332 BENGALI LITERATURE splendour of imagination or exuberance of inventive thought. These poets have none of the disturbing tyranny of violent passion or the ecstatic elevation of superior inspira- tion. But, after all is said, it cannot but be admitted that some of the despised Kabiwalas are poets and not poetical curiosities, and that if Kabi-poetry does not always attain a high level of poetical excellence, the level it occasionally reaches is striking enough as a symptom of the presence of the true poetical spirit which it is often impossible to detect for years together in other periods of literary history. Even in the emphatically minor Kabiwalas—often persons quite unknown or unimportant in literature as persons—we come across charming things, lines and phrases and stanzas of exquisite beauty, indicating a general diffusion of the poetic spirit which had made even such inferior songsters beautifully articulate. One important and characteristic feature of Kabi- poetry consists in the fact that The characteristit : : quality of Kabi-poetry. though it was in no sense popular poetry dealing, as it did, with con- ventional themes in conventional form yet it expressed, through its poets who were of the people, what the
- people had of the noblest and
Its expression of ; popular feelings and sincerest as well as of the grossest ; aoe and in virtue of this it could be appreciated by the people at large. It may be true that popular appreciation is not the sure touchstone of poetic quality ; yet we would lapse into the error of academical dogmatism if we do not take into account the hold which this poetry possessed upon the popular mind as one of the important factors in our consideration. It is salutary as well as significant that no abrupt line divided the poets from the huge uncultivated populations, often con- temptuously set down as ‘the masses.” Even while
