38 BENGALI LITERATURE also the deaths of Durgaprasad and cee death of ৮ Ram-prasad. With these last great shandra in marke the decay of names, we are at the end of what the older current in এরি remained of ancient Bengali literature. During the continuance of the dual system of government between *65 and ’72, the older poets, one by one, passed away ; and none remained who could for a time step into their vacant place. Between the death of Bharat-chandra in 1760 and the first appear- ance of Isvar Gupta in Samdad- The interregnum = ; till the emergence of prabhikar of 1830, there came an the new literature was broken chiefly, if not wholly, by the eentury, during which there was no Kabiwalas, interregnum of more than half a man who had been strong enough to seize the unclaimed sceptre. The only pretenders were the Kabiwalas, but they never rose to that level of artistic merit and sustained literary composition which would have enabled them to strike a commanding figure on the empty stage. Who would think of placing Haru Thakur or Ram Basu side by side with Bharat-chandra some of whom were or Ram-prasad? These Kabiwalas men of undoubted left টি behind them few things of permanent literary value; for although some of them were men of undoubted poetic power, they never cultivated literature for its own sake, but composed their songs chiefly to please their Their place in new patrons in society—the upstart literature not very hier zemindars, the wealthy speculators, or the illiterate mass whose chief amusement consisted of these songs, pinachalis, or Jatras. The Kabi literature, therefore, is one of a very composite character, and side by side with the higher flights, we have interspersed not a little amount of flat colloquial verbiage which no stretch of literary charity
