have substantially all that he wrote, and run no risk of ascribing to
him any considerable work from another hand.

Of these seven works, four are poetry throughout; the three dramas,
like all Sanskrit dramas, are written in prose, with a generous
mingling of lyric and descriptive stanzas. The poetry, even in the
epics, is stanzaic; no part of it can fairly be compared to English
blank verse. Classical Sanskrit verse, so far as structure is
concerned, has much in common with familiar Greek and Latin forms:
it makes no systematic use of rhyme; it depends for its rhythm not
upon accent, but upon quantity. The natural medium of translation into
English seems to me to be the rhymed stanza;[3] in the present work
the rhymed stanza has been used, with a consistency perhaps too rigid,
wherever the original is in verse.

Kalidasa's three dramas bear the names: _Malavika and Agnimitra,
Urvashi_, and _Shakuntala_. The two epics are _The Dynasty of Raghu_
and _The Birth of the War-god_. The elegiac poem is called _The
Cloud-Messenger_, and the descriptive poem is entitled _The Seasons_.
It may be well to state briefly the more salient features of the
Sanskrit _genres_ to which these works belong.

The drama proved in India, as in other countries, a congenial form to
many of the most eminent poets. The Indian drama has a marked
individuality, but stands nearer to the modern European theatre than
to that of ancient Greece; for the plays, with a very few exceptions,
have no religious significance, and deal with love between man and
woman. Although tragic elements may be present, a tragic ending is
forbidden. Indeed, nothing regarded as disagreeable, such as fighting
or even kissing, is permitted on the stage; here Europe may perhaps