THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

II. 6. Bankim Chandra Chatterji97senses by these magnificent and mighty poems. Tilottama wasa gauntlet thrown down by the Romantic school to the Classical.Romanticism won; it was bound to win; it had on its sideyouth, fire, enthusiasm, the future and the poems of an unexampledgenius for its battle-cry. Tilottama had been the casusbelli; that marvellous epic, the Meghnad-badh, was the coupde grâce. When Vidyasagar praised the Meghnad-badh as asupreme poem, the day of the Sanskritists was over. That cabalof Pandits which had shouted against Madhusudan couldonly murmur weakly against Bankim; the conscience of the nationhad passed out of their keeping. But still the victor's audiencewas small and went little beyond the class that followed himinto battle, the geniuses, the literary men and women, the culturedzamindars and those men of the stamp of Rajah JyotindraMohan Tagore, men of an extraordinary and original culture,who were then so common in Bengal, but are now almostobsolete. The great poet died with a limited audience andbefore the full consummation of his fame.Bankim came into that heritage of peace which Madhusudanhad earned. There is, indeed, a curious contrast betweenthese two builders of the Bengali language, so alike in their missionbut in their fortunes so dissimilar. Both were equipped withenormous stores of reading, both were geniuses of a vast originality,both had creative power, a fine sense for beauty and agift for emotion and pathos: both made the same false start. Buthere all likeness between them stops. One was the king of prose,the other the king of poetry; and their lives were of a piece withtheir writings. Madhusudan's is full of sound and passion, violenceof heart, extravagance, intemperance, self-will, a life passingthrough grief, bitterness and anguish to a mournful and untimelydoom. As we read the passage of that Titanic personalityover a world too small for it, we seem to be listening again tothe thunder-scene in Lear, or to some tragic piece out of Thucydidesor Gibbon narrating the fall of majestic nations or theruin of mighty kings. No sensitive man can read it without beingshaken to the very heart. Even after his death, Madhusudan'sevil star followed him. Though a great poet among thegreatest, he is read nowhere outside Bengal and the Punjab;