THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

148 The Harmony of Virtue— the air of the mountains or the struggle of a capable mindwith hardship and difficulty; the Vedanta philosophy, the idealof the niØkÀma dharma, the poetry of Vyasa, three closely relatedentities are intellectual forces that exercise a similar effectand attraction. The style of this powerful writer is perhaps theone example in literature of strength in its purity, a strength undefacedby violence and excess, yet not weakened by flaggingand negligence. It is less propped or helped out by any artificesand aids than any other poetic style. Vyasa takes little troublewith similes, metaphors, rhetorical turns, the usual paraphernaliaof poetry, nor when he uses them, is he at pains to selectsuch as will be new and curiously beautiful; they are there todefine more clearly what he has in mind, and he makes just enoughof them for that purpose, never striving to convert them into aseparate grace or a decorative element. They have force and beautyin their context but cannot be turned into elegant excerpts; inthemselves they are in fact little or nothing. When Bhima is spokenof as breathing hard like a weakling borne down by a load tooheavy for him, there is nothing in the simile itself. It derives itsforce from its aptness to the heavy burden of unaccomplishedrevenge which the fierce spirit of the strong man was condemnedto bear. We may say the same of his epithets, that great preoccupationof romantic artists; they are such as are most natural,crisp and firm, but suited to the plain idea and only unusual whenthe business in hand requires an unusual thought, but never recherchéor existing for their own beauty. Thus when he is describingthe greatness of Krishna and hinting his claims to beconsidered as identical with the Godhead, he gives him the oneepithet aprameya, immeasurable, which is strong and unusualenough to rise to the thought, but not to be a piece of literarydecoration or a violence of expression. In brief, he religiouslyavoids overstress, his audacities of phrase are few, and they havea grace of restraint in their boldness. There is indeed a rushingvast Valmikian style which intervenes often in the Mahabharata,but it is evidently the work of a different hand, for it belongs toa less powerful intellect, duller poetic insight and coarser taste,which has yet caught something of the surge and cry of Valmiki'soceanic poetry. Vyasa in fact stands at the opposite pole from