THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

V. 2. The Age of Kalidasa223intellectual preference and aesthetic affinities, than to have satisfiedwith them any profound religious want. In morals also heaccepted and glorified the set and scientifically elaborate ethicsof the codes, but seems himself to have been destitute of thefiner elements of morality. We need not accept any of the ribaldand witty legends with which the Hindu decadence surroundedhis name; but no unbiassed student of Kalidasa's poetry can claimfor him either moral fervour or moral strictness. His writings showindeed a keen appreciation of high ideal and lofty thought, butthe appreciation is aesthetic in its nature: he elaborates and seeksto bring out the effectiveness of these on the imaginative senseof the noble and grandiose, applying to the things of the mindand soul the same aesthetic standard as to the things of sensethemselves. He has also the natural, high, aristocratic feeling forall that is proud and great and vigorous, and so far as he has it,he has exaltation and sublimity; but aesthetic grace and beautyand symmetry sphere in the sublime and prevent it from standingout with the bareness and boldness which is the sublime'snatural presentation. His poetry has therefore never been, likethe poetry of Valmiki and Vyasa, a great dynamic force for mouldingheroic character or noble or profound temperament. In allthis he represented the highly vital and material civilisation towhich he belonged.Yet some dynamic force a poet must have, some generalhuman inspiration of which he is the supreme exponent; or elsehe cannot rank with the highest. Kalidasa is the great, the supremepoet of the senses, of aesthetic beauty, of sensuous emotion.His main achievement is to have taken every poetic element,all great poetical forms and subdued them to a harmonyof artistic perfection set in the key of sensuous beauty. In continuousgift of seizing an object and creating it to the eye he hasno rival in literature. A strong visualising faculty, such as the greatestpoets have in their most inspired descriptive moments, was withKalidasa an abiding and unfailing power and the concrete presentationwhich this definiteness of vision demanded, suffusedwith an intimate and sovereign feeling for beauty of colour andbeauty of form, constitutes the characteristic Kalidasian manner.He is besides a consummate artist, profound in conception