THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

V.. 7. Kalidasa's Characters265artistic tastes or impossible ideals and the best of them had in amost wonderful degree the poet's faculty of imparting this enthusiasmto others. The terrible fate which dogged them was nomysterious doom of the Atridae, but the natural inexorable resultof the incompatibility between their temperament and theirposition. Charles II was the only capable man of his line, theonly one who set before him a worldly and unideal aim and recognizedfacts and using the only possible ways and means quietlyand patiently accomplished it. The first James had some practicalenergy, but it was marred by the political idealism, the disregardof a wise opportunism, and the tyrannical severity towardsthose who thwarted him which distinguished his whole dreamy,fascinating and utterly unpractical race. Nor is the type wantingin Indian History. Sriharsha of Cashmere in the pages of Kalhanaaffords a most typical picture of the same unhappy temperament.It is interesting therefore to see how Kalidasa dealt with asimilar character.To our surprise we find that the Hindu poet does not associateincompetence, failure and tragedy with this image of thepoet-king; on the contrary, Pururavas is a Great Emperor, welllovedof his people, an unconquered hero, the valued ally of theGods, successful in empire, successful in war, successful in love.Was then Kalidasa at fault in his knowledge of the world and ofhuman nature? Such a solution would be inconsistent with allwe know of the poet's genius as shown in his other works. Thetruth is that Kalidasa simply gives us the other side of the shield.It is not an invariable law of human nature that the poetic temperamentshould be, by its temperament, absolutely unfitted forpractical action and regal power. Nero and Charles I were artistictemperaments cursed with the doom of kingship. But Alexanderof Macedon and Napoleon Buonaparte were poets on athrone, and the part they played in history was not that of incompetentsand weaklings. There are times when Nature giftsthe poetic temperament with a peculiar grasp of the conditionsof action and an irresistible tendency to create their poems notin ink and on paper, but in living characters and on the greatcanvas of the world; such men become portents and wonders,whom posterity admires or hates but can only imperfectly under-