400 PAINTING! A WORD-PICTURE
minutest details. He thinks it his duty to present it to the view in all its phases.
S ' il rencontre un palais, il m ' en depeint la face
II me promene aprfea de terrasse en terrasse
Ici s ' offre un perron; la rt-gne un corridor;
La ce balcon s ' enferme en un balustre d ' or,
II compte des plafonds les ronds et les ovales.
If a Hindu poet has a beautiful woman for his theme, he
will certainly never be content with merely stating, in a more or less flowery style, that she is endowed with all the charms of body and mind. Like the painter who reproduces on the canvas one feature after another of his
model, so does our Hindu poet pass in review a capite usque ad calcem the various charms of the beauty he is
describing. The colour of her skin, the expression of her face and eyes, in fine, everything connected with her, even her most secret charms, appear to him objects worthy of
his praise. The finishing strokes of his brush are generally reserved for the touching up of all the moral and intellectual qualities which his imagination can impart to the fair subject of his verses. It may be easily imagined that these descriptive details, overloaded as they are with a vast
display of epithets, become exceedingly diffuse; but we cannot deny to them at least the credit of exactitude.
Hindu poetry at first sounds harsh and inharmonious to a European ear, by reason of the frequent aspirations with which many of the letters at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the words are pronounced; but, on the other hand, this laboured pronunciation gives to the recital a stately and sonorous tone, which seldom fails to please one who has become used to it. At the same time it must be confessed that foreigners, and even natives who have not been well trained in it from infancy, find almost insurmountable difficulties in mastering this method of pronunciation.
The short pieces that I have seen have appeared to me generally weak and uninspiring. I know not whether the
Hindus have any real dramatic works. I only know of a few productions of this nature, and these are mixed up with songs and dialogues. The Dasa-avatara. or the ten incarnations of Vishnu, is among the number. But I am