Immediately on her return she began to
study Sanscrit with the same intense application which she gave to all
her work, and mastering the language with extraordinary swiftness, she
plunged into its mysterious literature. But she was born to write, and
despairing of an audience in her own language, she began to adopt ours
as a medium for her thought. Her first essay, published when she was
eighteen, was a monograph, in the "Bengal Magazine," on Leconte de
Lisle, a writer with whom she had a sympathy which is very easy to
comprehend. The austere poet of "La Mort de Valmiki" was, obviously, a
figure to whom the poet of "Sindhu" must needs be attracted on
approaching European literature. This study, which was illustrated by
translations into English verse, was followed by another on Josephin
Soulary, in whom she saw more than her maturer judgment might have
justified. There is something very interesting and now, alas! still more
pathetic in these sturdy and workmanlike essays in unaided criticism.
Still more solitary her work became, in July, 1874, when her only
sister, Aru, died, at the age of twenty.
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