Toru Dutt never
sinks to melodrama in the course of her extraordinary tale, and the
wonder is that she is not more often fantastic and unreal.
But we believe that the original English poems will be ultimately found
to constitute Toru's chief legacy to posterity. These ballads form the
last and most matured of her writings, and were left so far fragmentary
at her death that the fourth and fifth in her projected series of nine
were not to be discovered in any form among her papers. It is probable
that she had not even commenced them. Her father, therefore, to give a
certain continuity to the series, has filled up these blanks with two
stories from the "Vishnupurana," which originally appeared respectively
in the "Calcutta Review" and in the "Bengal Magazine." These are
interesting, but a little rude in form, and they have not the same
peculiar value as the rhymed octo-syllabic ballads. In these last we see
Toru no longer attempting vainly, though heroically, to compete with
European literature on its own ground, but turning to the legends of her
own race and country for inspiration.
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