Travels, Tom Brown's School days, the Bible and the Pilgrim's Progress?
What are the Telugu classics which the Telugus find it delightful and profitable to read for themselves? Tell us not that the Telugu Bharata is recited at the temples and the markets. We know it is recited by one Pandit and interpreted by another in the living tongue of to-day. That is a different thing. Such is not popular Literature. Do you not see vast crowds gathering round the man who recites the Ballad of Bobbili? He is an illiterate man, and his audience is illiterate too; there may be a pandit standing apart but 'enjoying' the vulgur performance. That is real popular Literature. Valmiki's Sanskrit Ramayana was so recited by illiterate bards when sanskrit was living language.
"The first Englishmen of letters of whom we have record—Smiths of Song, as they are called in The Yuglingla Saga—were the gleemen or ministrels who played on the harp and chanted heroic songs while the ale-mug or mead-cup was passed round, and who received much reward in their calling The teller of the tale in Widsith is a typical ministrel of this kind, concerned with the exercise of his art. The scop (the court ministrel) composed his verses and "published" them himself. The music of
