iii
and want of pretensions that serves to stamp it as one eminently suited for light literature. In their treatment of men, we find that both are impressed more with the broader features of human life than with the fine shades of feeling or thought that come in for the greatest share of the attention of an Austen, a Dickens or a Thackeray. Bankim Chandra does indeed display great powers of diving deep into the hearts of men and women and invites us to witness the play of the nicest sentiments and thoughts in some of his domestic novels. But still his great bent was, like Sir Walter's, for the broader aspects of human character.
Both he and Scott were of a highly romantic temperament and had a great fancy for adventurers and desperados of the Robin Hood type. There was a sentimental sympathy with this sort of characters in both which they could ill reconcile with their common sense with which both were uncommonly endowed. In Sir Walter this accounts for his Rob Roys and his Highland raiders, no less than for the Jacobite tendencies of his fictions, though he was one of the most loyal subjects of the Georges. In Bankim Chandra we find this leading him in enthusiastic assent a long way with bandits and outlaws of the type of Bhavani Pathak in his Debi Choudhurani and the Children in his Abbey of Bliss. Even among Children we find our author doting on the tumultuous and dashing spirit of Bhavananda more than on the gentler Jivananda. He gloats on the pranks of the free lances of the Children, such as burning and ravaging villages and outraging villagers, though in his heart of hearts he thoroughly condemns such roguery. Intellectual sympathy with these he has none, and he takes good care to dissociate himself from this lawlessness; but even in seeking to expose the foolishness of Children as he pro-
