taneous a cadence. Indeed the recapture or recreation of the original spirit in the English page surpasses anything else that we have seen in Oriental verse, since FitzGerald metamorphosed Omar Khayyam. So much so, that it has even been rumoured by sceptical critics in India that Gitanjali was in the process indebted to an English ghost; and the name of Mr. W. B. Yeats has been particularly associated with this mysterious office, thanks, it may be, to his known uncanny powers. It may be as well to say, then, that the small manuscript book in which the author made these new English versions when he was on his way here in 1912, is still in the possession of Mr. Will Rothenstein; and any one who takes the trouble to compare the pocket book with the printed text will find that the variations are of the slightest, while in certain instances the printed readings may be criticised as not an improvement on those in the MS.
Rabindranath Tagore, in fact, as you have heard, not only learnt English at home, but came to England when he was a student of seventeen, with a keen curiosity about western poetry and the finer usage of the tongue that
