SOURCE: "Kalidasa and the Guptas," in A History of Sanskrit Literature, The Clarendon Press, 1928, pp. 79-108.

In the following excerpt, Keith summarizes and discusses each of Kalidasa's poetical works.

The opinion of India which makes the Rtusamhara, cycle of the seasons, a youthful work of Kalidasa, has recently been assailed on many grounds. Thus it has been complained that the poem lacks Kalidasa's ethical quality, that it is too simple and uniform, too easy to understand. The obvious reply is that there is all the difference between the youth and the maturity of a poet, that there is as much discrepancy between the youthful work of Virgil, Ovid, Tennyson, or Goethe, and the poems of their manhood as between Kalidasa's primitiae and the rest of his work. Nor is it the slightest use to argue that Sanskrit poets differed from other poets since they were essentially learned and...