Bidasari.  It has all the absorbing fascination of a fairy tale.  We are
led into the dreamy atmosphere of haunted palace and beauteous
plaisance: we glide in the picturesque imaginings of the oriental poet
from the charm of all that is languorously seductive in nature into the
shadowy realms of the supernatural.  At one moment the sturdy bowman or
lithe and agile lancer is before us in hurrying column, and at another
we are told of mystic sentinels from another world, of Djinns and
demons and spirit-princes.  All seems shadowy, vague, mysterious,
entrancing. 

In this tale there is a wealth of imagery, a luxury of picturesqueness,
together with that straightforward simplicity so alluring in the story-
teller.  Not only is our attention so captivated that we seem under a
spell, but our sympathy is invoked and retained.  We actually wince
before the cruel blows of the wicked queen.  And the hot tears of
Bidasari move us to living pity.  In the poetic justice that punishes
the queen and rewards the heroine we take a childish delight.  In other
words, the oriental poet is simple, sensuous, passionate, thus
achieving Milton's ideal of poetic excellence.  We hope that no
philosopher, philologist, or ethnologist will persist in demonstrating