ABSTRACT

IN the next following chapter we shall be examining the work of the greatest of the

post-Mongol poets, in the view of many the greatest poet of all-Here a brief account will be given of five poets of the fourteenth century whose writings illustrate different aspects of the literary activities of that troubled and uncertain period. Our first subject is an author of no very great originality, whose reputation in Europe has surely

exceeded his merits; a good example-though not so astounding as

—of how the wayward interest of occidentals can sometimes prevail over the more informed and balanced judgment of native criticism, though unlike

he has not wrung from his countrymen a belated confession of genius.