Arthur Anthony Macdonell

“ Though a true poet, he is wanting in that artistic sense of proportion so characteristic of the Greek mind, which exactly adjusts the parts to the whole, and combines form and matter into an inseparable poetic unity. Kālidāsa’s fame rests chiefly on his dramas, but he is also distinguished as an epic and a lyric poet.
He wrote three plays, the plots of which all bear a general resemblance, inasmuch as they consist of love intrigues, which, after numerous and seemingly insurmountable impediments of a similar nature, are ultimately brought to a successful conclusion. ”

“ The Meghadūta, or the Cloud-Messenger, describes the complaint of an exiled lover, and the message he sends to his wife by a cloud. It is full of deep feeling, and abounds with fine descriptions of the beauties of nature. ”

“ The richness of his creative fancy, his delicacy of sentiment, and his keen appreciation of the beauties of nature, combined with remarkable powers of description, place Kālidāsa in the first rank of Oriental poets. The effect, however, of his productions as a whole is greatly marred by extreme artificiality of diction, which, though to a less extent than in other Hindu poets, not unfrequently takes the form of puerile conceits and plays on words. ”