Bridges handed over the responsibility of tasting Macmillan in the hands of his publisher Longmans green & Co and Sir Lauder Brunton. but Macmillan emphatically said that they have no objection but the 'the extracts must be given in the language of Tagore himself and they have no reservation about the translation of Kabir's poems ' provided that no references to Tagore & Underhill are included in the book.
But Bridges did not become hopeless and wrote on 8 Jun, " I am sure that a conversation between us wd clear up the difficulties.' and he played another tricks, directly or indirectly, he tried to defame the translation of Rabindranath without mentioning any name.Before commenting this he wrote to Rothenstein on 19 Apr., " I have herd [Sir Walter] Raleigh run it down in his public lectures " and in the same letter wrote to Macmillan ; "Moreover his English versions are received in this country with the apology that they are only translations and are accepted with this allowance" . He also demonstrated to some of his friend his alterations with Rabindranath's translation , to show his superiority.
Rabindramath came to learn, from the letter written by Rothenstein on 12th May, that the Macmillan did not accept Bridges' proposal -- he wrote to Bridges freely on ," I am sorry to find that my publishers did not see their way to grant you permission to include in your anthology the Gitanjali poems in its altered form. My hesitation is chiefly owing to my sentiment of gratitude to Yeats who edited these forms and I feel it would be showing want of loyalty to him if I allowed any alterations in any of them. At least I ought to be quite certain that he approves of it."Andrews first raised the name of Yeats on 5 April in the letter written to Rothenstein. Rothenstein informed this to Bridges and wrote to Rabindranath on 30th April; "I have written him that since Yeats went over the original translations, you naturally feel it would appear ungracious to him to allow any other hand to touch what he has passed & in some measure himself perfected & he is apparently not able himself to agree. " At this Bridges contacted Yeats immediately. To maintain the glory of the court-poet Yeats forgot his previous stand and wrote Rabindranath, "He [ Bridges] tells me now that Macmillan has showed him a letter from you refusing, lest I should be offended to allow him to make those changes... I should be sorry to prevent Robert Bridges from making the slight changes he wishes." And then certifying Bridges like Rothenstein he added, " He is at moments a most admirable poet and always the chief scholar [sic] in English style now living ... I have the same mother tongue as he has, but I would be grateful should he care to revise a poem of mine and certainly I would be ashamed if consideration for my revision should keep you from accepting his."
Before receiving this letter, Rabindranath wrote to Macmillan on 13th Aug,
"If my instinct is right then I think the version of translation that are already before the public should never be published in altered forms --otherwise they would loss all idea of finality and many a reader's mind would be exercised in trying to improve them." After a few days, on 19th Aug, he wrote the same thing in detail to Bridges,
"I think there is a stage in all writings where they must have a finality in spite of their shortcomings. Authors have their limitations and we have to put up with them if they give us something positively good. If we begin to think of improvement there is no end to it and differences of opinion are sure to arise."
Citing a portion of the letter, he proposed to Rothenstein on 20th Aug,
" Why doesn't Dr. Bridges try to translate some of my poems directly from the original with the help of his Bengali friends in Oxford."
He wrote these to Macmillan on 13th Aug.
In fact, Bridges, himself, informed Macmillan that he had contacted Shaheed Suhrawardi, the famous orientalist. "
