Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/109

Rh of Allâl." He has had many imitators, and certainly stands high as a novelist; his story might fairly claim to be ranked with some of the best comic novels in our own language for wit, spirit, and clever touches of nature. Michael Madhusûdan Datt, a Christianized Hindu, has also written a great many works, some of them very good. And "Hutam," as he calls himself, or Kali Prasanna Singh, must be mentioned as a vigorous and clever, though occasionally coarse, painter of the manners of his countrymen. There are many more, too many perhaps for a country which has so recently emerged from semi-barbarism; but civilization, or a curious imitation of it, is a plant of fast growth in India, and all we can do is to hope that much that is worthless may die out, while what remains may be strengthened and pruned. That the Bengalis possess the power as well as the will to establish a national literature of a very sound and good character, cannot be denied, and it is to be hoped that the ponderous high-flown Sanskrit style will be laughed out of the field by Tekchând Thâkur and his light-armed troops, so that Bengalis may write as they talk, and improve their language, not by wholesale importations from the dead Sanskrit, but by adopting and adhering to one standard universal system of spelling, and by selecting from the copious stores of their local dialects such vigorous and expressive words as may best serve to express their thoughts. If the style of any one writer were taken as a model by the rest, a standard would soon be set up, and Bengali would become a literary language.

The immense activity of the Calcutta press should also be, if possible, a little slackened. It is impossible that more than one-tenth of the heaps of books which daily appear should be really worth the paper they are printed on. Less works and better ones, more care and thought, and less of the froth of empty heads, are wanted to produce a solid and enduring literature.