Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/895

 VII. ] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 851 inspite of superstitions, was permeated with a noble purpose and a spirit of true devotional fervour. But we can by no means ignore or un- derestimate the great pains and the indefatigable industry that mark his endeavours to improve the lives of the Bengalis by spreading education and by disseminating the truths of the Gospel among them. To him we pre-eminently owe the rapid development of Bengali prose before Raja Rama Mohana Roy took up the work right earnestly. The difficulties in the way of Dr. Carey were -many and great. It was his greatest ambition in life to publish a translation of the Gospel in Bengali. When after years of hard and unremitted labour, he had brought the translation of the New Testa- ment almost to completion, he estimated the cost of printing at Calcutta of 10,000 of copies at Rs. 43750. This was quite beyond his means, and_ he thought of getting the book printed in England. At first he proposed to obtain punches from Caslon, the emi- nent letter-founder in London, calculating that the cost of each punch would be 55. only; but he was wrong; the cost of the punches was a guineaa His efforts plece. So he gave up the idea of getting the oe book printed in England, though before doing so q he had made another attempt to engage the services of a letter-founder whom he knew at Der- by. In 1798 he read an advertisement that a letter- foundry was established for the ‘country language ' at Calcutta. Dr. Carey lost no time in corres- ponding with the projector of the scheme, and found that the punches of the foundry were cut by Panchanana, who had been trained by Sir Charles