Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/178

 154 BENGALI LITERATURE the language”. This was his main object in writing Bengali books: he was never inspired by any literary enthusiasm or artistic impulse of creation. His language and his interests are perfectly definite and practical ; there is hardly any touch of elevation 2 ee or attempt at fine writing anywhere. That he was capable of better things, is, as we have already pointed out, obvious from his Dialogues: yet even this work was meant chiefly as a text-book, and as such it hardly afforded many oppor- tunities for the display of his inherent literary powers. Most of his other writings consists of translation or com- pilation. But, although even in translation a capable artist has scope for his originality, in Carey’s case the translations may be suspected to be pretty closely copied from the texts: there is no native literary aspiration to be free and original. Yet, after all is said, it must be admitted that whatever talent could achieve without genius, Carey did accomplish. If he wrote no great imaginative work, he at least prepared the way for the writing of such. We need not lament over the want of ori- ginality so conspicuous in his writings: for iu the special circumstances it makes far more for his honour than for his depreciation. His literary work was inspired not by any desire of fame nor by any The value and signi- ficance of his trans- lation personal craving to write, but wholly and solely by the wish of what he thought to be benefitting the people, of doing something that might help the country out of the slough of decadence into which it had been plunged by centuries of foreign rule, least favourable to the development of national life or literature. To this end, it would have been not merely presumptuous but, in the circumstances and the need of satisfying a peremptory