Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/180

 156 BENGALI LITERATURE of the works of these missionaries is acknowledged to-day as classical by Bengali authors or Bengali readers ; and Bengal had a language and literature of its own long before the: missionaries even dreamt of coming out to this country ; yet this language had decayed and the literature had been forgotten. It was at this time that Carey came to Bengal. In order to understand what he did for literature we must recollect in what state he had found it when he made the first start. There was hardly any printed book; manus- eripts were rare; and all artistic impulse or literary tradi- tion was almost extinct. To Carey The character and belongs the eredit of having raised object of his work. | the language from its debased condi- tion of an unsettled dialect to the character of a regular and permanent form of speech, capable, as in the past, of becoming the refined and comprehensive vehicle of a great literature in the future. Poetry there was enough in ancient literature; there was a rudiment of prose too, not widely known or cultivated. But Carey’s was indeed one of the earliest attempts to write simple and regular prose for the expression of everyday thoughts of the nation. Other writers contemporaneous with him, like Ram Basu, or Mrtyuiijay took Persian or Sanscrit as their model and their prose in consequence became somewhat quaint, affected and elaborate ; but the striking feature eee of Carey’s prose is its simplicity. It is pervaded by a strong desire for clearness and for use, and by a love of the language itself. It succeeds in being clear aud useful and it pleases by force of these elements. It is true that, in spite of all this, Carey must be admitted to have been in literature still a learner, not a master, in any sense; but we must not in our haste forget the pioneer who did the spade-work and paved the way for later glories. Such a pioneer Carey was, and eminently