Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/29

 DIVISION OF SUBJECT 5 1858, the year of the death of [svar Gupta and the first appearance of Michael’s dramas, (iii) gas followed within five years by the pub- lication of Zilottama, Nil-darpan and Durges-nandini, we are ina transitional period of great ferment on every side, during which the country, awakened to new energies, was struggling to break fresh ground by assimilating the wealth of new ideas now brought before it. All the greatest strifes, social, religious, and literary were fought, though not completely won, during this period of awakened activity. The problem of English education now decisively settled, the triumph of the West was fully proclaimed ; and the literature as well as the society, in trying to adjust itself to this new order of things, began to take a distinctly new tone and colour. This was the era of the Reforming Young Bengal. The various, plentiful, but inferior literature produced during these years in which new experiments were tried, new veins of thought opened, a new public and a new order of writers created, prepared the way for the great flood-tide which began with 1858. From the latter date we have a third epoch of great fertility, (iv) ৮ brilliant achievement, and high promise, during which all the older ideas of life and literature were being revolutionised and transmuted into things better suited to the needs of the new era. The Literary Young Bengal came to take the lead. _ Our enquiry in the following pages will be chiefly confined to the tracing of the origins, to the well-meant bat scarcely fruitful activity of pioneer authors who range over a seemingly dull and barren period at the commence- ment of our literary history. We need not lament, how- ever, that at the beginning of our acquaintance, we do