Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/30

 6 BENGALI LITERATURE not see our literature at its best, that we are not introduced at once toa Homer. We have, it is true, to plod wearily through a mass of indifferent writings Scope and method of Whose charm, if any, seems to have the present enquiry. long palled, before we come to a single good writer of importance; but it is well that we should du so. It enables us to examine the foundations more critically and get the parts of history into true proportion and connection. We are apt to pass lightly over the early beginniagss of literary history as a stage that we have outgrown and lay greater stress upon periods more engaging: but no theory is more inaccurate or insufficient than that which despises the historie estimate and bids us look only to the ‘best’ or the ‘principal’ things. In an era of evolutionary philosophy, it would be idle to investigate any manifestation of the spirit of nature or of man apart from its origin and growth. We can not despise the bar- barian for the civilised man, as Hume perhaps would have done; for to the student of modern sociology, the barbarian becomes important in his organic relation to the civilised man, and the whole “ social series,’ to quote a phrase of Mill’s, must be studied step by step through the various stages of development. No more can the historian of literature ignore the rude unshaped farrago of writings which always precedes the literature of a finer stuff; for the one can never be studied intelligently without the help of the other. The literature, therefore, which is represented, in poetry and in prose, by the great names of Michael and Bankim, must be studied in the light of the no-literature that is represented by the lesser names of Carey and Mrtyunjay. It is no waste of time to trace step by step the way in which we have laid the foundations of a national literature which, if not rich in present accomplishment, is radiant with the promise of the future.