Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/322

 298 BENGALI LITERATURE attempt of Don Quixote to revive the expiring days of chivalry. But, even though the cause was lost, its lessons were not lost ; the principles for which it had fought survived and found gradual acceptance. However imperceptible the process had been, it succeeded in tempering the un- licensed Europeanisation of later literature: it afforded a healthy antidote against the unchecked alienation of literature from national sensibilities; it represented a strong counter-current of purely native energy, which, if it never forced itself directly to the surface, never at the same time failed to make its subtle and wholesome influence felt. Itis a mistake to suppose that the old tendency absolutely died out with the death of Ivar Gupta. It never died out but it left its enduring vitality in the current of national thought and feeling, unmistak- able influence of which may be traced even in the literature of to-day. The spirit of an age or race, yielding to that of its successor, continues to abide in it as anessential ingredient, assumed, transformed and carried forward. In an historical survey of the 19th century literature, therefore, we cannot mistake the significance of this ten- dency of literature, which derived its inspiration primarily from conditions of national culture which were not access- ible to European or Europeanised writers of the first half of that century. We must indeed give the more prom- nent place to European writers and those who trod in their footsteps, because it is chiefly through their efforts, aided no doubt by the hand of the foreign government, that the dominance of western ideas ultimately strengthened itself and gave the final bent to the form and spirit of modern literature; yet the account of the period would surely be incomplete if we do not take into consideration this stream of purely indigenous activity flowing in the opposite direction and the extent of