Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/492

 468 BENGALI LITERATURE distinguishing mark of style or even personal idiosynerasy of the writer. When these passages are compared with those taken from the Sanya Puran, the great differences of the two manners will emerge at ence. Except the passage on Baramasi already quoted, which sounds like a piece of mystic incantation, there is an attempt, however rude and unintelligible to us, on the part of the San ya Puan writer to say Whatever he has got to say in a connected manner : while in the passages under discussion the short disjointed statements, often in the form of questions and answers, With their rigid and stripped precision of language make the prose halting, clumsily hinged, and totally unsatisfactory from purely rhythmical-stylistie point of view. But then the object in the latter case was doctrinal exposition and not artistic or even plainly narrative presentment: there is no attempt at fine writing, no rhetorical tinge anywhere, nor any intrusion of sustained narrative or descriptive matter happily striking into style. This prose, with its conciseness or pointedness overdone, presents a striking contrast to the rudimentary yet elaborately rhythmed prose of Sanya Puran. No sane criticism will be enthusiastic over either the capacities or the performance of this plain passionless aphoristic prose, not pedantic but severely scholastic, devoid of all ornamentation or suggestiveness, and, in spite of its close- ness to verse, hardly attaining avy proper prose-rhythm at all, Some improvement, however, in the direction of periodic and sustained prose will be found in some late works belonging probably to the _ Other prose wri- 18th century and certainly not ea Tie going beyond it. The language here is simple enough in syntax and vocabulary : there is no’