Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/509

 APPENDIX I 485 rhythmical and verbal dignity and showing the way to better things if it had suited the writers to write more originally in prose. Treatises on law, medicine, and similar documents or esoteric theological writing can seldom, in the very nature of the case, lay claim to literary com- petency or to the motive power of style; but the description of Brndaban and such other things gives better opportuni- ties and, rude though the resources of form and model were, yet such as they were, they were used with sufficient skill. This, though qualitied, is high praise indeed. Full and mature prose style is yet to come; indeed style in the strict and rare sense had scarcely been attained or consciously attempted. ‘The necessary stock of material was yet to be accumulated, the necessary plant and method of working to be slowly and painfully elaborated. There was still clumsiness and uncouth handling inseparable from earliness and immaturity. These Sahajiya and other works again written, as they were, for an exclusive and esoteric sect and in a difficult language were not very widely known or easily accessible to all: in facet, their general influence was not much and this may be one reason why their very laudable attempt at vernacular prose-writing was not so widely taken up or readily emulated as it should have been. But the return to vernacular writing from Sanserit or Persian; the general change of ground from verse to prose; the widening of subjects and methods ; the practising of a perfectly homely and vernacular style, free from obscurity or ornate Sanscrit constructions ; and lastly the example Its formal import- of easy plain business-like narration, ance 170 general. movement towards the not altogether devoid of character, all ১৯০ sean this meant a very great deal. The result achieved may not have been literature in the proper sense but the small amount of