Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/84

 C0 BENGALI LITERATURE had been attained, until the rich and plentiful literature of the West, which under the peculiar circumstances was alone capableof furnishing the needed impetus, had been made accessible to the literary men of Bengal. In the meantime, the alien rulers of Bengal, brought up in the habits of unchecked power and in the ignorance and passion of an adventurous life, cared little for culture or literature. The general people of the country, among whom literary traditions and aspirations had been all but extinet or had not found scope for free play, were apathetic to literary culture and devoted their attentions, in this troublesome time, to the more urgent and engrossing material necessities of life. The first Necessity of a re- step, therefore, that had to be taken, generation of the i general intellectual before literary venture could be life in the country :. zi before a renewal of possible, was towards diffusion of literature could be knowledge, spread of education, and made possible. promotion of literary tendencies. The first half of the 19th century, therefore, was entirely taken up in the realisation of these objects. It was necessary to prepare text-books, to translate standard works from foreign languages, to reprint older classics from inaccessible manuscripts, and in this way generally to furnish a leaven for elevating the decaying intellectual life of the country. This was the work chiefly of the foreign writers in Bengali and their colleagues, the Pundits of the Fort Willi:m College, Importance of the who were pioneers in various depart- work of the European writers in this respect, ments of vernacular writing and who wrote, not with any personal literary ambition but with the more modest yet useful object of promoting general education. ‘To their efforts, therefore, we chiefly owe, in a very practical sense, if not the regeneration of our literature, at least the regeneration of