Page:Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar, a story of his life and work.djvu/177

136 although the work was the fruit of Vidyasagar's first attempts at Bengali composition, yet it was undoubtedly a good, readable book for the Bengali-reading Civilians, on account of its beauty of style, sweetness of language, perspicuity of expression, and proper arrangement of thoughts. Prior to this, no Bengali book in prose had ever been written in such chaste, correct, easy, idiomatic language. No doubt, many Sanskrit pundits had, before this, written books in Bengali prose for the use of the students of the Fort William College, but none of them were worth reading. On the contrary, most of them were not at all readable for the worthlessness of their language. Several of the Vernacular teachers of the Fort William College had also compiled Bengali books for the use of the College students. Of these Babu Ramram Basu had written the "Pratapaditya-Charita," a prose work, its language was quite worthless. Pandit Mrityunjay Vidyalankar had written the "Prabodha-Chanbut drika." In addition to these, Mr. Cary, a European Christian missionary, had compiled an Anglo-Bengali grammar and dictionary. The grammar is now rare, but the dictionary is still extant. Besides the above, there were many Bengali prose books written by other authors contemporaneously with, or prior to, the "Vasudeva-Charita," but none of them could approach it in elegance of style, correctness of language, or sweetness of expression. To enable the reader to form some idea of