Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/230

216 It should be borne in mind, that when Latin was, it may be said, the cradle of science, the English language had not attained that fulness and correctness of which it can now legitimately boast. The style of vernacular writers was not formed, being quaint, pedantic, and vitiated; composition was in its infancy, and there were but few writers. The times, too, were far from favourable to the cultivation of letters.

To compare English composition as it was in those days, with what it afterwards became, would be to institute a comparison between a Hindoo figure-maker and. Ever since the Reformation, the English language has been advancing to its present magnificent state of universality, copiousness, and beauty. It would, indeed, be a strange thing, if in our day, when more works are published in a year than were in the olden time printed in half a century, the native youth of India, who may turn to the study of English, should, in defiance of the standard works put into their hands, and in spite of precept and example, follow such pedantic and vitiated models as those alluded to by Mr. Tytler. Facts daily occurring around us, demonstrate the groundlessness of such a fear.

“As it was in Europe,” contends Mr. Tytler, “so it will be with the English productions of the natives of India; they will be a mere patchwork of sentences extracted from the few English books with which their authors are acquainted. Mr. Tytler should at least have shown, that, to produce such an effect, the circumstances were precisely the same in the two countries. How he has reached his postulate, he has not condescended to say; nor is it of much importance to know; for it is, after all, a hypothetical assumption. In recommending that native medical students should possess a knowledge of English, we are swayed by a hope, not of their writing books, good or bad, but of their thoroughly understanding and digesting valuable works in that language, com-