Page:The Bengali Book of English Verse.djvu/22

xviii spirit, and their labours were not confined to any petty scholastic routine. The day of the Indian Universities was not yet. The rush of modern competition transforming school and college courses into an immediate means towards desperately desired ends, had not set in. There was no examination fetish, nor any extensive system of cheap secondary education. German philology had not as yet invaded the fair domain of letters. The aim of college work was to learn the English language; and towards this end the good fortune of Bengal provided patrons and teachers who combined scholarship with culture, and who had lived largely in the life of their time.

To the encouragement and example of these men may be traced whatever English verse was produced by Bengali writers in the first half of the 19th century. This was not large in quantity, and was the work of three authors: Kasiprasad Ghose, whose Minstrel appeared in 1830; Rajnarain Dutt who dedicated to Richardson his Osmyn, an Arabian tale, in 1841; and Michael Madhusudan Dutt whose Captive Ladie, published in 1849, is the most ambitious poetical effort of any Bengali writer. Michael Dutt is a curiously interesting figure. He was educated in the Hindu College, and won the friendship and patronage of Richardson who encouraged his bent towards poetry. In 1843 he became a Christian; and after residence in the Bishop's College, he went to Madras. Here, in 1849, he produced The Captive Ladie; and thereafter devoted himself to the study and cultivation of Bengali literature. In 1861 his classical narrative poem, Meghanadbadh, and his translation of the notorious Nil Darpan, brought him prominently into notice. In the following year he went to England and studied law; but his subsequent career was not fortunate;