So the sorrow of my heart is within my heart shut up.
I would have told it to him when he went to the far-off land;
But when I was about to speak, I could not.'
We have preferred to give this specimen rather than others of superior merit, because it is the most popular kabi among Bengális at the present day.
There is one other writer—himself a class—whom we wish to notice before we proceed to consider the present state of Bengáli literature. We mean Iswar Chandra Gupta. He stands between the past and the present, and singularly illustrates the literary poverty of the age in which he lived, and the progress that has been made within the last few years. A dozen, years have not elapsed since Iswar Chandra Gupta died, yet we speak of him as belonging to a past era; so essentially does he differ from the more prominent writers of the present day.
He was a very remarkable man. He was ignorant and uneducated. He knew no language but his own, and was singularly narrow and unenlightened in his views; yet for more than twenty years he was the most popular author among the Bengális. As a writer of light satiric verse, he occupies the first place, and he owed his success both as a poet and as an editor to this special gift. But there his merits ended. Of the higher qualities of a poet he possessed none, and his work was extremely rude and uncultivated. His writings were generally disfigured by the grossest obscenity. His popularity was chiefly owing to his perpetual alliteration and play upon words. We have purposely noticed him here in order to give the reader an idea of the literary capacity and taste of the age in which a poetaster like Iswar Chandra Gupta obtained the highest rank in public estimation. And we cannot even say that he did not deserve to be placed in the highest rank among his Bengáli contemporaries, for he was a man of some literary talent, while none of the others possessed any. However much we may lament the poverty of Bengáli literature, the last fifteen years have been a period of great progress and hope; within that time at least a dozen writers have arisen, every one of whom is immensely superior, in whatever is valuable in a writer, to this—the most popular of their predecessors.
Strange as it may appear, this obscure and often immoral writer was one of the precursors of the modern Brahmists. The charge of obscenity and immorality mainly applies to his poetry. His prose is generally free from both vices, and often advocates the cause of religion and morality. We extract the following passage from the prose portion of the Hita Prabhákar to illustrate his Brahmistic tendencies. His acquaintance with the leading tenets of the ancient Indian systems of philosophy ought not to surprise
