anyone, even though we have said that he was uneducated; for they were pretty known to most Bengális of the same amount of culture in a generation which is fast dying out.
‘O Lord there is none among men who can discover what Thou art! Art Thou formless or form? How may I know what Thou art! No man can tell whether even Thou knowest Thyself, for art Thou not the Unknowable? What name can I give Thee, but Thou? What else can I call Thee? Shall I call Thee the conditioned or the unconditioned? The active or the inactive? The unmade or the maker? The sum of all qualities or the absolute? The one alone or the aggregate of all? What shall I call Thee? Who will tell me what I shall call Thee? Philosophers have not seen the end. The Shastras do not agree. One teaches one thing, and another teaches another. * * * Each has gone as far as his powers lead him, but the indescribable could not be described, and no eye of human knowledge could reach so far as where Thou went. O Father, what is this which calls itself Me? I know not myself; how then can I know Thee? Who is this I? Why do I call myself me? Is it by my own power I call myself me, or is it Thou? and is the power Thine? Say, whose is the power to call myself me, mine or Thine? Who says it? Who says what I have said, I or Thou? Why have I this body? or is the body mine? Why has a body been attached to me to make me a corporeal being? and why is this body self-conscious? What is this body? and who am I that inhabit it! Am I the same being which I was, when I first became myself within this body?’
Iswar Chandra Gupta is now fast falling into oblivion, and we must proceed to notice the class of writers who have superseded him. But before doing so, we must premise a few words on the present general condition of Bengali literature.
One of the most noticeable characteristics of Bengal at the present day is the large amount of literary activity to be found there in comparison with other parts of India. But while books and newspapers are daily pouring from the press, the quality of our current literature is by no means proportioned to its bulk. In fact, by far the greatest part (of) what is published is absolute rubbish. There are several modern Bengali books of which we shall have to speak in terms of high praise, but the number of these is so small in comparison with the mass of publications yearly vomited forth by the Bengali press, that they go but a little way towards redeeming the character of the whole. We can scarcely expect a better state of things from the class of men who compose the rank and file of Bengali authors and Bengali critics. Authorship in Bengal is the vocation of half-educated scribblers. The educated native has a sort of ultra-utilitarian contempt for the office, and considers himself above writing in his own language. The case of criticism is worse. We can hardly hope for a healthy and vigorous Bengali literature in the utter absence of anything like
