diction should receive worship at his hands, and he set about writing Áláler Gharer Dulál in a spirit at which the Sanskritists stood aghast and shook their heads. Going to the opposite extreme in point of style, he vigorously excluded from his works, except on very rare occasions, every word and phrase that had a learned appearance. His own works suffered from the exclusion, but the movement was well-timed. In matter he scattered to the winds the time-honoured commonplaces, and drew upon nature and life for his materials. His success was eminent and well-deserved.
In Tekchánd Thakur’s steps followed other writers who met with equal or greater success, among whom we may name Kali Prosunno Singh as a novelist, Michael Madhusudan Datta as a poet, and Dinabandhu Mitra as a dramatist.
There are few Bengalis now living who have a greater claim to our respect than Pundit Iswar Chandra Vidyasâgar. His exertions in the cause of Hindu widows, the noble courage with which he, a pundit and a professor, first advocated their cause, the patient research and indefatigable industry with which he sought to maintain it, his large-hearted benevolence, and his labours in the cause of vernacular education—all these things combine to place him in the front rank of the benefactors of his country. His claims to the respect and gratitude of his countrymen are many and great, but high literary excellence is certainly not among them. He has a great literary reputation; so had Iswar Chandra Gupta: but both reputations are undeserved, and that of Vidyasâgar scarcely less so than that of Gupta. If successful translations from other languages constitute any claim to a high place as an author, we admit them in Vidyasâgar’s case; and if the compilation of very good primers for infants can in any way strengthen his claim, his claim is strong. But we deny that either translating or primer-making evinces a high order of genius; and beyond translating and primer-making Vidyasagar has done nothing. His brief discourse on Sanskrit literature deserves, and his widow marriage pamphlets claim, no notice here. If we exclude the school-books for children, his translations are five in number:—the Betal Panchabinsati from the Hindi; Sakuntalá, Sitár Banabás, and the introduction to the Mahábhárat from the Sanskrit; and the Bhrántibilás or Comedy of Errors from the English. Of these it is enough to say that they are excellent translations or adaptations, better probably than anything else of the same kind in Bengali. The Sitár Banabás is as little original as the others. The first chapter is taken from the Uttara Rámacharita, Bhavabhuti’s noble work; and the remaining three from the Ramayana itself, from which Bhavabhuti too drew his inspiration. It is in fact a reproduction, in smooth and flowing
