g60 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [ Chap. come the difficulties of a foreign tongue and master its idioms, their works, judged from the standpoint of pure merit, have, we are constrained to observe, no great attraction. They scarcely rise above the level of school-books. They were pioneers in the field of their labours, so we need not under- rate their laudable efforts ; but except awakening the Hindu mind to a sense of its own duty in literature and diverting it into practical channels, their productions have not served any essential or permanent purpose. These works will, in time to come, be looked upon merely as literary curiosities, to be preserved on the shelf amongst old and rare books. Their Bengali imitators set themselves mostly to the task of compiling and translating English works, which, though extremely necessary at that early period of the diffusion of western education, possess no remarkable merit or permanent interest. The whole of this period in the history of our literature, inspite of its great activity diverted to useful purposes, strikes us as singularly barren of originality ; and the greatest productions then worked out, though they required years of patient and indefatiguable industry, are no land-marks in the history of our progress ; and our minds, while full of admiration for the noble band of writers, involuntarily turn to the old literature for the gratification of those desires which true and ori- ginal composition can alone fulfil. There was much in the prose writings of this age to interest the intellect but little, to give pleasure or satisfac- tion to the soul.
