to spoil his quality. They only serve to give him self-confidence and poise. Like a child he is now grave, now gay, sometimes petulant, sometimes despairing. But in the child all this is purposeless. In Rāmprasāda there is a deep intensity of purpose. Every sentence he has uttered is designed to sing the glory of his mother.” As yet the works of our early poets have not been translated into English and made known to European Scholars, except in stray cases where they have elicited well-merited admiration. When these works are better known, they will, I confidently hope, draw a large number of admirers from all parts of the enlightened world. Mysticism in literature is justly receiving a tribute of praise from European scholars at the present moment, and this element predominates in our early poems—especially in those of the Vaiṣṇavas.
Mr. F. H. Skrine in a letter regretfully says, “if a tithe of the pains given by the Bengalis to acquire a smattering of English had been devoted to their mother tongue, they would long since have ceased to merit the reproach of producing little or no original work".
It is a note-worthy fact that while our poets sang and scholars laboured in the cause of the Vernacular Literature, the aristocracy of the country, both Hindu and Mahomedan, were not slow in rendering active support towards its development. Great sacrifices of time and money were made by munificent noblemen of the country for preparing translations of the Sanskrit epics and other religious works. They were anxious to enlighten the popular mind, and made free gifts to the poets towards this end. The reader is referred to the enormous costs borne by Rājā Jay Nārāyaṇa and the pains he took for translating the Kāsī-Khaṇda, mentioned in my History of Bengali Language and Literature (pp. 782-787). Rajā Jaychandra of Chittagong in the eighteenth century engaged a pundit named Bhabāninath for translating a Sanskrit Purāna on a pay of Rs. 300 a month. The value of this amount was much higher than now and it will be curious to note in this connection that even at a much later period Warren Hastings used to draw Rs. 300 a month as a member of the Council and in 1767 the local Government had to submit an explanation to the Directors of the East India Company for paying Rs. 300 a month to Major Rannell as Surveyor General of India—the amount being considered too high a pay for that officer! The patronage accorded by the Mahomedan Emperors of Gour to the Vernacular Literature in the 15th and 16th centuries, marks an epoch in its history, and the bounty of Rājā Kriṣṇachandra of Navadwīp and other Hindu noblemen in its cause at a later period is too well known to need a more than passing mention here. Not only the poets but even the copyists of vernacular
