Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/15

PREFACE xili and neglected history of the early Roman Catholie mis- sions to Bengal and their connexion with Bengali. The account of the Kabiwalas and other indigenous writers. could not be made as full and well-arranged as I -had desired ; for the materials and means of study are ex+ tremely scanty and unsatisfactory. Iam still engaged upon this investigation and am collecting materials for fuller treatment ; in the mean time what is presented here must be taken as merely tentative. The large number of quotations from various works. seattered throughout the volume, no doubt, swells it to an enormous length but I could not always control the length of these illustrative extracts : for each quotation, in order to be illustrative, must be presented as complete in itself. Scraps and fragments and stray passages are not always helpful. In the next place the comparative scarcity of the books from which such passages are taken will, it is hoped, be an ample apology for their length and frequency. When the history will come down to more recent times the quotations will naturally become fewer: for one may then depend on the reader’s means of acquaintance with the literature of his time. In these quotations I have carefully preserved the spelling and punctuation, of the original texts with which in all cases I have minutely compared and verified them. It will be also noticed that I have refrained from giving any transla- tion of these Bengali extracts for the simple reason that no translation could have adequately conveyed the spirit of the original, and that the real importance of these writers lie not so much in their matter as in their form and method of expression, which mere translation can never reproduce. As to chronology and classification, it is better to make a preliminary remark, Controlling dates and names,