278 BENGALI LITERATURE But these learned pundits, who traded upon the general ignorance of the people and treated the vernacular with contempt, knew nothing of our past literature, but with a confidence born of untraining and in their eagerness to display their classical Their classical learn- learning, they affected a pedantic sa0S- ing and pedantry; and total ignorance of the vernacular literature. what the language could bear. Their critised style which was more than very erudition proved their greatest disqualification ; and their unwieldy style and its uncouth form, betraying all the absurd defects of an untrained hand, were wholly out of accord with the genius of the language. ‘lo handle these matters properly there is needed a poise so perfect that the least overweight in any direction tends to destroy the balance. The Duke of Wellington said of a certain peer that “it was a great pity his edu- cation had been so far too much for his abilities.” - In like manner, one often sees the erudition of these pundits prove too much for their abilities. In justice to these learned pundits, however, it must be said that some of them honestly believed in the efficacy of the sanscritised style, which was supposed to add dignity to the flat and colourless vernacular and that if they did not write easily, they wrote correctly: only this partiality for ১ দুধাল ১3210801101 0৯০ 91 সাধুভাষা (10191) 5151০) 881190101961 ৭1৮16... 23 01191. 0811100 to the extreme. We have seen how the learned author of Prabodh-chandrikaé at the beginning of his work extols Sans- erit as the best of all languages'; but he prefers to write in Bengali inasmuch as it is the best of the vernaculars on account of the preponderance of 39109011111) 7 (অন্যান্য দেশায় ভাষা হইতে গৌড়দেশীয় ভাঁষ। উত্তমা সর্বোত্তম! সংস্কতভাষাবাহুল্য
- See extract quoted at p. 218,
