Dutt, Romesh Chunder: The literature of Bengal: being an attempt to trace the progress of the national mind in its various aspects, as reflected in the nation’s literature from the earliest times to the present day ; with copious extracts from the best writers (Calcutta, 1877)

ii INTRODUCTION. c

the people. To take an instance, English literature bears
on its broad bosom the impress and reflection of every
period aud almost every great event in English history.
Without the aid of history we could mark in the pages
of Spenser, Bacon and Shakespear the broad blaze of
light, the spirit of daring and adventfure, th.fi'first peeps
of knowledge and enlightenment, that burst upon
England about the close of the sixteenth century. Mil-
ton represents the national mind struggling for indepen-
dence and the free-born rights of man about the middle
of the seventeenth century; the pages of Waller s.ndc
Dryden mark the reaction from stern and sustained effort
to voluptuous ease. The literature of the beginning of
the eighteenth century^ as represented^ hy Pope and
Addison, shows the national mind once more refining,
expanding, gather? ig strength. Johnson represents the
last period of authority and conservatism, and the cling-
ing to old institutions because they were old. Thatt
authority, howevei', was shaken, and the pages of Burns
and Wordsworth, of Shelly and Byron, bear impress of
the multifarious and tumultuous passions, the crumbling
down of old institutions and the questioning of old au-
thorities, the violent-rush after Freedom in thecompletest
sense of the word, in religion, politics and society, which
marked the dawning of a better era for mankind.

Precisely in the same manner, the literature of
India represents the national mind through successive
agd&' The Historian however has yet to arise who, with
Ni^buhr's powers of research and generalization, will
give us an accurate and elaborate History of India as