History of Bengali Language and Literature c11.30

c11.30

foreigner who has studied our language. He had employed Pundits to help him to acquire knowledge of Bengali, and when they declared that he was fit to address the people he commenced preaching; and in 1794 we find him devoted to this task in the jungly tracts of Sundarvans. He writes on the 16th January, 1798, "I spoke in Bengali for nearly half an hour without an intermission." "But" says he later on "I recollect that after I had preached or rather thought that I had, for two years (in Bengali), a man one day came to me and declared that he could not understand me, and this long after my flattering teachers had declared that every one could understand me. I feel the impression which that poor man's remark made on me to this day."*