d the battle of the vernaculars of the people. Charles,
afterwards Lord Metcalfe, had been the first student to enter the
college. He was on its Persian side, and he learned while still under
its discipline that "humility, patience, and obedience to the divine
will" which unostentatiously marked his brilliant life and soothed his
spirit in the agonies of a fatal disease. He and Bayley were
inseparable. Of the first set, too, were Richard Jenkins, who was to
leave his mark on history as Nagpoor Resident and author of the Report
of 1826; and Romer, who rose to be Governor of Bombay for a time. In
those early years the two Birds passed through the classes--Robert
Mertins Bird, who was to found the great land revenue school of
Hindostan; and Wilberforce Bird, who governed India while Lord
Ellenborough played at soldiers, and to whom the legal suppression of
slavery in Southern Asia is due. Names of men second to those, such as
Elliot and Thackeray, Hamilton and Martin, the Shakespeares and
Plowdens, the Moneys, the Rosses and Keenes, crowd the honour lists.
One of the last to enjoy the advantages of the college before its
abolition was John Lawrence, who used to confess that he was never good
at languages, but whose vigorous Hindostani made many an ill-doing Raja
tremble, while his homely conversation, interspersed with jokes,
encouraged the toiling ryot.

These, and men like these, sat at the feet of Carey, where they learned
not only to be scholars but to treat the natives kindly, and--some of
them--even as brethren in Christ. Then from teaching the future rulers
of the East, the missionary-professor turned to his Bengali preaching
and his Benevolent Institution, to his visits to the prisoners and his
intercourse with the British soldiers in Fort William. And when the
four days' work in Calcutta was over, the early tide bore him swiftly
up the Hoogli to the study where, for the rest of the week, he gave
himself to the translation of the Bible into the languages of the
people and of their leaders.

CHAPTER X

THE WYCLIF OF THE EAST--BIBLE TRANSLATION

1801-1832

The Bible Carey's missionary weapon--Other vernacular
translators--Carey's modest but just description of his labours--His
philological key--Type-cutting and type-casting by a Hindoo
blacksmith--The first manufacture of paper and steam-engines in the
East--Carey takes stock of the translation work at the opening of
1808--In his workshop--A semi