de it necessary
for me to say what we had been about; and had it not been for this
circumstance we should not have said anything till we had got the New
Testament at least pretty forward in printing. I am very glad that
Major Colebrooke has done it. We will gladly do what others do not do,
and wish all speed to those who do anything in this way. We have it in
our power, if our means would do for it, in the space of about fifteen
years to have the word of God translated and printed in all the
languages of the East. Our situation is such as to furnish us with the
best assistance from natives of the different countries. We can have
types of all the different characters cast here; and about 700 rupees
per month, part of which I hope we shall be able to furnish, would
complete the work. The languages are the Hindostani (Hindi),
Maharastra, Ooriya, Telinga, Bhotan, Burman, Chinese, Cochin Chinese,
Tongkinese, and Malay. On this great work we have fixed our eyes.
Whether God will enable us to accomplish it, or any considerable part
of it, is uncertain."

But all these advantages, his own genius for languages, his
unconquerable plodding directed by a divine motive, his colleagues'
co-operation, the encouragement of learned societies and the public,
and the number of pundits and moonshees increased by the College of
Fort William, would have failed to open the door of the East to the
sacred Scriptures had the philological key of the Sanskrit been wanting
or undiscovered. In the preface to his Sanskrit grammar, quoted by the
Quarterly Review with high approbation, Carey wrote that it gave him
the meaning of four out of every five words of the principal languages
of the whole people of India:--"The peculiar grammar of any one of
these may be acquired in a couple of months, and then the language lies
open to the student. The knowledge of four words in five enables him
to read with pleasure, and renders the acquisition of the few new
words, as well as the idiomatic expressions, a matter of delight rather
than of labour. Thus the Ooriya, though possessing a separate grammar
and character, is so much like the Bengali in the very expression that
a Bengali pundit is almost equal to the correction of an Orissa proof
sheet; and the first time that I read a page of Goojarati the meaning
appeared so obvious as to render it unnecessary to ask the pundit
questions."

The mechanical apparatus of types, paper, and printing seem to hav