es,
was Gunga Kishore, whom Carey and Ward had trained at Serampore. He
soon made so large a fortune by his own press that three native rivals
had sprung up by 1820, when twenty-seven separate books, or 15,000
copies, had been sold to natives within ten years.

For nearly all these Serampore supplied the type. But all were in
another sense the result of Carey's action. His first edition of the
Bengali New Testament appeared in 1801, his Grammar in the same year,
and at the same time his Colloquies, or "dialogues intended to
facilitate the acquiring of the Bengali language," which he wrote out
of the abundance of his knowledge of native thought, idioms, and even
slang, to enable students to converse with all classes of society, as
Erasmus had done in another way. His Dictionary of 80,000 words began
to appear in 1815. Knowing, however, that in the long run the
literature of a nation must be of indigenous growth, he at once pressed
the natives into this service. His first pundit, Ram Basu, was a most
accomplished Bengali scholar. This able man, who lacked the courage to
profess Christ in the end, wrote the first tract, the Gospel Messenger,
and the first pamphlet exposing Hindooism, both of which had an
enormous sale and caused much excitement. On the historical side Carey
induced him to publish in 1801 the Life of Raja Pratapaditya, the last
king of Sagar Island. At first the new professor could not find reading
books for his Bengali class in the college of Fort William. He, his
pundits, especially Mritunjaya who has been compared in his physique
and knowledge to Dr. Samuel Johnson, and even the young civilian
students, were for many years compelled to write Bengali text-books,
including translations of Virgil's AEneid and Shakspere's Tempest. The
School Book Society took up the work, encouraging such a man as Ram
Komal Sen, the printer who became chief native official of the Bank of
Bengal and father of the late Keshab Chunder Sen, to prepare his
Bengali dictionary. Self-interest soon enlisted the haughtiest
Brahmans in the work of producing school and reading books, till now
the Bengali language is to India what the Italian is to Europe, and its
native literature is comparatively as rich. Nor was Carey without his
European successor in the good work for a time. When his son Felix
died in 1823 he was bewailed as the coadjutor of Ram Komal Sen, as the
author of the first volume of a Bengali encyclopaedia on a