LITERARY POSSIBILITIES IN INDIA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13640, 9 July 1906, Page 6

LITERARY POSSIBILITIES IN INDIA.

At the dinner of the Society of Authors Lord Curzon gave some amusing experiences of his own as a writer. " The proudest moment of his life," was when a secondhand bookseller charged him £10 for a copy of one of his own books, " which ho hail originally inflicted upon the world for the sum of Si." In a mow serious strain ho touched upon the marvellous possibilities of English literature which are associated with India. Al present it is supposed that little over 1.000,000 men, including Europeans and Eurasians, out. of a population of 300,000,000, can read and write English. But the number will constantly increase, and India will almost, certainly produce in future its own great writers' of the language of Shakespeare. We laugh at. the rhetoric of the " Bahnos.'' but. as Lord Clinton said, their mistakes aro not so astonishing as the wonderful proliciencv thoy attain in a foreign tongue that differs from their own io an oxtont'tltat those who know only the speech of Western Europe can hardly conceive. Whatever the political destiny of the English people, there can be no doubi as to the Imperial future of the English language, or as io the wonderful variety of poetic, historic, philosophic work ihnt it has yet to evolve. Will England remain the Attica of that now Hellenism, or will haply the dialed of Benares he held ihc purer idiom, say, in the twentyfif til century!