,jiii>-iijii»iiii»«jMirii.jji]iijai«),,i»s»>ssM»*«««*a»«3w«K)«r.a5»^^ 
 
 i:'^i'M^J«lSW^*'*w>| 
 
 AS/A 
 
 ■>tw) »**K.1W -f^-W^ ! • 
 
 

 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 COLLECTION 
 
 CHINA AND THE CHINESE 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 
 CLASS OF 1876 
 
 1918 
 
PL 1073.D73" """"'''' '-'""^ 
 
 ^*'*,„!?raH39,?„.?."'' literature of China ;tw 
 
 3 1924 023 333 630 
 
PLI073 
 
/^/4-^:/-'^^ 
 
 THE 
 
 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 
 OF CHINA. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023333630 
 
THE 
 
 LANGUAGE AND UTEEATURE 
 OF CHINA. 
 
 TWO LECTURES 
 
 DELIYEKED AT THE 
 
 EOTAL INSTITUTIOlSr OF GBEAT BKITAIN 
 
 IN 
 
 MAT AND JUNE, 1875. 
 
 EOBEET K DOUGLAS, 
 
 OP THE BRITISH MUSEUM, AND PBOPESSOB OP CHINESE AT 
 king's college, LONDON. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 TIliJBNEE & CO., 57 and 59, LUDGATB HILL. 
 
 1876. 
 All rights reserved, 
 
 ^ U ki I V ! 
 
PL 107 3 
 
 HERTFORD ; 
 
 STEPHEN AUSTIN AND SONS, PRIKTEBS. 
 
PS flothen 
 
 I DEDICATE 
 
 THIS YOLUME 
 As A Token of Affection and Gratitude. 
 E. K. D. 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 THE LANGUAGE OF CHINA. 
 
 The course of recent events in China indicates 
 with sufficient plainness that the " Middle 
 Kingdom " cannot much longer maintain the 
 isolation in which she has wrapt herself for 
 so many centuries. The advances which have 
 of late years been made by our diplomatists, 
 our missionaries, and our merchants, in influ- 
 encing the opinions of those classes of the people 
 with which they are brought into contact ; 
 the increased facilities of communication be- 
 tween the East and West afforded by steam and 
 electricity ; and the rapid — ^perhaps too rapid — 
 strides with which her enterprising neighbour 
 Japan is hastening forward in the march of 
 
2 The Language of China. 
 
 modem civilization ;— are all urging her with a 
 pressure which she cannot successfully resist, 
 strive as much as she may, into the fellowship 
 of those western nations whose friendly overtures 
 she has up to this time treated with unfeigned 
 indifference and contempt. 
 
 That she should have succeeded in separating 
 herself for so long from the rest of the world is 
 douhtless due in a great measure to the geo- 
 graphical position of the country. Bounded 
 on the east by the sea, on the west by vast 
 sandy wastes, on the south and south-west by 
 mountainous districts for the most part inhabited 
 by tribes whom it is usual to describe as virtu- 
 ally independent and haK savage, and on the 
 north by range after range of mountains rising 
 like sharks' teeth from the plain, and dwarfing 
 into insignificance the "Great Wall" which 
 remains a monument of the folly as well as 
 of the industry of the Chinese race, she has 
 dwelt, like Laish of old, quiet and secure ; while 
 at the same time the varied extent and richness 
 of her internal resources has enabled her, without 
 seeking the natural or artificial products of other 
 
The Language of China. 3 
 
 countries, to supply her people with enough and 
 to spare of all the necessaries of life. Indepen- 
 dent then of all the world, beyond comparison 
 more powerful, by reason of her wealth, her size, 
 and the nature of her inhabitants, than any of 
 her neighbours — a very Triton among minnows, 
 admitting no rivals, and courting no alliances, she 
 stood, and was content to stand, alone. Accepting 
 nothing from the world beyond her own frontiers 
 in religion, literature, science, or art, which did 
 not fall in with the national views on those sub- 
 jects, and which she could not make her own, 
 receiving no impress from without, and rejecting 
 peremptorily everything thrown in her way which 
 was distasteful to her, she brooded over the east 
 of Asia, absorbing only that which assimilated 
 easily with the national tastes and the precon- 
 ceived ideas of the people. 
 
 Thus, though in the course of the history 
 of China tribes from other parts of Asia have, 
 by force of arms, successfully invaded the 
 country, and have entered in and taken pos- 
 session, their advent has in no wise aflPected 
 the national life, and when they have yielded 
 
4 Tlie Language of China. 
 
 their powers to others, they have left no 
 more distinctiye trace behind them than do 
 mountain torrents when they lose themselves in 
 the ocean. A modem instance in point is the 
 fact, as has been lately remarked, that at Canton 
 and other large cities in China, the imperial 
 Tatar garrisons have been completely absorbed 
 into the native population. But it may possibly 
 be said that at least the Chinese of the first 
 century accepted and adopted from India the 
 religion of Buddha. True, they did ; but, like 
 the Manchu and Mongolian invaders, it had, if 
 I may so say, to go through the process of 
 digestion and assimilation. It was forced into 
 a Hke mould to those from which had issued 
 forth the national religions of Confucianism and 
 Taouism and the result has been that practically 
 
 of course much of the literature still remains 
 
 Indian — it is difficult to recognize in the beliefs 
 of modern Chinese Buddhists anything more 
 than traces of the pure and lofty teachings of 
 Sakyamuni. But the introduction of Buddhism 
 from India brought to the notice of the Chinese 
 of that day something more than the religious 
 
The Language of China. S 
 
 system of its founder. It forced on their 
 attention a comparison between the alphabetical 
 system of writing as existing in Sanskrit and 
 their own unwieldy characters. But neither 
 then, nor at a still earlier period, when their 
 armies marched across Central and Western 
 Asia to the borders of the Caspian Sea, did_ 
 their acquaintance with the more simple mode 
 of expressing thoughts on paper, employed by 
 the people of some of the countries through 
 which they passed, ever shake their faith for a 
 moment in their native symbols. 
 
 It is true that the adoption of an alphabetical 
 system of writing would have revolutionized the 
 language, and that as it then stood, and as it now 
 stands, it would be impossible to express it, for 
 general purposes, in any other way than through 
 the medium of the written character then as now 
 existing. But no thought of suggesting the pos- 
 sibility of such a change, which, though attended 
 with immediate inconvenience, would have re- 
 sulted in infinite advantage, appears to have 
 occurred to any writer or statesman of that day. 
 The nearest approach to it was the adoption of 
 
6 The Language of China. 
 
 a system of syllabic spelling for tlie purposes 
 at first of representing the sounds of Indian 
 and other foreign names in the native character, 
 and later of spelling as it were the sounds of 
 characters in the native dictionaries, but beyond 
 this its application has not been extended. For 
 Chinese scholars it was suf&cient to know that 
 their written characters " embalmed the wisdom 
 and reflected the sagacity of ages." In them 
 Confucius gave vent to his musings, and in 
 them the followers of the sage had stereotyped 
 his sayings and his doings ; and like as devout 
 Mahommedans would scorn the notion of tran- 
 scribing the Koran into any language but that 
 in which Mahommed wrote, so have Chinamen 
 through all ages clung to the form of written 
 character used by Confucius as the only channel 
 through which his inefiable wisdom should be 
 transmitted to future ages. Thus the written 
 character has remained unchanged, and is, from 
 a Chinaman's point of view, unchangeable. 
 
 But while the Chinese have shown themselves 
 thus supremely indifferent to all the world in 
 general, its arts, its sciences, its opinions, and 
 
The Language of China. y 
 
 its friendships, an almost equal degree of apathy 
 has been displayed by Englishmen concerning 
 everything connected with China except her 
 trade. A language which is the language of 
 400,000,000 of our feUow-men, and a literature 
 which goes back to the time of King David, 
 and which found its fullest development before 
 these shores were invaded by the Norman con- 
 querors, have been passed by as though they 
 possessed no sort of interest to us who yearly 
 exchange merchandise to the amount of 
 £40,000,000 sterling with the men whose speech 
 we ignore and whose learning we treat as 
 though it were beneath our notice. Our stake in 
 China is larger than that of any other European 
 country, and yet, as far as the diffizsion of a 
 knowledge of the language is concerned, we are 
 behind both France and Eussia. And with 
 the exception of two or three scholars, among 
 whom Dr. Birch of the British Museum, and Mr. 
 Beal, the learned translator of several works on 
 Chinese Buddhism, are chief, the study of Chinese 
 has been with us entirely confined to those who 
 by the nature of their professional duties are 
 
8 The Language of China. 
 
 compelled to grapple with the language. On the 
 other hand, France, who, as a French consul once 
 said to me, brings to China her ideas, while 
 England imports her merchandise, can present a 
 long list of Sinologues, among whom the well- 
 known names of Julien, Klaproth, Remusat and 
 Pauthier claim the pre-eminence, who never trod 
 the soil of China, but who, having devoted 
 themselves to the study of Chinese from a true 
 scholarly instinct, have left behind them for 
 our benefit a rich inheritance of knowledge. 
 At the present time there are three Professorial 
 Chairs of Chinese in Paris, and a goodly array 
 of students attend each lecture room. In 
 London there are two chairs, one of which 
 has been empty for some time, and which 
 when fiUed disappointed its founders by leaving 
 its occupant undisturbed in the enjoyment of 
 the full disposal of his time. As yet Chinese 
 has been entirely unrepresented at both Oxford 
 and Cambridge; but I am glad to be able to 
 state that lately a movement has been set on 
 foot, through the energy of Sir Rutherford Alcock 
 and others, for the establishment of a Chinese 
 
The Language of China. 9 
 
 Professorship at the older TJniversity. And all 
 those who are interested in the study of the 
 language will be glad to know that, should the 
 scheme be carried into effect, Dr. Legge, the 
 well-known translator of the Chinese classics, 
 will probably be the first holder of the office. 
 
 No doubt the difficulties, or the supposed diffi- 
 culties of acquiring a knowledge of the language, 
 have prevented many English scholars from 
 taking the grammar and dictionary in hand. 
 But I think that, with your leave, I shall 
 be able to show that these difficulties have 
 been much overrated. Stanislas Jidien began 
 the study of Chinese in Paris in the year 
 1823, and in 1825 he published an excellent 
 translation in Latin of the philosophical works 
 of Mencius, which is certainly not one of the 
 easiest books in the language ; and to any one 
 who wiU bring an equal amount of absorbing 
 energy to the work, the fortified places of 
 Chinese will surely yield, though not perhaps 
 as easily as they did to one who from the 
 first gained for himself a foremost place in 
 the front rank of European Sinologues. 
 
lo The Language of China. 
 
 "What then is the Chinese language ? It is the 
 chief among that small class of languages which 
 includes the Thibetan, Cochin- Chinese, Burmese, 
 Oorean and Chinese, and which is usually 
 described as monosyllabic. It is language in 
 its most archaic form. Every word is a root, 
 and every root is a word. It is without 
 inflexion or even agglutination ; its substan- 
 tives are indeclinable, and its verbs are not to 
 be conjugated; it is destitute of an alphabet, 
 and finds its expression on paper in thousands 
 of distinct symbols. 
 
 No wonder' then that it has been a cause 
 of surprise and perplexity to many. " In a 
 country, " says one writer, " where the roses 
 have no fragrance, and the women no petti- 
 coats ; where the labourer has no Sabbath, 
 and the magistrate no sense of honour; where 
 the roads bear no vehicles, and the ships no 
 keels ; where the needle points to the south, 
 and the sign of being puzzled is to scratch 
 the antipodes of the head ; where the place 
 of honour is on the left hand, and the seat 
 of intellect is in the stomach; where to take 
 
The Language of China. n 
 
 oif your hat is an insolent gesture, and to 
 wear white garments is to put yourself into 
 mourning — we ought not to be astonished to 
 find a literature without an alphabet, and a 
 language without a grammar." 
 
 "Here then," writes another author, "is the 
 most primitive language, and the one therefore 
 from which all others have sprung." Since 
 these last words were written some decades 
 have passed, and further research has not de- 
 finitely confirmed their truth. No doubt a 
 language possessing such characteristics as I 
 have mentioned afibrds a tempting field for 
 the comparative philologist. Here is a lan- 
 guage of monosyllabic roots, which, as regards 
 the written character, has been checked in its 
 growth and crystalKzed in its most ancient 
 form by the early occurrence of a period of 
 great literary activity, of which thb nation is 
 proud, and to the productions of which every 
 Chinaman even of the present day looks back 
 as contaiuing the true standards of literary ex- 
 cellence. If then from a language such as 
 Sanskrit, with its overgrowth of agglutinations 
 
12 The Language of China. 
 
 and inflexions, such great results, as have of 
 late years been made known, can be obtained, 
 what may not be expected from a language 
 in so simple a form as Chinese ? Such an 
 expectation is reasonable, and we may antici- 
 pate that philology will be a great gainer by an 
 extended knowledge of it. But as yet we are 
 not sufficiently acquainted with its various spoken 
 forms. It requires as it were kneading and pre- 
 paring before it can be used as a weapon by 
 the comparative philologist, and as a first step 
 it is necessary that we should trace back the 
 sounds to their original forms. But the dif- 
 ficulty which meets us here is, that unlike the 
 languages of the West, there is no inherent con- 
 nexion between the sounds and the written 
 medium; thus a character which is called to- 
 day chi, was called a couple of thousand years 
 ago ' tek, and equally wide variations in pro- 
 nunciation are observable in all the dialects 
 which are spoken at the present-day. Investi- 
 gation also has proved that in no one of these 
 dialects is the language pronounced as formerly, 
 and the result is, that only by a careful 
 
Ttie Langtiage of China. 13 
 
 comparison of tlie dialects witli the ancient 
 ritythmical writings, and the syllabic spelling 
 based on the Sanskrit alphabet which was in- 
 troduced with the knowledge of Buddhism from 
 India, as well as by tracing the sounds of the 
 characters as preserved in Japan and the neigh- 
 bouring countries, can we hope to arrive at a 
 certain knowledge of the ancient sounds of the 
 language. Considerable progress has abeady 
 been made by Mr. Edkins in this direction. 
 We now know, thanks to his labours, in what 
 part of the Empire to look for the old finals 
 m, h, t, p, which have long been lost in most 
 of the provinces, and where we may expect to 
 find the initials d, h, z, dz, zh, still playing 
 the same part in the spoken language that they 
 did in the time of Confucius ; and it is only by 
 thus tracing back the sounds to their most 
 ancient forms that we can compare it, with 
 a reasonable prospect of success, with other 
 languages. 
 
 But these studies refer more especially to the 
 sounds of the language; and in treating of 
 the two branches into which Chinese naturally 
 
14 The Language of China: 
 
 divides itself, namely, the written medium or 
 characters, and the spoken medium or sounds, 
 I propose to begin with the former. And in 
 following this course I shall be doing no vio- 
 lence to the language, for it would be quite 
 possible to separate the characters from the 
 sounds, and to treat them as two languages, as 
 indeed has already been partly done in Japan, 
 where the Chinese characters were at one time 
 in general use as representing the phonetic value 
 of their Japanese equivalents. Beginning at the 
 other end, but with a similar ultimate result, 
 various members of the missionary body have 
 published text books and dictionaries in Roman- 
 ized Chinese, that is to say, they have avoided 
 the use of the characters by transcribing the 
 sounds of the language in Eoman letters. But 
 since, though the characters are rich and copious 
 to a degree, the sounds are out of all proportion 
 poor, this last dismemberment presents the lan- 
 guage in a very denuded form, and is at the same 
 time attended with difficulties which only the 
 most sanguine can hope to see overcome. The 
 necessity of distinguishing between words having 
 
The Language of China. 15 
 
 the same sound can only be met by the adop- 
 tion of distinct diacritical marks for each, word ; 
 and as one sound often represents as many 
 as a hundred words, such a system cannot be 
 unattended with confusion. 
 
 The characters of the language form the 
 medium which speaks to the eye, and may be 
 described as the equivalents of the written 
 word& of other languages ; but unlike these, 
 instead of being composed of letters of an 
 alphabet, they are either symbols intended to 
 represent images, or are formed by a combi- 
 nation of lines, or of two or more such 
 symbols. All characters, say the Chinese lexi- 
 cographers, had their origin in single strokes, 
 or in hieroglyphics, and this no doubt is a correct 
 view of the case. Legends differ as to who was 
 the first inventor of writing in China. One 
 attributes the invention to Fuh-he (3200 B.C.), 
 who is also said to have instituted marriage, 
 and to have introduced the use of clothing, 
 and who caused the knotted cords, which had 
 been up to that time in use, to be super- 
 seded by characters founded on the shapes of 
 
1 6 The Language of China. 
 
 his celebrated diagrams. Another record states 
 that Tsang Ke, who lived b.c. 2700, was the 
 Cadmus of China. According to received native 
 accounts, Tsang Ke was a man of extraordinary 
 ability, and was acquainted with the art of 
 writing from his birth. While wandering in 
 the neighbourhood of his house at Tang-woo, 
 he one day met with a tortoise, and observing 
 its shell distinctly and beautifully spotted, he 
 took it home, and thus formed the idea of 
 representing the objects around him. Looking 
 upwards, he carefuUy observed the figures pre- 
 sented by the stars and the heavenly bodies ; 
 he then attentively considered the forms of birds, 
 and of mountains and rivers, etc., and from 
 them at length originated the written cha- 
 racter. 
 
 But however great the uncertainty may be 
 as to who invented the first characters, we 
 may take it for granted that they were simply 
 pictures of the various objects of sense which 
 were present to the eye of the writer. Thus 
 when he wished to express a mountain, he wrote, 
 as did also the ancient Egyptians, AM, a symbol 
 
The Language of China. ij 
 
 •whicli is written at the present day |lj ; H now 
 written ^ , served him to signify the moon, and 
 so on. But such a written medium was naturally 
 extremely limited, and by degrees, in some in- 
 stances, by the addition of strokes, and in others 
 by a combination of one or more of these pri- 
 mary characters, the written language has been 
 formed as it is at the present day. In tracing 
 the growth of the later characters we are as- 
 sisted by the native philologists, who have 
 divided them into six classes. 
 
 The first they call Siang king, lit. characters 
 representing the forms of the objects meant, or, as 
 we should say. Hieroglyphics, such as those thus 
 mentioned, and about 600 more, as, for example, 
 O jih 'the sun; ' '^ ma 'a, horse,' etc. ; and of 
 these are composed, with a few exceptions, the 
 214 determinative or radical characters, one of 
 which enters into the composition of every 
 character in the language. 
 
 The second class is called Chi sze, lit. cha- 
 racters indicating things, that is to say, characters 
 intended to represent ideas to the mind by 
 the position of their parts. Thus the character 
 
1 8 The Language of China. 
 
 tan 'dawn,' in which the sun is represented 
 as appearing above the horizon, belongs to it, 
 and also such characters as Jl shmg ' above,' and 
 f hea 'beneath,' which are formed, in the one 
 case, by placing a man above the medium level, 
 and in the other below it. 
 
 The third class is made up of Swuy i, lit. 
 characters combining ideas, or Ideographics. This 
 class is formed by uniting two or more sig- 
 nificant characters to give the idea of a third. 
 Of the time when these characters were in- 
 vented we know nothing ; but it is plain that 
 their introduction must have given a very ex- 
 tended scope to the language, and they offer 
 an interesting study, as, in many instances, 
 giving us an insight into the moral and social 
 conditions of those who framed them. For 
 instance, if we analyze the character ^ sin 
 'sincere,' we find that it is formed by the 
 combination of the characters A /»»* ' ^ man,' 
 and "= yen ' words,' a collocation of ideas which 
 speaks well for the honourable truthfulness of the 
 ancient Chinese, and which, when the unfor- 
 tunate failing in this respect of their descendants 
 
The Language of China. 19 
 
 is borne ia mind, is decidedly opposed to the 
 Darwinian theory as applied to language. The 
 character % Hwang 'Emperor,' is another 
 belonging to this class, which gives anything 
 but a contemptible notion of the moral standard 
 of the people. This symbol was originally writ- 
 ten thus ^, and was composed of the characters 
 meaning 'oneself' and 'ruler;' the Emperor was 
 therefore to be ruler of himself, or Autocrat in 
 the true sense of the term ; for how can a man, 
 said the ancient sages, rule others unless he 
 first learn to be master of himself? 
 
 Curiously enough, by the omission of a stroke, 
 this character has assumed its present corrupted 
 form, which consists of parts signifying ' white ' 
 and ' ruler,' and this, as was mentioned in a recent 
 letter from the St. Petersburg Correspondent of 
 the "Times," has been literally translated by 
 the Mongols into Tchagau Khan, and then by 
 the Russians into Biely Tsar, or White Tsar, the 
 name by which the Emperor of Russia is now 
 known throughout all Asia. 
 
 Another character in this class is B^ ming 
 ' brightness,' which is composed of a com- 
 
20 The Language of China. 
 
 bination of the sun and moon to indicate 
 brilliancy. Altogether, of these Ideographics 
 there are. said to be about 700 in the language, 
 although some writers have held that this class 
 is a very much larger one, and have justified 
 their belief by analyses which, to say the least, 
 are far-fetched. Gallery quotes a Jesuit work, 
 in which it is stated that the character |^ 
 chuen ' a ship,' contains to the eye of faith — 
 and we should imagine to that eye alone — a 
 reference to the Flood, since it consists of j^ 
 chow 'a ship,' A pd ' eight,' and P kow 'a 
 mouth,' plainly pointiug, adds the writer, to 
 Noah's ark with its eight inhabitants ; and that 
 ^ Ian ' to covet and desire,' bears traces of 
 Eve's guilt in its component parts, which are 
 ^ neu ' a woman,' and /fv muh ' a tree,' twice 
 repeated, illustrating the longing desire which 
 overcame our first parent when between the 
 trees of Life and of Good and Evil. 
 
 The fourth class is the Chuen choo, or cha- 
 racters which being inverted, either in form or 
 sound, assume different meanings. These number 
 about 372, and are formed in two ways : either 
 
The Language of China. 21 
 
 by some slight alteration of tlie character, as 
 the turning of a stroke or of strokes to the 
 left instead of the right, as, for instance, the 
 character for the hand pointing to the left in 
 this way ^ means 'left,' and when turned thus 
 ^, means 'right;' or by changing the sound 
 of the character, and with the sound the mean- 
 ing. Of this kind are such characters as ^, 
 which when pronounced yb means 'music,' and 
 when lb, 'delight,' and ^, which as i means 
 'easy,' and as yih means to 'change.' 
 
 The fifth class is the Chia chieh, lit. characters 
 having borrowed meanings, and consists of 
 about 600 characters, which are applied, as is 
 indicated by the name of the division, in 
 a double sense, and hence have been called 
 Metaphorical. As an illustration of this class, 
 Chinese writers adduce the character ^ shi 
 'an arrow,' which, from the straight course of 
 an arrow, has come to signify 'direct,' 'right,' 
 ' a word spoken to the point.' 
 
 The sixth class, which is known as the Chieh 
 shing, or Phonetic, embraces over twenty thou- 
 sand characters. The adoption of these Pho- 
 
22 The Language of China. 
 
 netics was the turning-point in the progress 
 of Chinese writing. As was the case with 
 the Egyptians, the Chinese found that, having 
 exhausted their power of invention in forming 
 hieroglyphics and ideographics, a further de- 
 velopment of the characters was necessary; 
 and, like the subjects of the Pharaohs, they 
 adopted certain characters to represent certain 
 sounds. As to when or by whom this system 
 was inaugurated, whether it was introduced from 
 abroad, or whether it was the product of native 
 intelligence, history is silent ; but when it was 
 once decided on, the language rapidly increased 
 and multiplied. "A character," writes a well- 
 known Chinese author, "is not sterile; once bound 
 to another, it gives birth to a son ; and if this 
 be joined to another, a grandson is born, and 
 so on." The characters then which belong to the 
 class called Phonetic are composed of two parts, 
 namely, the Primitive or Phonetic element, that 
 is to say, one of the characters which have been 
 chosen to represent certain sounds, and which 
 gives the sound to the whole character, and 
 one of the 214 determinatives or radical cha- 
 racters of the language. 
 
The Language of China. 23 
 
 One or more of these determinatives enter into 
 the composition of every character in Chinese, 
 and as a very large proportion of them are 
 plainly hieroglyphics, they may be said to be 
 the foundation of the written language. As 
 might be expected from their nature as hiero- 
 glyphics, they include the most remarkable 
 objects of nature, such as the sun, moon, a 
 river, a mountain, fire, water, earth, wood, 
 stone, etc. ; the chief parts of the human 
 body, as the head, the heart, the hand, the 
 foot, the eye, the ear, etc.; the principal parts 
 of a house,- as the roof, the door, etc. ; domestic 
 animals, such as the sheep, the cow, the horse, 
 the dog, etc. ; the primary relations of society, 
 as father, mother, son, daughter, etc. ; qualities, 
 such as great, small, straight, crooked, high, 
 low, long, etc. ; and actions, such as to see, to 
 speak, to walk, to run, to stop, to enter, to 
 follow, etc. They are thus admirably adapted 
 to form generic terms, and this is the part they 
 play in composition with the Primitives. For 
 instance, into the composition of every character 
 signifj'ing anything made of wood, such as a 
 
24 The Language of China. 
 
 table, a chair, a club, etc., the determinative 
 character meaning 'wood' is introduced, and it 
 then serves much the same purpose as do the 
 words ' mat ' and ' steam ' in the compounds 
 ' matshed ' and ' steamboat.' 
 
 The number of the primitives has been 
 variously estimated. Dr. Marshman gives them 
 at 3867, Gallery at about 1000, and later 
 writers have reckoned them to be from 1100 
 to 1200. Taking them even at the lowest of 
 these figures, it wiU readily be imagined how, 
 by combination with the 214 determinatives, 
 they may be made to form the thirty and odd 
 thousand distinct characters of the language, 
 since of course it would be possible by combining 
 each of the 1000 Primitives with every one of 
 the 214 Determinatives, to form more than seven 
 times that number of characters. 
 
 To illustrate this system of formation, I will 
 take the Primitive ^ ngo 'I,' which, by com- 
 bination with 27 determinatives, produces as 
 many derivatives having the same phonetic 
 value, in this way — combined with the deter- 
 minative |lj ' a mountain,' it " becomes ^ ngo 
 
The Language of China. 2$ 
 
 ' a higli mountain ; ' with ^ neu ' a woman,' 
 ^ ngo 'fair,i 'beautiful;' with f^ tsao 'grass,' 
 ^ ngo ' a certain herb ; ' with ,^ neaou ' a 
 bird,' ^1 ngo 'a goose,' and so on. From these 
 examples it will be observed that the determi- 
 natives play the part in some instances of adjec- 
 tives ; and in combination with their primitives 
 they form an exact parallel with many Egyptian 
 and Assyrian Ideophonetics. I have been favoured 
 by Dr. Birch, of the British Museum, with the 
 following example in Egyptian, showing precisely 
 the same formation in the composition of the 
 characters, and in the respective value of their 
 parts, as is seen in the Chinese instance I have 
 iust referred to. -^^ ITn means in Egyptian 
 
 J A/WSAA 
 
 IIMlllll 
 
 ' a hare ; ' combined with this determmative ^^j 
 
 ^ , ., ,. 
 
 it becomes '^^ Tin 'to open;' and with this 
 
 ^. I 
 ° ^ ^k ° * Un 'an hour.' Speaking of As- 
 
 Syrian hieroglyphics, Sir Henry Eawlinson 
 says, "Certain classes of words have a sign 
 prefixed or suiExed to them, more commonly 
 the former, by which their general character 
 
26 The Language of China. 
 
 is indicated. The names of Gods, of men, of 
 cities, of tribes, of wild animals, of domestic 
 animals, of metals, of months, of the points of 
 the compass, and of dignities are thus accom- 
 panied. The sign prefixed or suffixed may 
 have originally represented a word; but when 
 used in the way here spoken of, it is believed 
 that it was not sounded, but served simply to 
 indicate to the reader the sort of word which 
 was placed before it." 
 
 By the kindness of Mr. George Smith I am 
 enabled to illustrate Sir Henry Rawlinson's 
 words by these examples. t:Y means in As- 
 syrian 'wood,' and is used as the determinative 
 for things made of wood. Thus in combination 
 with the Primitive ^ it becomes fcTdt 'a 
 sceptre ; ' and when combined with the Primitive 
 <V^y we have S:y<^ 'a bow.' Again, ]J>-y 
 is used in the same way as the determinative 
 for all carnivorous animals. As, for instance, 
 I]y J^ is 'a dog,' and IJhJ'^^II is 'a lion.' 
 It will be seen that both the Egyptian and 
 Assyrian characters here quoted are constructed 
 on exactly the same principle as that to be 
 
The Language of China. 27 
 
 observed in the formation of the majority of 
 Chinese characters, but it is noticeable that in 
 Assyrian the Primitives do not retain in com- 
 position their phonetic values, as they generally 
 do in Chinese, and as they often do in 
 Egyptian. 
 
 Marking then the forces of the two parts of 
 the characters, we can easily imagine the way in 
 which new characters have from time to time 
 been formed. We wiU suppose, for instance, that 
 a tree for which a Chinaman wishes to give a 
 name on paper is known to him colloquially as 
 ma. The coiner of the new character would 
 then in the first place choose a common phonetic 
 or Primitive possessing the sound ma ; very 
 possibly he would take the hieroglyphic ,^ 
 ma 'a horse,' and would combine with it the 
 determinative % muh, meaning 'wood.' The 
 new character would then stand thus if^, and 
 might be understood to signify 'the ma 
 tree ; ' but, unless previously informed, the reader 
 would be left in complete ignorance as to the sort 
 of tree meant, as the parts of the character would 
 only supply the information that it was either 
 
28 The Language of China. 
 
 a tree or something made of wood, and that 
 it was to be pronounced ma. This is equally 
 the case, speaking generally, with all the 
 characters. By a careful study of the pho- 
 netics it is possible to arrive at the sounds or 
 approximate sounds — for certain variations con- 
 stantly occur— of the characters of the language; 
 but the only hint at their meanings is to be 
 derived from the determinatives, which point 
 only to the general, nature of the objects or 
 actions signified. 
 
 As I have already said, the Determinatives 
 are 214 in number, and these have been 
 considered by many of the native dictionary- 
 makers to furnish convenient headings under 
 which to arrange the characters of the 
 language. Again, others have chosen to 
 classify the characters according to their final 
 sounds. Both systems have their advantages. 
 By adopting the first, the headings are com- 
 paratively few, and the characters are, roughly 
 speaking, classified according to the generic 
 meanings they have in common ; and the second 
 gives constant practice to students in remem- 
 
The Language of China. 29 
 
 bering tlie tones and correct rhyming pronun- 
 ciation of the characters. But in both the 
 phonetic relationship between the Primitives is 
 entirely lost sight of. And this is much to be 
 regretted, since, as Gallery and others have 
 pointed out, the scientific way of arranging the 
 characters would be by placing them under 
 their Primitives, by which means the respective 
 values of both the Primitives and Determin- 
 atives would be brought out in prominent relief. 
 Only in two Chinese dictionaries that I have 
 met with have any attempts been made thus to 
 arrange the characters, and the older of these, 
 and the one on which the later work was 
 probably framed, owes the system on which it 
 is composed to the experience imported from 
 Japan by the co-compiler, who was a native of 
 that country. 
 
 In the course of my remarks I have given 
 a few instances of the original and modern forms 
 of the same characters, as, for example, ]^ and 
 J^. But, as may readily be supposed, the 
 change from one to the other was not made all 
 at once, and Chinese books afford us instances 
 
30 The Language of China. 
 
 of six distinct styles of writing, varying in 
 clearness from the square character used in 
 books at the present day to the Seal and Grass 
 or cursive characters, which are noted for their 
 obscurity. These styles are described as the 
 Chuen shoo or ' Seal character,' the Le shoo 
 or ' Official character,' the Keae shoo or ' Model 
 character,' the Sing shoo or ' Eunning cha- 
 racter,' the Tsaou shoo or ' Grass character,' 
 and the Sung shoo or ' Sung-dynasty character,' 
 and may be illustrated by the following example, 
 in which the character "^ tsaou ' herbs ' is shown 
 written in all the six styles just specified. Seal 
 character jf^ ; Official character ^ ; Model cha- 
 racter :^; Eunning character ^; Grass character 
 •%; and Sung character '^. But above and 
 beyond these six styles of writing, Chinese pen- 
 men not unfrequently allow their imaginations 
 to run riot when engaged in fanciful or orna- 
 mental pieces of caligraphy. An extraordinary 
 specimen of this quaint taste is to be seen in 
 the Chinese Library of the British Museum, 
 where there is a copy of the Emperor Keen- 
 lung's Poem on Moukden, printed both in 
 
The Language of China. 31 
 
 Chinese and Manchoo in thirty-two kinds of 
 strangely fanciful characters. 
 
 I will now pass on to the sounds of the 
 language; and the first thing concerning them 
 which strikes the student on becoming ac- 
 quainted with his dictionary is their extreme 
 poverty as compared with the characters. There 
 are over 30,000 characters in the language, 
 and these are represented to the ear by only 
 500 syllabic sounds. No doubt the adoption 
 of Primitives as phonetics, as has been already 
 described, has contributed to this result, since 
 it provided for the due expression of those 
 syllables then existing, but for no more. And 
 thus, though it vastly enriched the written 
 language — one Primitive producing as many as 
 seventy-four derivatives — it at once put a stop 
 to all increase in the number of the sounds. 
 The difficulty then arose as to the way in 
 which 500 syllables were to be made to 
 represent in conversation the thousands of 
 characters in common use. And three methods 
 have been adopted to prevent the confusion which 
 at first sight would appear to be inevitable. 
 
32 The Language of China. 
 
 These are — 1. By combining with the word 
 which it is desired should be understood 
 another, bearing a similar meaning, to dis- 
 tinguish it by pointing to its meaning from 
 other words bearing the same sound; thus, for 
 ' to see,' it is usual to say in conversation 
 ^ ^ liun keen, — kan meaning ' to look at,' 
 and keen ' to see.' 
 
 2. As regards noun substantives, by placing 
 certain classifying words between them and the 
 numerals which precede them. These classifiers 
 bear some resemblance to our expressions herd, 
 head, fleet, troop, etc., and have a certain refer- 
 ence to the nature of the substantives to which 
 they are attached. For example, the word }2 
 pa 'to grasp with the hand,' is used as a 
 classifier to precede anything which is held in 
 the hand, such as a knife, a spoon, a hatchet, 
 etc. Instead of expressing therefore a knife 
 by yih taou, which might either mean a knife, 
 a small boot, or a fringe, the classifier is in- 
 troduced to show which taou is meant, and a 
 speaker would say ylh pa taou, KteraUy 'a 
 grasped knife.' In like manner M keen ' a 
 
The Language of China. 33 
 
 space,' is used as a classifier for houses and 
 inclosures ; ;f| Mn ' a root,' for trees, poles, 
 clubs, etc., and so on. 
 
 And thirdly, by dividing the words of the 
 language among eight tones. These tones 
 partake of the nature of musical intonations, 
 and are divided by the Chinese into two 
 series, the upper and the lower, and are called 
 by them the upper even, the upper rising, 
 the upper departing, the upper entering; the 
 lower even, the lower rising, the lower de- 
 parting, and the lower entering. To each 
 character is allotted its appropriate tone, which 
 if wrongly rendered is liable to give an entirely 
 difierent meaning to the word from that in- 
 tended by the speaker. This possibility will 
 be understood when it is remembered that the 
 thirty and odd thousand characters find ex- 
 pression in about 500 sounds, thus giving an 
 average of one sound to sixty characters, and 
 these figures show that at best the system of 
 tones is but an incomplete solution to the 
 difficulty, since, were this average of sixty 
 characters equally distributed among the full 
 
34 The Language of China. 
 
 eight tones, there would remain nearly eight 
 characters of each sovmd identical both in sound 
 and tone. 
 
 But, as a matter of fact, only the four tones 
 of the upper series are in general use, to which 
 sometimes the first or even tone of the lower 
 series is added. The even tone is, as its 
 name signifies, simply the ordinary tone of 
 voice; the rising tone gives to the voice some- 
 what of the effect of an interrogation; the 
 departing tone, of doubtful surprise; and the 
 entering tone, of peremptory command. These 
 may easily be illustrated by repeating our 
 negative "No," first in the ordinary tone of 
 conversation, secondly as an interrogation, thirdly 
 as expressing doubtful surprise, and fourthly 
 as a peremptory refusal, thus 1 No — , 2 No /■ , 
 3 No \ , 4 No -. The difficulty of acquiring 
 a knowledge of the tones proper even to the 
 characters in common use is, as may be sup- 
 posed, very great, and the only way to master 
 them is to learn them, as the children learn 
 them, from the lips of the natives themselves. 
 No study of books will give the required 
 
The Language of China, 35 
 
 knowledge. The Cliiiiese learn them by ear 
 alone ; and if an educated man be asked to give 
 the tone of an isolated character, he generally 
 has to repeat a phrase in which the character 
 occurs in order that his lips- may tell his ear 
 the intonation proper to it. 
 
 It wiU be easily understood that the mistakes 
 and difficulties into which this intricate system 
 drives Chinese-speaking foreigners are often 
 inconvenient and sometimes dangerous. Some 
 years ago a petition on behalf of a Chinese 
 criminal was presented in person by a wealthy 
 Chinese inerchant to the Governor and Council 
 of Hong Kong. A well-known Chinese scholar 
 undertook to interpret on the occasion, and the 
 Chinaman began his speech with a reference 
 to our Kwai \ Kwok or " Honourable King- 
 dom," as he designated England, l^ow the 
 syllable hwai pronounced hwai/ means Devil, 
 and used in combination with kwok is an 
 abusive term not uncommonly applied to any 
 foreign country. Unfortunately the interpreter 
 confused the two tones, and turning indignantly 
 to the Grovernor, he reported that at the very 
 
36 The Language of China. 
 
 outset the petitioner had begun by speaking of 
 England as " the Devil kingdom." The just 
 anger of the Council knew no bounds, and it 
 was only after some minutes of wild con- 
 fusion that an explanation followed, which 
 saved the Chinaman from sharing the cell of 
 the man for whom he was pleading. To a 
 Chinaman such a mistake would be well-nigh 
 impossible, for the tones form integral parts 
 of the words, and to the ear of a native the 
 difference between liwae in the ascending tone, 
 and kwae ia the descending tone, would be 
 as great as between kvoae and kwan. 
 
 There is only one other point in connexion 
 with the sounds of the language to which I wiU 
 now refer, and that is the system which has been 
 adopted for spelling, as it were, the various 
 sounds. For this purpose thirty-six characters 
 which begin with the initial consonants of the 
 language have been chosen, and thirty-eight 
 which end with the final sounds. In order then 
 to indicate a desired sound, the writer takes a 
 character of the first series which begins with 
 the required initial, and a character of the 
 
The Language of China. il 
 
 second series whicli ends witli the required final. 
 These are placed together, and the initial of the 
 first and the final of the second give the required 
 sound. For instance, supposing a Chinaman were 
 desirous of expressing that the sound of a 
 certain character was ting, he would write the 
 two characters % tang and g Ung, the first 
 of which would give the initial t, and the 
 second the final ing. This syllabic spelling, 
 the initials of which are identical with the 
 initial Sanskrit consonants, was introduced by 
 the Buddhist missionaries in the fifth and sixth 
 centuries, and from the time of the appearance 
 of the Dictionary Yuh pien, which was published 
 in the year 543, it has been employed ia 
 every native dictionary of the language which 
 has since seen the light. 
 
 With a language of roots, which is devoid 
 of inflexion or even of agglutination, in which 
 a large number of words each play the part, 
 under varying circumstances, of substantives, 
 adjectives, verbs, and adverbs, it may at first 
 sight appear that grammar must be an im- 
 possibility. But inasmuch as there are in 
 
38 The Language of China. 
 
 Chinese, as ttere must be in every language, 
 certain words whicli, to quote Dr. Marslunan, 
 "denote tilings, and others which signify quali- 
 ties, there must be words to express actions 
 done, and these as done by one or many; 
 already done, now doing, or intended to be 
 done ; they must also be described as done 
 absolutely or conditionally, as proper to be 
 done, or peremptorily commanded. Further, 
 the various circumstances of the doer, and of 
 the subject of the action, must also be either 
 plainly expressed or tacitly understood; hence 
 the need of prepositions. Connecting words, 
 too, necessarily exist in every language, as well 
 as those which express the emotions of the 
 mind. Thus the principles of Grammar must 
 substantially exist in every language." And 
 though the absence of all inflexion in Chinese 
 places the grammar of the language on a dif- 
 ferent footing from that of the polysyllabic 
 languages, it is yet distinctly defined by the 
 position and connexion of the words of the 
 sentence. 
 
 Since, when a language is spoken and under- 
 
The Language of China. 39 
 
 stood only in tlie country of its birtli or 
 adoption, tlie study of the grammar affecting 
 it is, as far as tlie natives are concerned, 
 comparatively unimportant, we find tliat little 
 attention lias been paid by tbe Chinese to the 
 grammar of their language. But practically the 
 grammar, which, as I said just now, con- 
 sists of rules for the construction of the 
 sentence, has for many centuries been enforced 
 by example, and by the censorship of the ex- 
 aminers at the competitive examinations. If 
 then we observe the connexion of words 
 which these authorities have preserved, we 
 find that in every Chinese sentence the sul- 
 ject comes first, then the verb, which is followed 
 by the complement direct and the complement 
 indirect, and further that, as is the case ia most 
 of the Turanian languages, every word which 
 defines or modifies another invariably precedes 
 it. Por instance, the adjective precedes the 
 substantive, the adverb the verb, the genitive 
 the word which governs it, and the preposition 
 the word governed by it. 
 
 The importance of exactly following these 
 
40 The Language of China. 
 
 rules becomes at once apparent when we re- 
 memter that often one and the same word is 
 capable of being used as a substantive, an 
 adjective, a verb, or an adverb. This is 
 the case also with some words in English. 
 "We use the word present, for example, as a 
 substantive when we talk of giving a present; 
 as an adjective when we say the present time; 
 and as a verb when we say 'I present you.' 
 Cut is another word which we make use of in 
 the same way. We say, 'the cut of a sword,' 
 ' cut grass,' and ' to cut a man down.' 
 
 A number of other instances of the same 
 kind might be adduced; but I will now take 
 a Chinese word, and show how, by varying its 
 position in a sentence, it changes its grammatical 
 value. The character j^ hao has for its 
 meanings ' to love,' ' good,' ' excellent,' ' well,' 
 etc.; and possibly with the intention of illustrat- 
 ing, as it were, these meanings by representing 
 the highest and purest form of natural affection, 
 that which exists between a. mother and her 
 child, the inventor of the character has formed 
 it of two parts signifying respectively ' a 
 
The Language of China. 41 
 
 ■woman' and 'a son.' If, then, we meet with 
 it in sncli a connexion as this, which I have 
 taken from the lips of Confucius, ^ ^ ^ ^ 
 ^ f^, Kwei keen chlh cUa che hao, we re- 
 cognize it at once as a substantive, since, were 
 it an adjective, it would be followed by a 
 substantive ; were it a verb, it would be followed 
 by its complement, and also because it follows 
 a substantive ^ ^, to which is added ^, the 
 sign of the possessive case. The sentence should 
 then be translated 'Kwei keen to peep and see 
 hao the excellence or the goodness che of chih 
 chia the apartments.' In the sentence, also 
 from Confucius, ^D ^ ^ ■& <^oo hao hao slh, 
 we see by the position of the two Aaos that the 
 first must be a verb, and that the second .must 
 be an adjective, since it is followed by a sub- 
 stantive with which it forms the direct comple- 
 ment to the verb. The meaning of the sentence 
 then is 'Joo, as [when] Aao\ we love hao^ slh 
 excellent beauty.' Again, in the modem col- 
 loquial expression ^ ^ "we have an example 
 of the use of hao as an adverb preceding a 
 verb, and the phrase is then incapable of 
 
42 The Language of China. 
 
 being translated otHerwise than as 'well said,' 
 hao 'well,' shwb 'said.' 
 
 The number of characters which might be 
 treated as I have dealt with ^ is legion, and 
 I will not weary you with other examples. 
 Little has been said on the subject of this 
 peculiarity of the language by native gram- 
 marians, who have not done much more for 
 the science of grammar than to divide the 
 characters into ^ ^ S%e tsze or ' Dead 
 words,' as they call nouns; JS ? ■Sm'^ ^^^^ 
 'Living words,' or verbs; and |g ^ Hsii tsze 
 ' Empty words,' or JParticles. It is worthy of 
 remark that in a great many instances the tran- 
 sition of a character from one part of speech 
 to' another is marked by a change of tone. 
 This is the case with the character hao/, of 
 which we have been speaking. When it stands 
 for the adjective ' good,' it should be pro- 
 nounced ra the ascending tone hao^; and when 
 it becomes the verb 'to love,' it is transferred 
 to the departing tone hao^. And in some few 
 cases the character suffers a change of sound as 
 weU. ^ sMh, the verb ' to eat, is pronounced 
 
The Language of China. 43 
 
 in tlie entering or abrupt tone, and becomes 
 sze'^ in the departing tone, wben it plays tbe 
 part of a substantive meaning 'food.' In a 
 lecture administered to tbe- King of Leang, 
 Mencius, rebuking him, says, 3^ ^ ^^ A ;& 
 Eow che shih jin sze^, 'Your dogs and swine 
 eat men's food.' Here you wiU observe the 
 first ^ must by the rules of position be 
 the verb sMk 'to eat,' and by the same ne- 
 cessity this same character at the end of the 
 sentence must be a substantive ; and the diction- 
 aries teU us that, when this is the case, it is 
 pronounced sze. But though it is true that 
 a vast number of characters can be made to 
 serve a writer in a variety of capacities, yet 
 each belongs more particularly to some one part 
 of speech, and many are identified with that one 
 alone. For instance, we find that certain sub- 
 stantives which express things, such as cho 'a, 
 table,' or e 'a chair,' remain fixed as sub- 
 stantives, and that others, if they denote actions, 
 are primarily verbs, and if conditions such 
 as ' honour,' or ' riches,' are in the first in- 
 stance adjectives. 
 
44 T^he Language of China. 
 
 As might be expected from the nature of the 
 language of which this iuterchangeability forms 
 a part, Chiaese. admits no variation of gender, 
 and in this particular it agrees with the Manchu, 
 MongoKan, Turkish, and Finnish families of 
 tongues, in which, as Dr. Caldwell points out, 
 not only are all things which are destitute of 
 reason and Hfe denoted by neuter noims, 
 but no nouns whatever, not even nouns 
 which denote human beings, are regarded in 
 themselves as being masculine or feminine. 
 All nouns as such are neuter, or rather are 
 destitute of gender. " The unimaginative 
 Scythian reduced all things," adds the Doctor, 
 " whether rational or irrational, animate or 
 inanimate, to the same dead level, and regarded 
 them all as impersonal." But in every language 
 there are certain words the gender of which 
 must necessarily be distinguished, and in common 
 also with the people just referred to, the 
 Chinese prefix to such, words denoting sex. 
 Thus a son is spoken of as -^ ^ nan tsze 
 or 'man child,' and a daughter as ^ -^ niu 
 or 'woman child.' In the case of animals 
 
The Language of China. 45 
 
 other characters are used. S' ^wwg' 'noble,' 
 ' superior/ is employed to denote tlie male, and 
 •^ moo 'mother,' to indicate the female. Thus 
 ^ \% hung sze is ' a lion,' and -^ Jgjfi moo sze 
 is 'a lioness.' "With birds other characters are 
 considered more appropriate. Thus, the male is 
 described as kung 'martial' or 'brave,' and the 
 female as tsze, 'weak,' or 'inferior,' 
 
 As regards number, Chiaese is left in an 
 equally indefinite condition. As a rule it is 
 the connexion of the words of the sentence 
 which determines whether a noun is in the 
 singular or plural. Often this is made plain 
 by the presence of a numeral, as in the fol- 
 lowing expression, taken from the Confucian 
 Analects, H •? ^ ffi ' '^^^ ^^^^^ disciples 
 went out.' Here the character san 'three,' 
 indicates that tsze is ia the plural, although it 
 has no inherent mark of number. Another 
 way of plurahzing a noun is by adding to 
 it one of certain words signifying ' all ' or 
 ' many.' The most common of these are ^ 
 chung, |f choo, f keae, Jl fan, and ^ t&ng. 
 The first four have for their meaning 'aU,' and 
 
46 The Language of China. 
 
 the last, t&ng, means 'a class.' Its use, like 
 its meanirig, is distinct from tlie others; they 
 precede the noun, t&ng always follows it, and 
 forms with it a compound such as Animal- 
 class for animals, Man-class for men. In 
 colloquial Chinese the character ^ mun has 
 been adopted as a sign of the plural; but its 
 use is abnost entirely confined to the personal 
 pronouns. Thus ^ wo means 'I,' and ^ ff9 
 wo mun 'we.' 
 
 The rules of position which serve to fix the 
 parts of speech of the words of a sentence are 
 allowed also in great measure to regulate the 
 cases of nouns and the moods and tenses of 
 verbs. But this is by no means always the case. 
 For example, the possessive case is marked by 
 certain particles of which I shall speak presently ; 
 and although European writers on Chinese 
 grammar have been in the habit of considering 
 that when two substantives come together, the 
 first is to be taken as being in the possessive 
 case, — ^thus in the sentence 5c •? ^ ^ ^^^'^ ^^^^ 
 haou hed, which we should translate as ' the Son 
 of Heaven loves learning,' teen, they would say, 
 
The Language of China. 47 
 
 is in tlie possessive case, — it may be questioned 
 whether such expressions may not be more ap- 
 propriately considered as compound terms, in the 
 same way that we treat their equivalents iu 
 English. For instance, we should never consider 
 such an expression as ' the Chelsea-Water- 
 Works' to consist of a nominative and two 
 possessive cases, as it would be parsed by these 
 grammarians, were it turned word for word, • 
 as it might be, into Chiaese. And this treat- 
 ment becomes stiU. more difficult of adoption 
 when we find, as is often the case ia Chinese, 
 a number of substantives strung together, all 
 of which, with the exception of the last, would 
 then have to be considered as a succession of 
 possessive cases. If we take, for example, one of 
 the ordinary marks on porcelain made in China, 
 such as ;;^ BJ H ^ H ^ ffl ^« ming Wan 
 leih son neen che, we should be told to consider 
 Ta ming, Wan Mh, and neen, as possessive 
 cases, and that the phrase should be translated, 
 'The manufacture of the third year of (the 
 reign) "Wan-leih of the Ta ming dynasty,' 
 instead of treating it as a compound expression 
 
48 The Language of China. 
 
 on the ' Chelsea- Water-Works ' principle, thus 
 ' The Ta - ming - Dynasty -Wan - leih - third - year - 
 mamifacture.' 
 
 Besides, Chinese is by no means destitute 
 of case-particles. In the Literary and col- 
 loquial languages the possessive is expressed 
 by suffixing respectiTely ;^ che and g^ telh to 
 the substantive. Thus these particles answer 
 exactly to the 's commonly used in English. 
 % it, 'M, ^00 che taou is 'The Way of [his] 
 Father,' or, as we should more often say, 
 ' [His] Father's Way.' 15 10 A fi^ .1 Na 
 ko jin teih ma is 'The horse of that man,' 
 or 'That man's horse.' If we trace back the 
 case-particle ;^ che to its earliest use, we find 
 that it was originally a verb, and meant 
 'to proceed to,' and thus, as a sign of the 
 possessive case, it implies the sense of partition 
 which is inherent in our 'of and "the French 
 de. In some instances, by, its addition to certain 
 substantives, compound nouns of possession are 
 formed which are capable of being used as 
 adjectives. For example, ^ kin is 'gold,' and 
 ■^ ^ is ' of gold,' or ' golden.' It is used also 
 
The Language of China. 49 
 
 to express relation, but not as frequently as its 
 colloquial equivalent §0 teih, whick is very com- 
 monly thus employed. Such expressions as g 
 Ws 65 -^^* '''* ^^^^' ^^^^ ' He who,' mai ' sells,' 
 ma 'horses,' are in constant use. 
 
 With verbs of giving to and speaking to the 
 Dative case is marked by position. The person 
 to whom a thing is given immediately follows the 
 verb, and the thing given comes next. The sen- 
 tence ' The Prince gave to the officer some money,' 
 is in accordance with the Chinese idiom, which 
 would not admit the more usual English form, 
 ' The Prince gave some money to the officer.' 
 The Dative case, with the sense of 'for,' is 
 marked by the use of the characters f^ tae 
 'to succeed,' ^ te 'to put another instead of,' 
 and ^ wei 'to be ; ' thus f:^ A fiSt ♦ ^^ J^'^ 
 tso sse 'to do something for a person,' g ^ 
 te wo 'for me,' etc. 
 
 The accusative case is as a rule marked by posi- 
 tion. But occasionally, as has been shown by M. 
 Julien, the Particles ^ c, ^ yu, ^ yu, and ^ hoc, 
 are disassociated from their usual signification, 
 and are employed simply as signs of this case. 
 
50 The Language of China, 
 
 The instrumental case ia indicated by the 
 character J^ e ' by ' in the language of the 
 books, and by ^ yung 'to use' in the col- 
 loquial. As an instance of the use of the 
 first, I may quote the following passage from 
 Mencius : M Wi ^ t% ^ 'M Nan wang e 
 fei ke taou, ' (A superior man) cannot be en- 
 trapped by that which is contrary to right 
 principles.' 
 
 The ablative case, haying the sense of ' from,' 
 is marked by the signs § tsze, and ^ yew, and 
 in the colloquial by ^ tsung, as in the following 
 examples : @ ^ ^ J^ ^ Tsze sang min e lae, 
 ' From the birth of mankind until now ; ' ^ ^ ^ 
 J5S^ T •^'^^ Tang che yu Woo-ting, 'From Tang 
 until you arrive at Woo-ting ; ' fj^ ® ^ ^ ^ 
 f Ta tsung tung peen lae leaou, ' He has come 
 from the east.' 
 
 The remarks which I have made on the gen- 
 der, number, and case of the substantives apply 
 in Hke manner to the adjectives, and I need 
 only refer therefore to the manner in which de- 
 grees of comparison are formed. The comparative 
 is denoted either by certain particles meaning 
 
The Language of China. 5 1 
 
 'more ttan,' or 'beyond,' or in the colloquial 
 by forms of expression such as 'This man 
 compared with that man is good,' or, again, 
 'This man has not that man's goodness.' As 
 signs of the superlative, words such as ^ tsuy 
 'excelling,' j^ keih 'the highest point,' or ^ 
 shin ' exceeding ' are employed. 
 
 In aU Oriental languages the personal pro- 
 nouns play a prominent part from their number 
 and the variety of equivalent terms, whether of 
 self-depreciation or of complimentary adulation, 
 used to express them, and in Chinese they derive 
 additional importance from the fact that in the 
 absence of all verbal inflexion, they serve to in- 
 dicate the person, and in the spoken, language 
 the number of the verb. ^ woo, ^ urh, and 
 ^ Ite, are the terms most commonly used in 
 classical writings to signify the first, second, and 
 third persons of the personal pronoun, of which 
 ^ wo, ^ ne, and •fjj^ ta, are the common col- 
 loquial equivalents. These latter have for their 
 plural wo mun, ni mun, ta mun. Quite separate 
 and apart from these and all their equivalents is 
 the character JE|^ chin, which is reserved especially 
 
^2 The Language of China. 
 
 for the Emperor, and has been the traditional im- 
 perial ' We ' since the time of the three 
 mythical Emperors to whose wisdom, energy, 
 and foresight the greatness of China is at- 
 tributed by the native historians. 
 
 But not always does the Emperor feel 
 himself entitled to use this inherited character. 
 In times of national misfortune he chooses to 
 beUeye that his own remissness is the cause 
 of the evils which have overtaken the country, 
 and then it is the custom for him to desig- 
 nate himself Kwa jin, or ' Deficient man.' 
 With his subjects the assumption of a similar 
 humble position is habitual, and among ac- 
 quaintances the place of 'I' is nearly always 
 taken by terms by which the speaker seeks 
 to give a complimentary importance to the 
 person addressed at the expense of his own 
 intellectual or social position. "The dullard,' 
 'the little one,' and 'the man of low degree,' 
 are terms most frequently used in this sense, 
 while nu tsae, or 'slave,' is the self- assumed 
 epithet adopted by ministers when addressing 
 the Emperor. In like maimer the speaker's re- 
 
The Language of China. 53 
 
 lations and personal belongings are spoken of 
 as ' the Httle,' ' the mean/ and ' the cheap.' 
 The respect due to age guides on the other 
 hand the choice of expressions employed towards 
 the person addressed, who, instead of being 
 called by the second person of the pronoun, 
 hears himself addressed as ' Master,' ' Old 
 Grentleman,' or 'Senior.' The holders of the 
 lower offices, such as the Hien or District 
 Magistrates, are addressed by law as Lao ye 
 or 'Old Fathers;' as they rise, they become Ta 
 lao ye 'Great Old Fathers;' and when they 
 reach the higher ranks, such as the Governor 
 of the Provinces, they are caUed Ta jin ' Great 
 Men.' In the same spirit it is customary to 
 speak of the belongings of another as being 
 'Worshipful,' 'Honourable,' or 'August.' 
 
 History is vague as to the date when the 
 Chinese adopted the numerals they at present 
 employ ; but as we find reference to them in the 
 Book of History, it is fair to infer that they 
 were in existence before the sixth century B.C. 
 They are seventeen in number, and are these: 
 — yih 'one,' ^ urh 'two,' H s^'^ 'three,' 
 
54 The Language of China. 
 
 sse 'four,' jS, woo 'five,' /S; ink 'six,' ^ ^srfA 
 ' seven,' /\ p& ' eigM,' % kew ' nine,' -f- sUh 
 ' ten,' "g joilA ' a Inmdred,' =f- feeera ' a thousand,' 
 H waw 'ten ttousand,' -j^ ylh 'one litmdred 
 thousand,' ^^ cAaoM ' a million,' ^ A;e?z^ ' ten 
 millions,' and J^ A;fl!e 'a hundred million.' The 
 four last are now very seldom used, the rest are 
 hourly employed. It will be seen that there is 
 no single numeral between ten and one hundred, 
 and the intervening numbers are therefore 
 formed by shlh 'ten,' in combination with 
 the lower numerals. For example, the 
 numbers between ten and twenty are ex- 
 pressed by sMh 'ten' with the addition of 
 the number required. Thus 'thirteen' would 
 be -p H ^hlh san. The figures between twenty 
 and a hundred are denoted by -p sMh 'ten,' 
 preceded by the other numeral, and in this 
 ■w^ay H + '^'^^ ^^^^ would be 'thirty.' 
 
 After the explanation, however summary, 
 which I have given of the manner in which the 
 number, gender, and case of nouns are clearly 
 expressed in composition, you will not be sur- 
 prised when I say that by position and the use 
 
The Language of China. 55 
 
 of particles it is possible to give expression to 
 all tlie moods and tenses of the verb. Such a 
 fact should not astonish lis when it is recollected 
 that, as stated by Marshman, in the case 
 of certain English verbs, such as 'to cut,' 
 position is found equal to the task of forming 
 211 out of the 216 verbal variations which such 
 verbs undergo, and five only are formed by the 
 addition of termiuations to the original mono- 
 syllable, namely ' cuttest,' ' cuts,' ' cutteth,' 
 'cuttedst,' and 'cutting.' As no change, not 
 even the lengthening of a Hne, or the addition 
 of a dot, can possibly be effected in a 
 Chinese character without entirely altering 
 its meaning, position has to do everything 
 for the Chinese verb, and it accomplishes 
 its mission in two ways, either by stating 
 the time at which the action has taken place, 
 or is about to take place, or by prefixing or 
 suffixing certain words which by their several 
 meanings supply Kke information. For instance, 
 in the colloquial sentence ^ \^ i: ^«» to, keu, 
 kin 'now' indicates that the action is present, 
 and the three characters are to be translated 
 
56 The Language of China. 
 
 'he is going.' But if we were to excliaiige 
 the Mn for Bfl "% ming teen, 'to-morrow,' the 
 verb km will he in the future tense, ' to-morrow 
 he will go;' and i£ yet once again we say, 
 tso teen ta keu, tso teen meaning 'yesterday,' 
 the verb will then be ia the past tense, and the 
 sentence wiU run, 'yesterday he went.' But 
 more frequently the present tense of the verb 
 is not accompanied with any word to denote the 
 time of the action, and iadeed the only tense- 
 particles employed are those which serve to ex- 
 plain the past and future tenses. The characters 
 -f leaou 'to complete,' and j^ kw6 'to pass 
 over,' are the coiomonest of those which are 
 suffixed to denote the first, and Jf| tseang 'to 
 take,' and g yam 'to want,' are the most 
 frequently used as prefixes to mark the second. 
 Thus, ta keu leaou, or ta keu ku'6, would mean 
 'he went,' while ta tseang keu or ta yaou keu 
 would be 'he will go.' 
 
 In every language, as Marshman has pointed 
 out, "it wiU sometimes be found necessary 
 to indicate or declare a thing, to command 
 an action to be performed; to express it as 
 
The Language of China. 5/ 
 
 desirable, obligatory, or possible; to represent 
 it as conditional, and to describe it in a general 
 way," and Chinese is no exception to this 
 rule. In the case of the Active and Infi^itiTe 
 moods, position, which, as we have already 
 seen, has done so much for Chinese grammar, 
 is again equal to the occasion, but the Impera- 
 tive, the Optative, and the Potential moods aU, 
 although not always, have their distinctive signs. 
 The third person of the imperative mood, for 
 instance, is formed in modern Chinese by pre- 
 fixing a verb meaning either 'to give,' or 'to 
 permit,' and answers exactly to our 'let.' % 
 \'^ ^ heu ta keu is 'let him go,' heu meaning 
 'to allow,' 'to permit.' The optative mood is 
 formed by the addition of words meaning 'to 
 wish,' or 'to desire,' and the potential by the 
 addition of words implying 'power,' 'duty,' 
 or 'doubt.' 
 
 It is difficult in the space of one hour to give 
 any idea of a language about which so little is 
 known, and which has so little in conmion with 
 the Indo-European tongues, as the Chinese. But 
 though time has prevented my entering as fully 
 
58 The Language of China, 
 
 into the subject as I could have wished, I trust 
 the sketch I have been permitted to lay before 
 you has served to show that by carefully follow- 
 ing the laws of Chinese Syntax, it is possible to 
 express in that, as exactly as in other languages, 
 all the parts of speech in all their variety of 
 number, gender, case, mood, tense, and person, 
 and therefore every shade of meaning which it 
 is possible to convey by word of mouth. The 
 difficulties of acquiring a knowledge of Chinese 
 have hitherto shared that exaggeration which 
 surrounds the unknown. It is time that the 
 language was better understood, and at this 
 period of the world's history we cannot afford 
 to leave unnoticed a language so ancient as to 
 dwarf into insignificance the antiquity of western 
 tongues, and one which is the solitary medium 
 of communication between 400,000,000 of our 
 fellow-men. 
 
LECTURE 11. 
 
 THE LITERATURE OF CHINA. 
 
 On Saturday last I attempted to trace the 
 growth of the written Chinese character from 
 its first creation as a hieroglyphic to its final 
 development in the more modem ideophonetic 
 form, and also the rules which govern the 
 position of these characters in a sentence. Taking 
 up my parable, then, at this point, my object 
 this afternoon will be to show the use which. 
 Chinese authors have made of the characters 
 and of the grammar to which they are sub- 
 servient. It was obviously necessary to begin, 
 as I did, with the language, before dealing with 
 the literature, since some of the leading charac- 
 teristics of the literature are, as is the case ia 
 
6o The Literature of China. 
 
 every tongue, plainly traceable to the structure 
 of the language. The words of a sentence are 
 as a piece of clay in the hands of a potter. If 
 they be soft and pliable, that is to say, if they 
 be capable of inflexions and of syntactical 
 motion, they may be moulded to express with 
 varying vigour and force the highest fancies 
 and noblest thoughts of an able writer in all 
 the changing beauty of poetic diction or of 
 rhetorical eloquence. But if on the other hand 
 they be destitute of inflexion, and be cramped 
 by inexorable laws of position, which cannot 
 for a moment be departed from, without a 
 sacrifice of sense, the result must be that the 
 literature of which they are the component 
 parts wiU partake to some extent of their 
 hard unyielding nature. 
 
 If we turn for a moment to the poetry 
 of ancient Greece and Eome, we find that 
 some of the finest effects have been produced 
 by the power which the inflexional nature 
 of those languages gave, of transposing the 
 position of words in a sentence so as to give 
 vigour and grace to the rhythm. To prove 
 
The Literature of China. 6 1 
 
 the truth, of this we have only to take some 
 striking passage, and compare it ia the 
 original with a plain straightforward trans- 
 lation in prose. The idea is the same in hoth, 
 but how differently it appeals to the imagiaa- 
 tion of the reader! The gem is there, but it 
 has lost the advantage of its setting. It must 
 now be judged by the prosaic rule of its 
 intrinsic value, with no softening surround- 
 ings to add grace and brilliancy to its natural 
 beauty. 
 
 But the effective weapon which was thus 
 placed in the hands of the poets and authors of 
 ancient Greece and Rome has been completely 
 denied to Chinese writers. As I explained last 
 Saturday, the language is absolutely without 
 inflexion, and the grammar consists so entirely 
 of syntax, that no word can be moved out of 
 its determined position in a sentence, without 
 either changing its value, or rendering it mean- 
 ingless. Thus the literature has lost much of 
 the variety and elegance which belongs by 
 nature to that of the polysyllabic languages. 
 And I would go beyond this and say that the 
 
62 Jhe Literature of China. 
 
 lack of that power of ■ expression whicli is 
 given by syntactical motion, has been accom- 
 panied by a blighting influence on the imagi- 
 nations of Chinese authors. Other causes, to 
 which I shall presently refer, are also to some 
 extent responsible for this result; but in our 
 review of the various branches of Chinese 
 literature, we shall find that those which are 
 most dependent for their successful develop- 
 ment on the powers of imagination, are those 
 which least repay attention, and that the more 
 excellent are those which contain simple narra- 
 tions of facts, or consist of the arguments of 
 the philosopher or of the man of science. 
 
 But notwithstanding this the Chinese are 
 eminently a literary, in the sense of a reading, 
 people. The system of making competitive 
 examinations the only royal road to posts of 
 honour and emolument, and the law which 
 throws these open to everybody who chooses 
 to compete, have caused a wider difiusion of 
 book learning among the Chinese than is 
 probably to be found among any other people. 
 As to the date when the literature first took 
 
The Literature of China. ^-i^ 
 
 its rise, it is impossible to speak with any 
 certainty. The vicissitudes which attended the 
 early manuscripts and books which were col- 
 lected by private individuals and in the Im- 
 perial libraries have been such as to render 
 the preservation of any ancient record a matter 
 of wonder. Constant references are found in 
 books to works which are said to have 
 existed at early dates, but of many of these 
 the titles are all that remain to us now. 
 
 The earliest published work on which we can 
 lay our hands is the "Book of Changes," the 
 most ancient and the m.ost revered, because 
 the least understood of the nine classics. This 
 work first saw the light within a prison's 
 walls. In the year 1150 B.C. its author, Wan 
 Wang, was, we are told, imprisoned for a 
 political offence, and sought to while away 
 the tedium of his confinement by tracing 
 out a system of general philosophy from the 
 eight diagrams and their sixty-four combina- 
 tions invented by the Emperor Fu-he. These 
 diagrams have been likened to the mystical 
 numbers of Pythagoras, and the leading idea 
 
64 The Literature of China. 
 
 of Wan Wang's system seems to have been 
 founded upon tlie Chinese notions of the crea- 
 tion of the world, according to which aU 
 material things proceed from two great male 
 and female vivifying elements, the Yin and 
 the Tang, which in their turn owe their 
 existence to the Tai keih, or the first great 
 cause. As Sir John Davis says, this "might, 
 with no great impropriety, be .styled a sexual 
 system of the universe. They, that is to say 
 the Chinese, maintain that when from the 
 union of the Yang and the Yin aU existences, 
 both animate and inanimate, had been pro- 
 duced, the sexual principle was conveyed to 
 and became inherent in all of them. Thus 
 heaven, the sun, day, etc., are considered of 
 the male gender; earth, the moon, night, etc., 
 of the female. This notion pervades every 
 department of knowledge in China. It exists 
 in their theories of anatomy and medicine, 
 and is constantly referred to on every subject. 
 The chief divinities worshipped by the Emperor 
 as High Priest of the State religion are Heaven 
 and Earth, which in this sense appear to 
 
The Literature of China. 65 
 
 answer in some degree to the ohpavo% and 77; 
 in the cosmogony of the Greeks." 
 
 The style and matter of Wan Wang's writings 
 were, however, so cramped and vague that 
 Confucius among others attempted the task 
 of elucidating their dark places. Many years 
 the Sage spent in endeavours to make 
 straight that which was so crooked ; and the 
 only result attained has been to add some 
 inexplicable chapters to an incomprehensible 
 book. But the fact that it gave rise to a 
 system of Divination saved it from sharing 
 the fate which, in the year 221 b.c, befell 
 all books except those on Medicine, Divina- 
 tion, and Husbandry, at the hand of the 
 Emperor Che Hwang-ti, of the Tsin Dynasty. 
 This monarch, to whom I shall again refer, 
 ordered, for political reasons, the destruction 
 of all the books to be found within the 
 Empire, except those on the subjects I have 
 just mentioned. Fortunately, no monarch, how- 
 ever powerful, is able to carry out to the 
 letter an order of so inquisitorial a nature; 
 and the roofs of houses, the walls of dwell- 
 
 5 
 
6^ T]ie Literature of Chinas 
 
 ings, and even the b^s of riYers, became 
 tbe receptacles of the literary treasures of tbe 
 nation imtil the tyranny was overpast. The 
 works of Confucius, the "Book of History," 
 the "Book of Odes," the "Spring and the 
 Autumn Annals," together with the "Book of 
 Rites," and the "Four Books" by the Disciples 
 of the Sage and of Mencius, were aU alike 
 condemned to the flames. How all these were 
 preserved we know not, but history tells us 
 that, when in after years efforts were made 
 to restore the "Book of History," twenty-eight 
 sections out of the 100 composing the entire 
 work were taken down from the lips of a 
 bHnd man who had treasured them in his 
 memory. One other was recovered from a 
 young girl ia the Province of Honan. And 
 these are all which would probably have come 
 down to us, had not a complete copy been 
 found secreted in the wall of Confucius' s 
 house, when it was pulled down in the year 
 140 B.C. 
 
 This "Book of History" takes us back to 
 about the time of Noah. It consists of a 
 
The Literature of China. 67 
 
 number of Records of the Yu, Hea, Shang, 
 and Chow Dynasties, embracing the period 
 from the middle of the 24th century b.c. to 
 721 B.C. These, and a number of other MSS., 
 attracted the attention of Confucius when he 
 was at the court of Chow, and selecting those 
 which he deeined of value, he compiled them 
 in a work which he called the Shoo king or 
 "Book of History." 
 
 This work, as Mr. "Wells Williams says, 
 " contains the seeds of all things that are 
 valuable in the estimation of the Chinese; it is 
 at once the foundation of their political system, 
 their history and their religious rites, the basis 
 of their tactics, music and astronomy." For the 
 most part it consists of conversations between 
 the kings and their ministers, in which are 
 traced out the same patriarchal principles of 
 government as guide the rulers of the Empire 
 at the present day. " Yirtue," said the minister 
 Yih, addressing the Emperor, "is the basis of 
 good government ; and this consists first in 
 procuring for the people the things necessary 
 for their sustenance, such as water, fire, metals. 
 
68 The Literature of China. 
 
 wood, and grain. The ruler must also think 
 of rendering them virtuous, and of preserving 
 them from whatever can injure life and health. 
 When yoix would caution them, use gentle 
 words, when you would correct, employ autho- 
 rity." "Do not be ashamed of mistakes, and 
 thus make them crimes," was another piece of 
 wholesome advice oflfered to the Emperor by 
 his advisers, the effect of which is still observ- 
 able in the outspoken confessions of official 
 incompetence which are daily to be met with' 
 in the columns of the Peking Gazette. 
 
 As, in reviewing the national history, I shall 
 treat at some length the compilation which stands 
 next on the list of the classics — ^the "Book of 
 Odes," — I will now pass on to mention a work 
 whose dicta have entered into the very marrow 
 of Chinese life — I mean the Le ke, or " Book of 
 Rites." This work is said to have been com- 
 piled by the Duke of Chow in the twelfth century 
 B.C., since which time it has ever been the 
 guide and rule by which Chinamen have regu- 
 lated all the actions and relations- of their 
 lives. No every-day ceremony is too insigni- 
 
The Literature of China. 69 
 
 ficant to escape notice, and no social and 
 domestic duty is considered to be beyond its 
 scope. From tlie nature of its contents, there- 
 fore, it is tbe work of all the classics 
 which has left the most palpable impression 
 on the manners and customs of the people. 
 Its rules are minutely observed at the pre- 
 sent day, and one of the six GoTerning 
 Boards at Peking — the Board of Rites — is 
 entirely concerned with seeing that its pre- 
 cepts are carried out throughout the Empire. 
 
 Speaking of this work, Gallery says with 
 justice, " In ceremonial is summed up the whole 
 soul of the Chinese, and to my mind the 'Book 
 of Eites' is the most exact and complete mono- 
 graph that this nation can give of itself to the 
 rest of the world. Its affections, if it has any, 
 are satisfied by ceremonial; its duties are ful- 
 filled by means of ceremonial. Its virtues and 
 vices are recognized by ceremonial; the natural 
 relations of created beings are essentially con- 
 nected with ceremonial ; in a word, for it cere- 
 monial is man, the man moral, the man politic, 
 and the man religious, in their numberless 
 
7© The Literature of China. 
 
 relations with the family, society, the state, 
 morality and religion." 
 
 But though each and all of the classics 
 bear to some extent the impress of Confucius, 
 only one, the Chun Tsew, or "Spring and 
 Autumn Annals," was written by him. At 
 first sight therefore a more than usual in- 
 terest attaches to this book, which is not 
 lessened by the statements made by the 
 Sage himself, and by contemporary scholars 
 concerning it. "The world," says Mencius, 
 " was fallen into decay, and right principles 
 had dwindled away. Perverse discourses and 
 oppressive deeds were again waxen rife. Cases 
 were occurring of ministers who murdered their 
 rulers, and of sons who murdered their fathers. 
 Confucius was afraid, and made the Chun Tsew." 
 As soon as it appeared, we are told that rebel- 
 lious ministers quaked with fear, and undutiful 
 sons were overcome with terror. "Its righteous 
 decisions," said Confucius himself, "I ventured 
 to make." 
 
 The title also of the book, we are told, was 
 given it, because its commendations were 
 
The Literature of China. 71 
 
 life-giving like spring, and its censures life- 
 witliering like autumn. The expectant 
 student miglit therefore be excused for antici- 
 pating id its pages an intellectual treat. He 
 would look to have the history of the period 
 dealt with treated as a sustained narrative, 
 interspersed with sage reflections and deep 
 analyses of the characters and circumstances 
 of the time. He would expect to find praise 
 and blame distributed with a discrimiuatiag 
 pen, and the foul crimes of regicide and murder 
 denounced in impassioned outbursts of indigna- 
 tion. But how different is the book when we 
 take it up ! In the words of Dr. Legge — 
 and I would take this opportunity of saying, 
 that for many of the quotations from the 
 classics, and for much of the information con- 
 cerning them, I am indebted to that great 
 scholar — " Instead of a history of events 
 woven artistically together, we find a congeries 
 of the briefest possible intimations of matters in 
 which the court and state of Loo were more or 
 less concerned, extending over 242 years, with- 
 out the slightest tincture of literary ability in 
 
72 The Literature of China. 
 
 the composition, or the slightest indication of 
 judicial opinion on the part of the writer. The 
 paragraphs are always brief. Each one is de- 
 signed to commemorate a fact ; but whether that 
 fact be a display of -virtue calculated to command 
 our admiration, or a deed of atrocity fitted to 
 a,waken our disgust, it can hardly be said that 
 there is anything in the language to convey to 
 us the shadow of an idea of the author's feeling 
 about it. The notices, for we cannot call them 
 narratives, are absolutely unimpassioned. A base 
 murder and a shining act of heroism are chron- 
 icled just as the eclipses of the sun are chron- 
 icled. So and so took place: that is all. No 
 details are given; no judgment is expressed." 
 
 The following extract from the annals of a year 
 taken at random wiU be sufficient to show that 
 Dr. Legge's remarks are weU founded. " 1. In 
 the 15th year in spring the Duke went to Tse. 
 2. A body of men from Tsoo invaded Seu. 3. 
 In the 3rd month the Duke had a meeting with 
 the Marquis of Tse and others, when they made 
 a covenant in Mow-Kew, and then went on to 
 Kwang. 4. Kung-sun Gaou led a force, and, . 
 
The Literature of China. 73 
 
 with the great officers of the other princes, en- 
 deavoured to relieve Sen. 5. In sirouner in the 
 5th month the sun was ecKpsed. 6. In autumn 
 in the 7th month an army of Tse and an army 
 of Tsoo invaded Le. 7. In the 8th month there 
 were locusts. 8. The Duke's daughter went to 
 her home in Tsang. 9. On Ke-mao, the last day 
 of the moon, the temple of E-pih was struck hy 
 lightning. 10. In winter, a body of men from 
 Sung invaded Tsaou," and so on page after page. 
 Having thus reviewed the Five Classics, I wiU 
 now briefly consider the "Four Books" which, 
 together with those just mentioned, make up 
 the fuU complement of the Nine Classics. The 
 three first of them, the Ta-heb, or "Great Learn- 
 ing;" the Chung-yung, or the "Doctriae of the 
 Mean;" and Lun-yu, or "Confucian Analects," 
 are all by the pupils and followers of the Sage ; 
 while the fourth, the Mdng-tsse, or the "Works 
 of Mencius," is by a disciple of that philosopher. 
 AU these, therefore, represent the views of Con- 
 fucius, and if we ask what those views point to, 
 we find that they may be summed up in the ad- 
 monition: "Walk in the trodden paths." For 
 
74 The Literature of China. 
 
 as Confucius said of Limself, he came not to 
 originate but to fulfil, and the primary object 
 of his teaching was to revive in a dissolute age 
 the purity, or supposed purity, of former gene- 
 rations; to quote agaiust the roues of his day 
 the examples of the ancients, vt^hom he believed 
 to have been scrupulous in fulfilling the uni- 
 versal obligations existing between sovereign 
 and minister, between father and son, between 
 husband and wife, and between friend and 
 friend. Man he taught was a microcosm, and 
 that by striving to improve himself by ac- 
 quiring knowledge, by purifyiag his thoughts, 
 by rectifyiag his heart, and by cidtivating his 
 person, he would then be able to regulate his 
 family. When he could regulate his family, 
 he might then be able to govern a state; and 
 when he could govern a state, he might then 
 be trusted to rule an Empire. The Empire 
 was as one famUy ; and as it was the 
 part of the Emperor to cherish and guard 
 his people as a father does a child, so it was 
 the duty of the people to render willing and 
 submissive obedience to their sovereign. 
 
The Literature of China. 75 
 
 It is due to these political opinions that Con- 
 fucius has become such an object of respect to 
 both rulers and the ruled. The former see in his 
 teaching a ready argument for the maintenance 
 of their authority, and the people, believing 
 that heaven has constituted for them rulers 
 and teachers,, whose duty it is to extend favour 
 and maintain tranquillity throughout the Empire, 
 have at the same time learnt to hold that 
 when the ruler ceases to be a minister of 
 G-od for good, he forfeits the title by which 
 he holds the throne. Confucius was ambitious, 
 and was a courtier, as well as philosopher, and 
 beyond this point he avoided in any shape or 
 way indicating the manner in which an op- 
 pressive ruler should be induced to abdicate. 
 No such consideration influenced his disciple 
 Mencius, who,, being superior to the ordinary 
 ambitions of man, was superior also to their 
 common timidities, and who with much boldness 
 of utterance freely taught that the people were 
 the most important element in a nation, and the 
 Sovereign was the lightest ; and he did not scruple 
 to admit the conclusion that an iniquitous ruler 
 
76 The Literature of China. 
 
 should be dethroned, and, if circumstances re- 
 quired it, that he should he put to death. 
 
 The "Confucian Analects" and the "Works 
 of Mencius" differ in their construction from 
 the "Great Learning" and the "Doctrine of the 
 Mean," both of which are continuous treatises 
 by individual authors ; whereas the two first 
 named are records of the sayings and doings of 
 the two Sages, compiled from memory by their 
 faithful disciples, and somewhat resemble in 
 construction, but at a vast interval, the plan 
 of the Gospel narrative. 
 
 I have dwelt at some length on the classics, 
 because, since they are the sacred books of 
 China, it is natural to suppose that in them 
 we may find the mainspring of the national 
 literature. Unfortunately, to some extent this 
 is the case, and Confucius has much to answer 
 for, both as regards his teaching and the 
 literary model he bequeathed to his country- 
 men. Instead of encouraging his disciples to 
 think for themselves, to look into their own 
 hearts, and to acquire that personal know- 
 ledge that enables a man to stand alone, he 
 
The Literature of China. 77 
 
 led tliem out both, by precept and example 
 into tbe dreary waste of cold formalism, in 
 wMcb all individuality is lost, and all force 
 and originality of thinking is crushed out. 
 It may be said that, as far as his teachings 
 were concerned, he strove to suit his system 
 to the capacity of his audience ; and that he 
 was successful in so doing is proved by the 
 fact that for twenty-two centuries his name 
 has been revered and his precepts have been 
 followed by his countrymen of whatever rank 
 ajid station in life. 
 
 As has been well observed by WeUs Williams, 
 " If Confucius had transmitted to posterity 
 such works as the Iliad, the De Officiis, 
 or the Dialogues of Plato, he would no 
 doubt have taken a higher rank among the 
 commanding intellects of the world; but it 
 may be reasonably doubted whether his in- 
 fluence among his own countrymen would 
 have been as good or as lasting. The variety 
 and minuteness of his instructions for the 
 nurture and education of children, the stress 
 he lays upon fiKal duty, the detail of etiquette 
 
78 The Literature of China. 
 
 and conduct he gives for. the intercourse of 
 all classes and ranks in society, characterize 
 his writings from those of all philosophers in 
 other countries, who, comparatively speaking, 
 gave small thought to the education of the 
 young. The "Four Books" and the "Five 
 Classics" would not, as far as regards their in- 
 trinsic character in comparison with other produc- 
 tions, be considered anything more than curiosities 
 in Kterature, for their antiquity and language, 
 were it not for the incomparahle influence they 
 have exerted over so many millions of minds." 
 
 But no such apology can be offered for the 
 example he set them in the substance and 
 style of his writings. And we are forced to 
 the conclusion, that though a man of great 
 force of character, he was yet strangely devoid 
 of imagination, and that, in his blind admira- 
 tion for the ancients, he constrained himself to 
 walk humbly and passively in the paths that 
 had been traced by others. At all events he 
 has done his countrymen an irreparable injury. 
 The inflexible sterility of the earliest speci- 
 mens of literature might possibly have been 
 
The Literature of China. 79 
 
 the characteristic of a particular phase in the 
 national mind, but Confucius helped to per- 
 petuate it throughout aU generations. As 
 might be expected, in no class of the litera- 
 ture is the effect thus produced more apparent 
 than in the commentaries on the Classics. 
 These works are to be numbered by thousands, 
 and, with some few exceptions, they are, as 
 has been said of the writings of the Scribes 
 at the time of Our Lord, cold in manner, 
 second-hand and iterative in their very essence; 
 with no freshness in them, no force, no fire ; 
 servile to all authority, opposed to all inde- 
 pendence; never passing a hair's breadth be- 
 yond the carefully-watched boundary line of 
 precedent ; full of balanced inference and 
 orthodox hesitancy, and impossible literalism ; 
 elevating mere memory above genius, and re- 
 petition above originality. 
 
 But whatever may be the shortcoming of 
 Confucius as a writer, the respect he felt and 
 inculcated for letters, gave an impetus to 
 literature. Following the example he set, men 
 began to compile the histories of the various 
 
8o The Literature of China. 
 
 States; and authors wilji a turn for more 
 original composition busied themselves witli tlie 
 production of works on sucli arts and sciences, 
 including medicine, mathematics, law, and hus- 
 bandry, as were known to them. It was 
 just as this new industry was beginning to 
 flourish that the Emperor Che Hwang -ti, 
 to whom I have already referred, an able and 
 ambitious prince, ascended the throne. By a 
 judicious mixture of force and diplomacy, he abol- 
 ished the Feudal States, into which the Empire 
 had up to his time been divided, and drew all 
 power and authority into his own hands. 
 
 Estimating the traditions of the past to be 
 almost as potent as did Confucius, and for that 
 very reason deeming them as dangerous to the 
 existence of his rule, as Confucius had con- 
 sidered them to be beneficial to the Empire, he 
 determined to break with them once and for 
 ever. He therefore issued an order that all 
 books should be burned, except those contain- 
 ing records of his own reign; that all who 
 dared to speak together about the "Book of 
 Odes" or the "Book of History" (harmless 
 
The Literature of China. 8i 
 
 subjects enougli, one would tlimk) should be 
 put to death, and their bodies exposed ia the 
 market-place ; that those who should make 
 mention of the past, so as to blame the 
 present, shoidd be put to death along with 
 their relatives; and that any one possessing 
 a book after the lapse of thirty days from 
 the issuing of the ordinance should be branded 
 and sent to labour on the Great Wall for 
 four years. The publication of this edict 
 was followed shortly afterwards by an order 
 for the execution of upwards of 460 scholars 
 who had failed to obey the mandate of the 
 Emperor. 
 
 Curiously enough, it was duriag the reign 
 of this uncompromising enemy to Kterature 
 that the brush pencil as at present used in 
 China for writiag purposes was invented, 
 — an invention which implies that about this 
 time a substitute was found for the bamboo 
 tablets which had up to that period served the 
 purposes of paper. At first this new material was 
 a kind of closely woven silk. But this was soon 
 found to be as unsuitable for general purposes 
 
82 The Literature of China. 
 
 from its expense, as the tablets had been from 
 the cimihrousness ; and shortly after the estab- 
 lishment of the Han Dynasty, when the Decrees 
 of Che Hwang-ti were reyersed, and every 
 encouragement was given by the State to men 
 of letters, the Marquis Tsae "invented the 
 manufacture of paper from the inner bark of 
 trees, ends of hemp, old rags, and fishing- 
 nets." The increased facility thus afibrded for 
 the multiplication of boots was eagerly taken 
 advantage of ; and from the Annals of the Han 
 Dynasty, 206 b.c. — 25 a. d., we learn that the 
 Imperial Library of that reigniug house con- 
 sisted of 3123 sections on the classics, 2705 on 
 philosophy, 1318 of poetry, 790 on military 
 affairs, 2528 on mathematics, and 868 on medi- 
 ciae. But at the end of the second century 
 an insurrection, which brought the Han Dynasty 
 to a close, gave another check to the growing 
 literary taste. And though the then reigning 
 Emperor, in his flight from his capital at 
 Loyang, attempted to carry off the contents of 
 the Imperial Library, only half the books 
 reached their destination at Chang- gan, and 
 
The Literature of China. 83 
 
 the remnant was shortly after given to the 
 flames by the successful revolutionists. 
 
 Such as had been the course of literature 
 up to this time, so it continued until the 
 close of the sixth century, when the art 
 of printing, which became known in Europe 
 nearly 900 years later, was invented in 
 China. A well-known CMnese Encyclopaedia 
 teUs us that on the 8th day of the 12th 
 month of the thirteenth year of the reign of 
 Wan-ti (593 a.d.), it was ordained by a decree 
 that the various texts in circulation should 
 be collected and should be engraved on wood, 
 to be printed and pubKshed. Thus within a 
 few years of the time when St. Augustine 
 brought the enlightening influences of Chris- 
 tianity to these Isles, the art of printing — a 
 civilizing agency second only to Christianity — 
 was made known in China. But at first com- 
 paratively little use seems to have been made 
 of the invention; for we are told that though 
 it made some way during the Tang (618-907) 
 and the five following Dynasties (907-960), it only 
 arrived at its full development under the Sung 
 
84 The Literature of China. 
 
 Dynasty (960-1127). It was during this last 
 epocli that a further improTement was made in 
 the art by the introduction of moveable types, 
 by a blacksmith named Pe Ching. This in- 
 ventor, writes M. Julien, used to take a paste of 
 fine and glutinous clay, and make of it regular 
 plates of the thickness of a piece of money, 
 on which he engraved the characters. For 
 each character he made a type, which he 
 hardened at the fire. He then placed an iron 
 plate on the table, and covered it with a ce- 
 ment composed of resin, wax, and Kme. When 
 he wanted to print, he took an iron frame 
 divided by perpendicular threads of the same 
 metal, and placing it on the iron plate, ranged 
 his types ia it. The plate was then held near 
 the fire, and when the cement was sufficiently 
 melted, a wooden board was pressed tightly 
 upon it, so as to render the surface of the 
 type perfectly even. This method was neither 
 convenient nor expeditious, so says a Chinese 
 writer, when only a few copies of a book were 
 to be printed; but when a large number were re- 
 quired, it printed them o£F at a prodigious speed. 
 
The Literature of China. 85 
 
 ' At tMs and at later periods the art of 
 printing has been turned to no better purpose 
 in China than to the publication of the his- 
 tories of the various dynasties. Debarred both 
 by the nature of the material at their command 
 and by a lack of original genius from indulging 
 in the higher branches of imaginative -writing, 
 Chinese authors have devoted themselves with 
 untiring energy and with very considerable ability 
 to the compilation of information concerning 
 the physical and political features of their own 
 and the neighbouring countries. Each dynasty 
 has its official chronicle of these subjects, and 
 the celebrated collection of twenty-one histories 
 which forms a well-nigh unbroken record of 
 the nation's annals, by contemporary authors, 
 from the third century B.C. down to the 
 middle of the seventeenth century, forms a 
 notable monument of the indefatigable industry 
 of their authors. The edition of this huge 
 work which stands on the shelves of th^ 
 Chinese Library at the British Museum is 
 contained in sixty-six European-bound volumes 
 of folio size. In order to facUitate the pro- 
 
86 The Literature of China. 
 
 cess of reference, the different histories of 
 which it is composed, though they vary con- 
 siderably in extent, are all formed on the 
 same model. First in order come the Im- 
 perial Records, which consist of the purely 
 political events which occurred in each reign. 
 Then foUow the Memoirs, including articles 
 on mathematical chronology, rites, music, juris- 
 prudence, political economy, state sacrifices, 
 astronomy, elemental influences, geography, lite- 
 rature, biographies, and records of the neigh- 
 bouring countries. 
 
 On all these subjects they contain a vast 
 amount of valuable and varied information, 
 much of which possesses considerable interest 
 for European readers. The position which 
 China, as a nation, has occupied and maintained 
 through so many centuries has been such 
 as to render her the natural depository of 
 the annals of the kingdoms of Central and 
 Eastern Asia. With Burmah, Cochin China, 
 Tibet, Japan, and Corea as her vassals, with a 
 never-ceasing relationship with the tribes of 
 Central Asia, kept up as times and circiunstances 
 
The Literature of China. 8 
 
 cliaaiged, now as subjects, now as allies, and 
 now as enemies, alone uncliangiag in her poli- 
 tical constitution amidst the recurring wrecks of 
 neighbouring States, she has had the means at 
 her command of coUectiag masses of ethnologi- 
 cal information which are beyond the reach of 
 any other people. The movements of the tribes 
 in Central Asia, to which her policy has largely 
 contributed, are aU clearly traced in the Dynas- 
 tic Annals ; and it was with the view of placing 
 the record of these within the reach of European 
 readers that a proposal was recently made to 
 translate, as a beginning, the History of the 
 Han Dynasty. 
 
 Allied to these Annals are the Topographical 
 Works' of China, which for breadth of scope 
 and for minuteness of detail are scarcely to 
 be equalled in the literature of any other 
 country. The most generally comprehensive of 
 these is the Ta Tsing yih tung cM, which forms 
 a geography of the Empire, together with the 
 Chinese Districts of Mongolia and Manchuria 
 as existing since the accession of the present 
 Dynasty. This work, which consists of 356 
 
88 The Literature of China. 
 
 books, was published at Peking in the year 
 1744. In it each province, each prefecture, 
 each department, and each district, is separately- 
 dealt with, and are seyerally treated of under 
 the following twenty-four headings. 1. A table 
 of the changes which the district to be described 
 has undergone during the successive Dynasties 
 from the Han downwards. 2. Maps. 3. A list 
 of the distances from the various places to the 
 chief towns of the department. 4. Its astrono- 
 mical bearings. 5. Its ancient geography. 6. Its 
 geographical position and its notable localities. 
 
 7. The manners and customs of the inhabitants. 
 
 8. Its fortified places. 9. Its colleges and 
 schools. 10. The census of the population. 
 11. The taxes on land. 12. Its mountains and 
 rivers. 13. Its antiquities. 14. Its means of 
 defence. 15. Its bridges. 16. Its dykes. 17. Its 
 tombs and monimients. 18. Its temples and an- 
 cestral halls. 19. Its Buddhist and Taouist tem- 
 ples. 20. Patriotic native officials from the time 
 of the Han Dynasty downwards. 21. Celebrated 
 men and things. 22. Illustrious women. 23. Saints 
 and immortals. 24. The products of the soil. 
 
The Literature of China. 89 
 
 On this model distinct topographies have also 
 been compiled, tmder official superintendence, 
 of CTery province, every prefecture, every 
 department, and almost every district. And 
 not only this, but the water-ways of China, 
 as well as the rivers of Manchuria, Mongolia, 
 and Tibet, have aU been accurately surveyed 
 and minutely described. The narrow train of 
 thought, however, into which the system of 
 Chinese education has compressed the mind of 
 the people tends to develope in them a faculty 
 for the observation of minute details, rather 
 than to foster the power of taking a correct 
 comprehensive view of any wide subject. 
 This peculiarity is observable in the class of 
 Works of which I have been speaking; for 
 while they are wonderfully accurate as to de- 
 tails, their maps and general descriptions are 
 often vague and imtrustworthy. But when we 
 remember how only recently the very impor- 
 tant duty of causing surveys to be made of 
 our own Isles has been undertaken by the 
 Grovernment, it becomes us rather to speak 
 with respect of the energy and wisdom shown 
 
90 The Literature of China. 
 
 by the Chinese topographers, than to criticize 
 too closely their shortcomings. 
 
 I should be dealing unfairly by Chinese 
 literature were I to leave this part of my 
 subject without referring to the historical and 
 literary Encyclopaedias which form so very 
 notable a feature in every library throughout the 
 country. The best known of these compilations, 
 and the one which may be taken as a specimen 
 of the class, is the Wdn keen tung kaou, by 
 Ma Twan-Kn. This work has been more 
 largely drawn upon by European authors than 
 has any other Chiaese book of reference, and 
 those who are best acquaiated with it are 
 those who speak most highly in its praise. 
 "One cannot cease to admire," says Remusat, 
 "the depth of research which the author was 
 compelled to make in order to collect his 
 materials, the sagacity he has shown in the 
 arrangement of them, and the clearness and 
 precision with which he has presented this 
 multitude of objects in every light. It may 
 fairly be said that this excellent work is a 
 library in itself, and that if Chiaese literature 
 
TJie Literature of China. 91 
 
 contained nothing else, it would be wortli wliile 
 to learn the language in order to read it. One 
 has only to choose the subject one wishes to 
 study, and one finds all the facts recorded and 
 classified, aU the sources of information indi- 
 cated, and all the authorities cited and dis- 
 cussed." " It elevates our opinion," says Wells 
 WiUiams, " of a nation whose literature can 
 boast of a work like this, exhibiting such 
 patient investigation and candid comparison of 
 authorities, such varied research and just dis- 
 crimination of, what is truly important, and 
 so extensive a mass of facts and opinions 
 upon every subject of historical interest." 
 
 In point of size and importance, however, 
 this Encyclopaedia yields place to one other, 
 entitled Koo kin too shoo tseih ching, or 
 " A Complete Collection of Ancient and 
 Modem ' Books." During the reign of the 
 Emperor Kien-lung (1735-95) it occurred 
 to that monarch that, in view of the gradual 
 alterations which were being introduced into 
 the texts of Works of interest and value, 
 it would be advisable to reprint such from the 
 
92 The Literature of China. 
 
 old editions. He ther^ore appointed a com- 
 mission, and directed ttem to reprint in one 
 huge collection all sucli works as they might 
 deem worthy of preservation. A complete set 
 of copper type was cast for the undertaking, 
 and when the Commissioners brought their 
 labours to a close, they were able to lay 
 before the Emperor a very palpable proof of 
 their diligence in the shape of a compilation 
 consisting of 6109 volimies. The contents they 
 divided under thirty-four heads, embracing 
 works on every subject contained in the 
 national literature. Only a small edition was 
 printed off in the first instance, and before 
 long the Government, yielding to the necessi- 
 ties of a severe monetary crisis, ordered the 
 copper type employed to print it to be melted 
 down for cash. Thus only a few copies of the 
 first edition are in existence, and it is but rarely 
 that one finds its way into the market. It so 
 happens, however, that one is now for sale at 
 Peking, and it is much to be hoped that this copy 
 of a "Work which is the largest in the world, 
 unique of its kind, and incapable of reproduction, 
 
The Literature of China. 93 
 
 may, tliougli at present fate is adverse, find 
 its way to the shelves of our ITational Library. 
 Time -would fail me even to refer to the 
 immense ♦number of biographies, and of works 
 on the sciences, on education, and on juris- 
 prudence, which have from time to time 
 issued, and are stUl issuing, from the presses, 
 in China. Nor need the literature of the 
 religious sects of China — the Confucianists, 
 the Buddhists, and the Taouists — detaia me 
 long, siace I have already introduced to your 
 notice the works of Confucius ; and since the 
 great bulk of Chinese Buddhist literature is 
 of Indian origin. It remains, therefore, for 
 me to refer only to the Taouist literature, which 
 has its foundation in "The Sutra of Reason 
 and of Virtue," by Laou-tsze, the founder of 
 the sect. Like Confucius, of whom he was a 
 contemporary, he held office at the Court of 
 Chow ; but being less ambitious than the Sage, 
 he retired early from his post, and we are 
 told that as he passed the frontier on his way 
 westward, whither we know not, he placed in 
 the hands of the officer in charge of the 
 
94 The Literature of China. 
 
 frontier guard a small volume, wliicli embodied 
 the results of liis meditations. According to 
 the interpretation put upon his system thus 
 expounded by the famous commentator Choo 
 He, it would appear to bear a strong analogy 
 to those of the Quietists and Manicheists. 
 "Laou-tsze's scheme of philosophy," he tells 
 us, " consists in modesty, self- emptiness, in 
 being void of desires, quiet and free from 
 exertion, iu being self-empty, retiring, and 
 self-controlling in actual life." But beyond 
 this his great object seems to have been to 
 elucidate and develope his idea of the rela- 
 tions between something which he calls Taou 
 and the Universe. To this Taou, Laou-tsze 
 refers all things as the ultimate ideal unity 
 of the Universe. All things originate from 
 Taou, conform to Taou, and to Taou they at 
 last return. Formless, it is the cause of Form. 
 It is an eternal road; along it all beings and 
 all things walk; but no being made it, for 
 it is Being itself, and yet nothing. It is the 
 path, and also the path-goers, and everything 
 and nothing, and the cause and effect of all. 
 
The Literature of China. 95 
 
 This is a sufficiently mystical foundation to 
 allow of any superstructures, however wildly 
 superstitious, to be based upon it. And just 
 as the religion of Ancient Rome became ia- 
 crusted and overlaid by superstitious vanities 
 gathered from Egypt, and from wherever the 
 Roman arms penetrated, so the teachings of 
 Laou-tsze have been debased and disfigured 
 m. the hands of later writers, who, casting 
 aside his profound speculations, busy themselves 
 with the pursuit of immortality, the search 
 after the philosopher's stone, the use of amulets, 
 with the observance of fasts and sacrifices, 
 rituals and charms, and the indefinite multi- 
 plication of objects of worship. , 
 In China, as elsewhere, the first development 
 of literary talent is found in Poetry. The Songs 
 and Ballads which form the " Book of Odes," to 
 which I have already referred, date back to 
 a time long antecedent to the production of 
 any works of which we have knowledge. In 
 those early days, before China was China, the 
 then Empire was divided into a number of 
 feudal states, aU of which, however, acknow- 
 
96 The Literature of China. 
 
 ledged fealty to the ruliiig' Sovereign, at 
 whose Court were a munber of rmisic-masters 
 and liistoriographers, whose duty it was to 
 collect and set to music the songs of the 
 people, and to preserye the historical records 
 of the Empire. In strict imitation of the 
 surroundings of their liege Lord, the feudatory 
 Princes numbered among their retinues officers 
 of like position, and professing similar func- 
 tions. At stated intervals these Princes, accom- 
 panied by their followings, were in the habit 
 of meeting the King at certain recognized 
 places to take orders for the future and to 
 receive credit or blame as the case might be for 
 their past conduct. On such occasions the music- 
 masters would carry with them the Ballads and 
 Songs collected in their principalities, and 
 present them to their Superior at the E,oyal 
 Court. These he would collect and classify, 
 reminding one of Queen Elizabeth's Minister, 
 who, according to the Spectator, "had all 
 manner of books and ballads brought to 
 him, of what kind soever, and took great 
 notice how much they took with the people; 
 
The Literature of China. 97 
 
 upon wliich he would, and certainly might 
 very well judge of their present dispositions, 
 and of the most proper way of applying them 
 according to his own purposes." Thus it 
 happened, that at the time of Confucius there 
 existed an official collection of some 3000 songs. 
 On these the Sage set to work, and, in the words 
 of the historian Sze-ma Tseen, "he rejected 
 those which were only repetitions of others, 
 and selected those which would he serviceable 
 for the inculcation of propriety and righteous- 
 ness." Such he arranged to the number of 311 
 under four heads, namely. National Airs, the 
 Lesser and Greater Eulogies, and the Songs of 
 Homage, and gave the title of She king, or 
 " Book of Odes," to the collection. 
 
 If we can imagine ourselves seated in the 
 study of the royal minister, searching with 
 him into the Ballads thus laid before us 
 for an indication of the temper and mind 
 of the people among whom they had had 
 their birth, we should be inclined to con- 
 gratulate him on the easy task entrusted to 
 him of governing such a population. Through 
 
98 The Literature of China. 
 
 most of tliem there breathes a quiet caJm and 
 patriarchal simplicity of thought and Hfe. 
 There are few sounds of war, little tumult of the 
 camp, but, on the contrary, a spirit of peaceful 
 repose, of family love and of religious feeling. 
 We have brought before the miad's eye the 
 lowly cottage, where dwell a fanuly united 
 by the bonds of affection and of duty. 
 Their food is the produce of the soil and the 
 spoils of the chase. The highest ambition of 
 the men is to excel as archers and charioteers, 
 and their religious worship is the same as that 
 which, untainted by Buddhism or any other 
 form of philosophical teaching, is now prac- 
 tised at the Imperial Temples of Heaven and 
 Earth, by the Emperor only as High Priest. 
 Their wives are objects of affection and respect, 
 and though in one song we find the belief 
 expressed that "a wise woman will ruin a 
 city," yet there seems to have been abundance 
 of regard for honest housewives who did their 
 duty, who shared the toil of their husbands, 
 and enjoyed with them the simple pleasures 
 within their reach. 
 
The Literature of China. 99 
 
 It is true that now and again we meet 
 with traces of scenes of revelry bordering on 
 licentiousness; but their idyllic surroundings, 
 and the absence of all violence, deprive the 
 most dissolute descriptions of all vulgarity 
 and coarseness. More serious by far are the 
 wailing complaints of misrule and tyranny 
 under which the subjects of certain princes 
 groan. But even here there are no signs 
 of iasubordiuation or tumult ; the remedy 
 which suggests itself to a people, patient and 
 long-suffering to a degree, is to emigrate beyond 
 the reach of the tyrant, not to rise in re- 
 bellion against him. In the following lines, 
 for instance, the writer begs his friends to fly 
 with him from the oppression and misery pre- 
 vailing in his native State, which he likens to 
 the North wind and thickly falling snow : 
 
 " Cold blows the North, wind ; 
 Thickly falls the snow. 
 Oh come all ye that love me, 
 
 Let 's join hands and go. 
 Can we any longer stay, 
 Yictims to this dire dismay?" 
 
lOO The Literature of China. 
 
 Foxes and crows were looked upon as creatures 
 of evil omen, and so, giving play to- liis imagi- 
 nation, lie teUs us that the only variations 
 noticeable in the monotony of the present dis- 
 tress were these prognostics of future evil, in 
 these words, 
 
 " Fought red is seen but foxes, 
 
 Ifor aught else black but crows, 
 Oh come all ye that love me, 
 
 Let 's fly before our foes. 
 Can we any longer stay. 
 Victims to this dire dismay?" 
 
 Though the style and diction of these 
 songs are of the simplest description, yet 
 through some of them there runs a rich vein 
 of sentiment, and in forming a judgment on 
 them it is necessary to remember that they 
 are not studied poems, but simply what 
 they profess to be, songs of the people. 
 Like all political ballads also, many of them 
 refer to contemporary events about which we 
 know next to nothing; and ia estunating their 
 merits, therefore, we are much in the same posi- 
 
The Literature of China. loi 
 
 tion as that in which a Chinaman would be 
 placed, who, in the year of our Lord 3000, 
 might criticize the poetical squib ia last week's 
 "Punch" on the Derby, without ever having 
 heard of that great cockney festival. "We are 
 therefore much in the hands of the com- 
 m.entators, and they tell us that the following 
 song is intended to depict a rural scene, in 
 which an industrious wife impresses on her 
 husband the necessity of early rising, and en- 
 courages bi-m to make virtuous and respectable 
 acquaintances : 
 
 "Get up, husband, here's the day!" 
 "Not yet, wife, the dawn's still grey." 
 "Get up. Sir, and on the right 
 See the morning star shines bright. 
 Shake off slumber, and prepare 
 Ducks and geese to shoot and snare. 
 
 "All your darts and line may kill 
 I will dress for you with skUl. 
 Thus, a blithesome hour we'll pass, 
 Brightened by a cheerful glass; 
 While your lute its aid imparts 
 To gratify and soothe our hearts. 
 
t 
 102 The Literature of China. 
 
 "On all wtom you may ■wish, to knew 
 I'll girdle ornaments bestow ; 
 And girdle ornaments I'll send 
 To any one who calls you friend ; 
 With, him whose love for you 's abiding 
 My girdle ornaments dividing." 
 
 {The Bool of Odea, Pt. I. Bk. vn. Ode 8.) 
 
 One otiier I will quote, taken from tlie Songs 
 of Homage, or Hymns which were sung either 
 by or before the Emperor when he sacrificed 
 as High Priest to God. We are told that 
 this one was sung by King Seuen on the oc- 
 casion of a great drought in the eighth century 
 before Christ. In it he expostulates with God 
 for bringing this misery upon him, and ex- 
 presses his belief that he had a right to 
 expect succour instead of disaster from the 
 Most High. 
 
 Brightly resplendent in the sky revolved 
 The milky way. 
 
 The monarch cried, Alas! 
 "What crime is ours, that Heaven thus sends on us 
 Death and Disorder, that with blow on blow 
 Famine attacks us? 
 
The Literature of China. 103 
 
 Surely I have grudged 
 To God no victims; all our store is spent 
 Of tokens. "Wliy is it I am not heard? — 
 Rages the drought. The hiQs are parched, and dry 
 The streams. The demon of the drought 
 Destroys like one who scatters fiery fiames. 
 Terrified by the burning heat my heart, 
 My mourning heart, seems all consumed with fire. 
 The many dukes and ministers of the past 
 Pay me no heed. 
 
 Grod ! from Thy great Heaven 
 
 Send me permission to withdraw myself 
 
 Into seclusion. 
 
 Fearful is the drought. 
 
 I hesitate, I dread to go away. 
 
 Why has this drought been sent upon my land ? 
 
 No cause for it know I. Pull early rose 
 
 My prayers for a good year; not late was I 
 
 In ofi'ring sacrifice unto the Lords 
 
 Of the four quarters and the land. 
 
 Afar 
 In the high Heaven God listens not. And yet 
 Surely a reverent man as I have been 
 To all intelligent Spirits should not be 
 The victim of their overwhebning wrath. 
 
 {The Book of Odes, Pt. III. Bk. m. Ode 4.) 
 
 SucK is tlie poetry of the Book of Odes, 
 
I04 The Literature of China. 
 
 and sucL. we should have expected to find 
 it, since the earKest specimens of poetry in 
 every land partake of a simple and religious 
 nature, are crude in their measure, and are 
 wanting iu that harmony vrhich is begotten 
 of study and cultivation. The Chinese say 
 of poetry that the Book of Odes may be 
 Ukened to its roots, that during the Han 
 and Wei Dynasties it burst into foKage, and 
 that during the Tang Dynasty (620-907) it 
 came into fuU bloom. Certainly the change 
 that came over it after the time of Confucius 
 is very marked. Instead of the peaceful Odes 
 of his day, we find pieces reflecting the un- 
 settled condition of poKtical and social afiairs. 
 Songs breathing fire and sword, mingled with 
 wild fancies, the offspring of Taouist teach- 
 ing, have taken the place of the domestic 
 ballads of the Book of Odes. The simple 
 monotheistic belief of the early Chinese is 
 exchanged for a superstitious faith in a host 
 of Gods and Groddesses, who haunt every hill, 
 and dance in every glade. As a specimen of 
 the' Poetry of this period, I may quote the 
 
The Literature of China. 105 
 
 followiag " Lament of a Soldier on a Campaign," 
 by Sun Tsze-king, of the "Wei Dynasty. 
 
 On the hilly way blows the morning breeze ; the 
 Autumn shrubs are veiled, in mist and rain. 
 
 The whole city escorts us far on our way, providing us 
 with rations for a thousand li. 
 
 Their very worst have the three Fates done. Ah me ! 
 how can I be saved. There is nought more 
 bitter than an early death. Do not the Gods desire 
 to gain perpetual youth? 
 
 As Sorrow and Happiness, so are Fortune and Mis- 
 fortune intermingled. Heaven and Earth are the 
 moulds in which we are formed, and in them is 
 there nothing which does not bear significance. 
 
 Far into the future looks the sage, early striving to 
 avert calamity. But who can examine his own 
 heart, scrutinize it by the light of heaven, regulate 
 it for his present life, and preserve it for the 
 old age which is to come ? 
 
 Longer grows the distance from what I have left 
 
 behind me : my trouble is greater than I can bear. 
 
 With other Poets this new phase of belief 
 encouraged a contempt for life, and an un- 
 certainty of all beyond it; and these during 
 the first two centuries gave vent to their 
 
io6 The Literature of China. 
 
 indifference in Odes advocating the Epi- 
 curean philosophy, " Let us eat and drink, 
 for to-morrow we die." Eight short Dynasties, 
 times of confusion and disorder, followed after 
 the Han Dynasties (206 B.C.-221 a.d.) ; and 
 then came the Tang Dynasty (620-907), a 
 period which is looked back upon as being 
 the golden age of literature, as indeed it was 
 in every field '■which marks a nation's great- 
 ness. It was during this epoch that Imperial 
 armies occupied Bokhara and Samarcand, that 
 the Buddhist traveller Heuen-tsang made his 
 way to India, and to every spot rendered 
 sacred by the presence of Buddha, and that 
 the softening influences of Christianity were 
 introduced by the Nestorians into the very 
 heart of the Empire. It was a time of pros- 
 perity and peace. Literature flourished, and 
 skill and art were employed to soften and add 
 harmony to the national poetry. The four 
 syllables, of which nearly all the lines in the 
 Book of Odes were composed, were exchanged 
 for five and seven. The subjects also partook 
 of the change. Le Tae-pih, the greatest poet 
 
The Literature of China. 107 
 
 of his time, timed his lyre to notes on the 
 pleasures of wine and of beauty, which would 
 have done honour to Anacreon. Evening feasts 
 amid the parterres of gardens rich with the 
 bloom of a thousand flowers furnished themes 
 upon which he and his imitators were never 
 tired of dilating. Such sonnets axe som.etimes 
 pretty, and occasionally the ideas they contain 
 are strikiag ; but the disadvantages of the 
 language and of education weigh heavily upon 
 their authors, and they seldom rise beyond 
 the level of the merest mediocrity. The follow- 
 ing is taken from the writings of the poet 
 I have just mentioned, and is translated 
 lineatim et verbatim : — 
 
 A SolITAET CakOITSB ON A DaT IN SpEING. 
 
 The east wind fans a gentle breeze, 
 
 The streams and trees glory in the brightness of the 
 
 Spring, 
 The bright sun illuminates the green shrubs, 
 And the falling flowers are scattered and fly away. 
 The solitary cloud retreats to the hollow hill. 
 The birds return to their leafy haunts. 
 
io8 The Literature of China, 
 
 Every being has a refuge whither he may turn, 
 I alone have nothing to 'which to cling. 
 So seated opposite the moon shining o'er the cliff, 
 I drink and sing to the fragrant blossoms. 
 
 Of epic poetry tlie Chinese know notTiing, 
 and this need not surprise us when we remember 
 how entirely that style of writing was an im- 
 portation from Greece into Western Europe ; 
 and Voltaire tells us, that when he was thinking 
 of puhlishing the Henriade, he consulted a 
 friend on the subject, who recommended him to 
 give up the undertaking, — "for," said he, "the 
 French have not epic heads." Neither have the 
 Chinese. A sustained effort of imagination is 
 difficult to them, and the strict laws of rhjnne 
 and m.etre which hamper the poet would make 
 a lengthened poem in Chinese the work of a 
 lifetime. It is probably due to this cause that 
 the Kterature shows no instance of real dramatic 
 poetry. Their dramas abound with short lyrical 
 pieces, which are introduced to break the mono- 
 tony of the dialogue; but dramas in verse are 
 unknown, except in the case . of low plays 
 written in vulgar rhythm. As, however, love for 
 
The Literature of China. 109 
 
 the drama is one of tlie most noticeable features of 
 the Chinese character, every encouragement has 
 been given to playwrights, and this branch of 
 literature is therefore well supplied both as 
 regards matter and bidt. The most celebrated 
 plays are contained in a collection entitled 
 "The Hundred Plays of the Yuen Dynasty," 
 many of which have been translated into 
 European languages, and one of which, The 
 Orphan of Chaou, served as the groundwork of 
 Voltaire's tragedy, "L'Orphelin de la Chine." 
 Their dramas are divided in the playbooks 
 into acts, generally four or five ; but as there 
 is an absence of all scenery, and as the dresses 
 are never changed during the piece, the acting 
 is as a rule continuous throughout without 
 break or interval. The stage directions are given 
 in their books as in ours, but not with the same 
 minuteness. "Enter" and "Exit" are ex- 
 pressed by "Ascend" and "Descend," and 
 "Aside" by "Turn the back and say." By 
 the rules of the Chinese, as was the case also 
 in the Greek, drama, only two players are 
 allowed to have possession of the stage at any 
 
no The Literature of China. 
 
 one time. This, and the aj)sence of all scenery, 
 obliges the dramatists to put in the mouths of 
 the actors long pieces of spoken narrative, much 
 after the manner of the prologue in the Plays 
 of Euripides, which appear tame and heavy to a 
 European spectator accustomed to have the plot 
 and locality explained by dialogue and scenery. 
 The plots are for the most part simply and well 
 sustained. The unities, though sometimes ob- 
 served, are more often disregarded, especially 
 that of place, the characters being frequently 
 sent to different parts of the country in the 
 same act, and are made to inform the audience 
 of their whereabouts by the simple expedient 
 of walking up and down the stage, and ex- 
 claiming, "Now I am at such and such a 
 place," or "at such and such a house." The 
 acting, generally speaking, is good. The 
 Chinese are actors by nature, and are no 
 doubt a good deal improved by their inherent 
 cunning and want of sincerity, which make 
 them quick of observation and fertile in re- 
 source, and in every-day life enable them 
 easily to catch the tone of those with whom 
 
The Literature of China. iii 
 
 they associate, and on tKe stage to assume 
 the characters they wish to represent. 
 
 The theatre is in China, as it was in Greece, 
 national and religious. It is under the direct 
 control of the law, and is closed by Imperial 
 edict during aU periods of public mourning, 
 while at the same time it plays a prominent 
 part at aU the yearly religious festivals. 
 In order to give some idea of the substance 
 and plot of a Chinese drama, I wiU quote 
 from Sir John Davis's "China" an abstract 
 of a play, which he has translated and 
 published at fuU length, entitled "The Heir 
 in Old Age." This piece serves, as is ob- 
 served by the translator, to illustrate the 
 consequences which the Chinese attach to the 
 due performance of the oblations at the tombs 
 of departed ancestors, and also the true 
 relation of the handmaid to the legitimate 
 wife. The dramatis personm are, he says, 
 "made up entirely of the members of a 
 family in the middle class of life, consisting 
 of a rich old man, his wife, a handmaid, 
 his nephew, his son-in-law, and his daughter." 
 
112 The Literature of China. 
 
 The old man, having no son to console him 
 in his age, and to perform the ohsequies at 
 his tomb, had, like the Jewish Patriarch, 
 taken a handmaid, whose pregnancy is an- 
 noimced at the opening of the play, in 
 which the old man commences with saying, 
 "I am a man of Timg-ping Foo, etc." In 
 order to obtain from Heaven a son, instead 
 of a daughter, he makes a sacrifice of sundry 
 debts due to him, by burning the bonds, 
 and this propitiatory holocaust serves at the 
 same time to quiet some scruples of con- 
 science as to the mode in which part of his 
 money had been acquired. He then deKvers 
 over his affairs to his wife and his married 
 daughter, dismissing his nephew (a deceased 
 brother's son) with a hundred pieces of silver 
 to seek his fortune, as he had been subjected at 
 home to the persecution of the wife. This done, 
 the old man sets out for his estate in the country, 
 recommending the mother of his expected son 
 to the humane treatment of the family, and with 
 the hope of receiving from them speedy con- 
 gratulations on the birth of a son. 
 
The Literature of China. 113 
 
 The son-in-law now betrays to the daughter 
 his disappointment at the expected birth, 
 since, if it prove a girl, they shall lose 
 half the family property, and if a son, 
 the whole. His wife quiets him by a 
 hint how easily the handmaid may be got 
 rid of, and the old man persuaded that 
 she had suddenly disappeared; and shortly 
 afterwards both the son-in-law and the audience 
 are left to infer that she had actually con- 
 trived to make away with her. In the mean 
 time the old man waits the result in great 
 anxiety; his family appear in succession to 
 console him for the loss of his hopes. In 
 the bitterness of his disappointment, he bursts 
 into tears, and expresses his suspicions of foul 
 play. He then attributes his misfortunes to 
 his former thirst for gain, resolves to fast 
 for seven days, and to bestow alms publicly 
 at a neighbouring temple, in the hope that 
 the object of his charity may treat him as 
 a father. Among the beggars at the temple, 
 his nephew appears in the most hopeless state 
 of poverty, being reduced to take up his 
 
114 '^^^ Literature of China. 
 
 lodgings imder the furnace of a pottery ; 
 lie is insulted by the son-in-law, and re- 
 proached by the old wife; but his uncle, 
 moved with compassion, contrives to give him 
 a little money, and earnestly advises him to 
 be punctual in visiting the tombs of his 
 family at the approaching spring, assuring 
 him that a due attention to those sacred 
 rites must ultimately lead to prosperity. It is 
 on the importance attached to the sepulchral 
 ceremonies that the whole drama is made to 
 turn. 
 
 The nephew accordingly appears at the tombs, 
 performs his oblations as well as his poverty 
 will admit, and invokes the shades of his an- 
 cestors to grant him their protection. He no 
 sooner departs than the old man appears with 
 his wife, expressing their indignation that their 
 own daughter and son-in-law had neglected to 
 come with the customary offerings. They 
 observe, from the appearances at the sepulchre, 
 that their nephew must have been there. The 
 scene at the tombs, and the reflections of the 
 old man thereon, have considerable interest; 
 
The Literature of China. 115 
 
 lie reasons with his wife, and convinces her 
 that the nephew is nearer in hlood and more 
 worthy than the son-in-law ; she relents, and 
 expresses a wish to make him reparation ; he 
 appears, and a reconciliation takes place, and 
 he is received back iato the family. The son- 
 in-law and daughter now enter with a great 
 bustle and a procession, to perform the cere- 
 monies, but are received with bitter reproaches 
 for their tardy piety and ingratitude, and 
 forbidden to enter the doors again. 
 
 On the old man's birthday, however, they 
 claim permission to pay their respects, when, 
 to the boundless surprise and joy of the father, 
 his daughter presents him with the long-lost 
 handmaid and child, both of whom, it appears, 
 had been secreted by the daughter, unknown 
 to her jealous husband, who supposed they 
 were otherwise disposed of. The daughter is 
 taken back, and the old man divides his 
 money in three equal shares, between her, 
 his nephew, and his newly-found son ; the 
 play concluding with expressions of joy 
 and gratitude that the venerable hero of 
 
1 16 The Literature of China. 
 
 the piece had obtained an: "heir in his old 
 age." 
 
 This play furnishes ue with a Tery good 
 type of Chiaese plays in general. The inci- 
 dents are true to life, but they have no psy- 
 chological interest about them. There is no 
 delineation of character in it, and there is 
 nothing in the plot to make it more appro- 
 priate for the groundwork of a play than for 
 that of a novel. In the works of fiction we 
 are treated only to the same crude narration 
 of facts, without any just representation of 
 nature. Exaggerated sentiments, which always 
 precede correct reasoning and refined simplicity, 
 fill the pages of their works of fiction,, render- 
 ing them favourites only with those who are 
 taught to judge of them according to their 
 own standard of taste. Of the characters por- 
 trayed, we have to judge only from actions 
 attributed to them, which are strung together 
 with no connectiag Hnks, except those supplied 
 by the iteration of details, which are weari- 
 some to a degree. Several novels have been 
 translated into English by Sir John Davis and 
 
The Literature of China. 117 
 
 others ; but, from the causes I have described, 
 few have attracted any pubKc interest. ' Some 
 of their shorter tales, being to a great extent 
 purged of the cumbrous repetitions common to 
 larger works, are better capable of translation, 
 and the novelty of many of the situations 
 and incidents serves to keep alive the attention 
 of the reader. "Unfortunately the tone of most 
 Chinese novels is not such as to afford any 
 palliation for the dreariness of their contents. 
 If Chinese novelists are to be believed, virtue 
 in women and honour in men are to be found 
 only in a few rarely-gifted individuals," and 
 this has been so constantly insisted on, that 
 it appears to have become one of those beKefs 
 which have been the means of their own justi- 
 fication. 
 
 If then, having considered the past and 
 present Kterature of China, we cast a glance 
 into the future, the prospect is not encouraging. 
 Already every subject within the scope of Chinese 
 authors has been largely treated of and in- 
 finitely elaborated. Every grain of wheat has 
 
Ii8 The Literature of China. 
 
 long ago Ibeen beaten out of it, and any 
 further labour expended upon it can but be 
 only as thrashing out straw. The only hope 
 for the future of the literature is that 
 afforded by the importation of foreign know- 
 ledge and experience into the country. For 
 many years these can only be introduced in 
 the shape of translations of books. But the 
 time mtl come when Chinese authors wiU 
 think for themselres ; and when that period 
 arrives, they wiU learn to estimate their 
 present loudly-vaunted literature at its true 
 value. 
 
 STEPHEN AUSTIN AND SONS, PRINTERS, HERTFOKS.