■■■I'm C:•:•:■>!•/ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES f THE POETRY OF THE CHINESE. fjticf POESEOS SINIC^ COMMENTARTl. THE POETRY OF THE CHINESE. BY SIE JOHN FRANCIS DAVIS. BART., K.C.B..3>^L F.R.S.. &c. NEW AND AUGMENTED EDITION. LONDON : ASHEK AND CO., BEDFORD STREET. BERLIN : 11, UNTER DEN LINDEN. 1870. LONDON ; rrinttd at the Office of THE FLYING DRAGON l:EPORTER, s, George Yard. Lombiml Street. ? INTRODUCTION. \ When this Treatise was first printed (now more than forty ■^ years ag-o), with tyj^es brought fi-om China, in the quarto ^ Transactions of the Eoyal Asiatic Society, the foreign character 2 was so Httle known in England, that Lord Pahnerston, Avith his ►J usual pleasantry, said he took it " at first sight for a work on Entomologyy But the number of Entomologists (in this peculiar ^ sense) has so increased in the last half century, that the eye has ^ become sufficiently familiar with a page of Chinese type ; and ^ a newspaper printed in modern Greek has been followed, in our "^ cosmopolitan London, by the Fei-Loong, or " Flying Dragon," a Chinese advertiser, in the original character. •it w Sir James Macintosh, reviewing in the EdmburglL a ? translation of the Chinese Penal Code by Sir George Staunton, I made some striking remarks on its " European good sense," which seems to apply more or less to all branches of Chinese literature. " There is nothing of the monstrous verbiage of most other Asiatic productions, — none of the superstitious deliration, the miserable incoherence, the tremendous non- sequitm-s, and eternal repetitions of those oracular performances. . . . . When we pass from the ravings of the Zendavesta or the Puranas to the tone of sense and business of this Chinese J;^^i;5585 VI. collection, we seem to be passing fi-om darkness to light — fi-om the di'ivellings of dotage to the exercise of an improved understanding." The late Lord Brougham, no incompetent judge, when dilating on the same subject, declared the following to be an " admirable precept " : — Let a man only correct himself with the severity he displays to others, and excuse others with the indidgence lie shoivs himself. Perhaps the poetry of no language contains a more natural expression of feeling and sentiment, or a style less ampoule, than the Tea-picking Ballad at page 68. Tliis appeared in the Chinese Repository long after the first printing of the present Treatise, and the contributor then remarked that it confirmed and illustrated what has been herein advanced on the subject. It must be observed, however, that the construction of the verse in the Ballad is of the simplest description, far less artificial than most of the examples which have been herein adduced — in fact, more suitable to the subject and the occasion, that of a young girl singing at her work on a Spring morning, and giving vent to her almost childish feelings in gu'lish and pleasing language. The intrinsic merits of the piece are considerable, and the English version by Mr. W. T. Mercer, of Oxford University, so Avell conveys the meaning and spirit of the original, that I have been glad to avail myself of it. When Mr. John Gibson Lockhart was editor, in 1829, of the Quarterly Review, he found a copy of this Treatise in MS. lying on Mr. Murray's table; and in one of our occasional vu. walks fi'om Regent's Park, about three in the afternoon, to Albemarle Street, he proposed that I should adapt it as an article to the Quarterli/. This was accordingly done, and it appeared (together with other remarks on the Drama and Romance) in Vol. 41, though, of com-se, without the original character. After the lapse of a generation and a half, and with the present considerable additions, the reader at this remote date can hardly complain, — a($ Kpd^L^r, ed^aros. The reproduction of the Essay, now long since out of print, and principally for the use of Chinese scholars, could not have been effected in the original character without the old type preserved in the archives of the Royal Asiatic Society, nor without the ample Chinese fount, and the able supervision of the Rev. Professor Summers, of King's College, London, to whom, in the event of success, the author is bound to say, like Horace, " Quod placeo (si placeo) tuum est." POESEOS SINIO.E COMMENT AlUl. On TIIH POKTRY OF TIIK C'lllXESK " Quserere csepit Quid — utile ferrent : Teutavit. quoque, rem si digiie vertere posset." HOr. In the arrangemeut of our subject, it may perhaiis be useful to preserve so much regard to inetliod, as to treat of it separatelj-, under the following two heads : — Part I. 'S'ersification, or the particular rules which prevail in the mere construction of lines, couplets, and stanzas ; and the sources whence these derive their melody and rhythm. Part II. A general view of the style and spirit of Chinese poetrj-, the character of its imagery and sentiment, and the extent to which it seems to admit of a precise classification, relatively to the divisions and nomenclature adopted in European literature. To such as should find the first portion of our treatise dry and technical in its details, the second may possibly prove more attractive : but tlie order of discussion could hardly be inverted with propriety. PART I. In Chinese versification, the following are the circumstances which seem chiefly to demand our notice: — 1. The nature of the sounds of which B * 2 The Poctrij of the Chinese. the spoken language consists, and the fitness of tliis for metrical composition. 2. The \ariation of certain tones, or accents, as prescribed by rule. 3. The use of poetical numbers or measure. 4. The observance of a regular csesural pause, about the middle of each Acrse. 5. The use of terminal rliymes. G. The rhythmical effect produced by ihe paraUelism of couplets, whicli will be explained in its proper place. 1. (^f file sounds of the spoken language, llie attention of curious persons may perhaps be excited to ascertam what power of melody can be possessed by a system of speech, which has been represented to contain merely about four hundi-ed monosyllabic sounds. They may naturally enough imagine, tliat Chinese poetry must, in point of eujihony, rank with those defective verses censured by our own great poet : — Where ten low words oft creep in one dull line. Low words, of any length, are certainly out of place in poetrj- ; but that an English verse is much the Avorse for consisting of ten monosyllables, does not so clearly appear : and Pope's own poems aboiuid in monosyllabic lines, as may be pro-s-ed by the sliglitest examination. A few instances occur even of coiqilets so distinguished : — " Ah, if she lend Tiot arms, as well as rules. What can she more tlian tell us we are fools !" " Talk what j'ou will of taste, my friend, you'll find Two of a face, as soon as of a mind." " There are who have not — and, tliank heav'n, there are Who, if they have not, think not worth their care.'' A summary disposal of the (juestion, by assuming, at once, that it is a case in w^hich melody is unattainable, has to be reconciled with the obvious fact, that the Chinese take a passionate delight in their poetry. Is it likely that so large a portion of the human race should huxc persisted in the enthu- siastic cultivation (jf an art, w Inch is essentially incapable of possessing that The Poetry of the Chinese 3 ^el7 charm, which everywhere else forms a main element of its attractiveness"?* It has pretty generally gone abroad, that all the Chinese words are strictly monosyllabic — which only proves that opinions, wliich nobody is particularly concerned in correcting, will sometimes pass current for a surprising length of time. — Perhaps the cuxumstance of every word tilling the same space in tlie page, has assisted to perpetuate the notion. It is tlie business of the present treatise, however, to state all that can fairly be said in faAour of its subject ; and, with the concurrent opinion of Dr. iNIorrison, we will endeavour to produce fiicts, and institute comparisons, which may tend to prove that a considerable portion of the Chinese words are not absolutely monosyllabic. Some of these, if expressed by the powers of the English alphabet, ai-e written hede, keaen, heiic, ledou — eveiy vowel being distinctly pronounced,- and others cannot be properly expressed, except with the direct use of the diteresis, as leen, fheev, kee, &c. Now, with respect to the latter of these, if the necessity for using such a mark were not, of itself, sufficient to prove that they are something more than mere monosyllables, the metrical examples of another language might serve to settle the point : — Their fluid bodies half dissolvM in light — Like some gaunt lion in his gloomy lair. Any person who has been in the habit of hearing the Chinese pronounce their own language, knows that leen, seen, &c., are quite as dissyllabic as lion, fluid, and such other Avords, wherein no consonant intervenes between the Uvo syllables. Similar examples, however, are by no means so abundant in our harsh modem languages, especially those of Germanic extraction, as in Latin and Greek, where almost every line of poetry teems with such vowel sounds ; and where (at least in the latter) we constantly meet with three suc- cessive vowels, forming as many separate syllables — the very circumstance whicli constitutes the ground of its superor melody. '■ A writer of the " Memoives sur les Chinois" asserts, that thfir poetry is susceptible of even imitative har- mony and this is no doubt true : butthe instance which he a.ldnces may perhaps make the reader smik^. -'On vantei" says he, "I'harmonie imitative d'Homi^re. Elle est tr^s-familicTe a la poesie Chinoise : au lieu de dire, parexemple, on entend le bruit des tambours, le Chiking dit, 'On entend le tang-ian,j dcs tambours.' Cette citation n'est pas des plus heureuses. maise'estla eeule qui me vicnne." 4 Tlie Poetry of the Chinese But let it be objected, and let us admit for a moment (what in fact is not true), that in Cliinese every wend is pronounced in the same time, and there- fore the above distinction signifies little. Does it, with reference to a sister art, make no difference in music \\het\\eY two ov three notes be struck in the same measured time — or only (me ? Wliat, but something very similar to this, was the Greek and Roman practice, as fiir as we can understand it, of making two short syllables exactly equivalent to a long one, and pronouncing them in the same time. That such matters arc not totally indifferent, might be proved by the trite example from "^"irgil — the well known verse, descriptive of an eager and restless horse, which derives its imitative character from the rapid succession of dactyls ; and again, by the opposite artifice, used by the same poet in painting the blinded giant, where the heavy spondaic measure of the line, joined to the redundant terminal syllables, is equally expressive in another Avay. The discussion of this point, however, is rendered some- what superfiuous by the plain fact, that all Chinese words are ?io^ pronounced in the same time. Of what are called the " four tones," it is the professed business of the third to prolong, and o£ the fourth to shorten them. The truth seems to be, that the language of China abounds m diphthongal at least, if not in triphthongal sounds, which contribute, when fovmd blended with others that are more strictly monosyllabic, to give to its verse a certain share of varied euphony. Tliore is no occasion to incur the charge of at- tempting to prove too much: at the same time it does not seem ^ery easy to >hew, why sucli words as kede and Jcedou, with every vowel clearly pro- nounced, should not advance nearly as good a claim to the title even of trisyllabic, as those marked in the following examples, each of them con- sisting of as many metrical sijUahles as it has letters: ■'HIE ^vv T€ Met'oiTifiSp, Kal &ts hjapoicnv. Not only, however, do vowel-aownCis so extensively prevail in the language of which we treat, but the few consonants that are to be found in it are, al- most without exception, free from the reproach of harshness. There is no The Poetrji of the Chinese 5 terminal consonant whatever, except n and its nasal »// ;* and the initials are only Ch — F — G hard — // (if it may be called a consonant) — J, soft as in Ymxich—K—L—M—N—P—S—Sz—Sh—T—Th—Ts-imA Tsz. Of these, Tsz, and, if you please, Ts, are the only sounds which approach to the character of harshness. The Chinese find it no easy matter to pronounce English words ; but Englishmen meet with little difficidty in pronouncing theirs — the natm-al inference from which is, that our own language, though certainly more varied, is the harsher of the two. We shall presently see that they possess the usual means, employed by other nations, to give harmony and rhythmical effect to their verse : but it may not be unimportant first to show, that the native and original qualities of the language are such, as not to unsuit it altogether to the purposes of melodious composition, — that the raw material is not unfitted for the manu- facture. A notion seems to have existed, that the whole merit of Chinese poetiy lay in some curious and fanciful selection of the characters, with a reference to their component parts. As a medium for the communication of ideas, the Aviitten language certainly differs from alphabetic systems : but, after all, the characters are the means only, and not the end. The melody of the sound— the harmony of the structiu'e — and the justness of the senti- ment, or beauty of the imagery — constitute, as they do everywhere else, the merits of poetical composition. 2. Such being the natural qualifications of the Chinese language, con- sidered in its oral capacity, for poetry — it derives cadence and modidation from the artificial use of the tones, or accents ; AA'hicli appear, however, to have been originally adopted for a very different purpose, and to have owed their existence, rather to the necessity of perspicuifij in speech, than of melody in verse. It may easily be imagmed, that where a whole spoken language consists of not more than about four hundred different sounds, hence there would be great danger of two interlocutors misunderstanding each other, from the unavoidable occurrence of the equivoque ; and liencc 'It must be kept in miiul, that we here treat ol' the ilialect of literature, aud of educated persons. In tlif south of the empire, words cud in k &, t ; but provincial corniptions and v\ilgarisms form no part of the subject. H The Poetry of the Chinese the necessity for the tones, or accents, consisting of what may, in sufficient conformity with the meaning of their original names, be styled the even or natural, the acute, the grave, and the short. In point of fact, the fii'st is no accent at all, but rather a negative quality — the absence of all marked intonation; and, accordingly, the Chinese themselves call it _pVHy, 'even or smooth,' while the three others they class togetlier, under tlie general name off see, 'deflected,' that is, deflected from the natural tone. These last are, in regular poetical composition, used indiflerently for each other ; they are considered as being opposed to, and required in verse to be alternated with, the even-toned or unaccented words. It would be quite unprofitable to dwell here upon their minute distmctions, or to endeavour to give parti- cular description of them, because nothing but the mouth of a native can illustrate them properly : they are really — vox et pr(eterea nihil, and have already been as fully noticed, as such a subject admitted of, by several writers on Chinese grammar. Suffice it then to say, that by their use the original sounds of the language are varied or multiplied about fourfold, and a great accession made to its fitness for metrical composition. Of a sj)ecies of technicality which admits so ill of illustration on paper, it is enough to observe, that the words (we shall presently see that these are equivalent to feet in otlier languages) which answer to the even numbers in each line, — the second, fourth, sixth, according to the length of the verse, — together with the last word of aU, — are, in regular poetiy, the subjects of attention with regard to the alternate position of the tones called "natural," and "de- flected." The rule f )r placing them seems to have variety, or the avoiding of a too frequent recurrence of the same tone, for its principal object. Their attention to this pomt goes beyond the smgle lines, and extends to the coup- lets : for whatever the intonation of the second, fourth, or sixth words in the first line may be, — Avhether natural or deflected, — that of the correspon- ding words in the next line is required to be the opposite. M. Freret, in the "Mt moires de 1' Academic," fell into a great error, in asserting that "les Cliinois n'ont jamais connu la versification cadencee par I'arrangement de ces tons musicaux : leur poesie a seulement ete consacree par le nombre The Poetry of the Chinese 7 des syllabes, et dans la suite on a y ajouto la rime." Even the most irregular species of Chinese verse, called Tsze, is to a certain degree regula- ted by the tones, though in a different manner from tlie foregoing. 3. The next source of liarmony tliat we ha\e to notice, is the use of poetical numbers. Every word of Cliinese poetry, instead of being regardi>d as a mere syllable, may more properly be considered as corresponding to a metrical foot in other languages. It has already been shown, that a con- siderable portion are dissyllabic — and all of them are pronounced, in the recital of verse, with an emphasis and prolongation of the voice, \er\ different from the manner in which we slur over the unaccented portion of our syllables. To begin with the smallest number of words that form a measured line in Chinese, we sometimes meet with so few as three, repeated like a kind of 'refrain' in popular songs, 'i'hese songs are called ^ keo, and below is an example of what we might call the chorus. H ^ »1^ ® # M 3t r* M ^Ic ± ^ ^ ^ A ffi ± ^ ± 9 ^ % ^Sl ^ m. iS « ^ ^ -IS To the woods ;iiid streams the Spring returns, The long willow-twigs sweep the earth, the peach-blossoms fly ; The clear breeze blows on man, the light shines on his vestments ; 8 ■ The Poetry of the Chinese It shines on his vestments, Its brightness precedes the setting ; Prepare the expenses of a feast, Detain our exalted guest ! The custom of the country, as almost universally throughout the world, reserves the principal meal, or Coena, for the evening, when business is over and both mind and bod)- are left free for enjoyment, and digestion ; for they agree with us, that — " He's a most uncomfortable sinner Who only eats, but can't digest, his dinner." This short measure also constitutes occasionally a species of chime for the inculcation of moral maxims ; and it was, no doubt, for the similar purpose of assistimj the memory, that it lias been adopted in the com- position of the San tsze king, or " Trimetrical Classic" — a work evincing considerable ingenuity, though intended for the humble purpose of con- veying to youth the rudiments of general knowledge. In China, as else- where, persons of high attainments occasionally think it worth their while to devote their talents to the promotion of the great business of education. The following lines are taken, as a specimen of this particular kind of verse, from that portion of the above work, in which the regular succession of all the dynasties, and most celebrated emperors, is turned into rhyme ; and it may perhaps remind the English reader of a well-known song, called the "Chapter of Kings :" — Trimeters. Kaou-tsoo king— Han nee keen, Che Heaou-ping—Wancf^manfj tsuen : Kwang-avoo king — Wei Tung-Han ; Sze pi neen — Chung yu Heen : Wei, Shu, Woo — Tseng Han ting, Haou San-Kwo—Heih leang Tsin. The Poetry of the Chinese Ife #K. ^ jt S ^ ^ T :^ # ^:1 o ^ ^ % Jf. m y •«• Ji f- ,# ^ i ^ * ^^ ^ # f- t *^ )^ & )] " Kaou-tsoo arose — And the race of Han was established, Until the reign of Heaou-ping — When Wang-mang usurped the empire : Kwang-woo arose — And established the Eastern family of Han : After enduring four hundred years — The Han ended with Heen-tee : Wei, Shii, and Woo — Contended together for the empire of Han, They were called the Three Nations — And continued till the rise of the two dynasties Tsin." The line of four words is the shortest that seems ever to ha\c been used in the higher species of composition. It constitutes the chief part of the measure of the sacred book of odes, called Sheeking, the oldest poetical work in China.* There, however, the measure of some pieces is altogether irregular, varying from three, to seven or eight words in a line. Poetry, in most countries, begins with being the vehicle of religion and morality, and the first record of historical facts. Venerated at first as the language of wisdom or inspiration, it is at length cultivated as a pleasurable art, and never fails to improve ui harmony, however it may degenerate in other points with the progress of time. "II faut distinguer dans la poesie," says Racine, * For two of the most regular odes of this collection, vide infra, Part II. The three hundred odes compiled by Confucius are divided into three parts. 1. Foong, Customs and ordinary affairs of life. 2. Fa, Government and morals. 3. Soong, Eulogies or commendations. 10 The Poetry of the Chinese "ce qui vient de la nature, et ce qui est ajoute par Yart: la nature inspire d'abord la rapidite du style, et la hardiesse des figures ; I'art vient ensuite, et pour rendi'e le style poetique encore plus rapide, et en meme terns plus harmonieux, le resserre dans les bornes etroites de la versification. La poe- sie naissante n'a point du connoitre cet esclavage, puisque les regies de I'art ne s'«5tablissent qu'avec le terns et la reflection." The earliest Chinese poetry, as we find it in the Sheeking, appears certainly to have made use of the embellishments of both measure and rhyme, but with a degree of irregular- ity veiy different from the polish of modem versification. The lines are occasionally of all lengths ; and the rhyme seems to be subject to little rule. It ynW occasionally occur for six or eight consecutive verses, and there will sometimes be none at all. For the same reason that Pope is more harmoni- ous than Chaucer or Donne, Boileau or Eacine than Ronsard, Virgil or TibuUus than old Ennius : "Sic horridus ille Defluxit numerus"- so the poetry of China, from the T'ang dynasty (Avhen this art attained its liighest perfection) Aovm to the present time, is, in 2)oint of mere versijica- fion, a vast improvement on the Sheekhu/. A writer of their own, in his pre- face to a collection of poems, compares its progress to the natural growth of a tree. The Sheeking he likens to the roots ; when Soo-le flourished the buds opened : in the time of Keen-gan there were abundance of leaves : but in the T'ang dynasty many reposed under the shade of this tree, and there were rich supplies of flowers and fruit. It would be strange indeed, if this people were an exception to a rule so general ; if an art, in which they took so much delight, had not improved by cultivation, or were, at the present day, de- void of so essential a qualification as the harmony of numbers. The old measure of four words, or feet, is now seldom adopted, being from its short- ness unsusceptible of much melody. At the same time it does occasionally occur, chiefly for moral and didactic purposes ; and the following may be taken as a specimen. — They are some lines of the Buddhists, or quietists : — The Poetry of the Chinese. 11 ft Tetramctkhs. — 1- ^ s » -rt JE ^c 1^ ^ ^1 5^ s w >l * a^ 2L — ^ ^ g t. T> m It H '[i m ^ ,^^ 1^ iiii^r isai y? teen—Puhjaou, pu king; Woo sz, woo III — Che shing, che ming : Teen le chaou choo — Shen sing hen ching : Yi tsd yuivei — Woo tee tsuy king. "When the heart is enlightened by a spark of the sethereal intelligence, There is neither perturbation, nor alarm ; There is neither thought, nor anxiety : But all is moral perfection, and the complete radiance of truth ; Where the heavenly principle pours its light, The root of a virtuous disposition is perfected : But once mingling with human frailty, The whole man will be subdued and overturned." The improved system of versification consists in lines oijive words or feet, as well as in the longer and stiU superior measure of seven. These now con- stitute what are properly called Shee, or regular poems, and we give an ex- ample of each in this place, though many others will appear in the sequel :- Pentameters. -f ^ li it fl 4 Ft ^ Bt ;t- T- ^ # ^t S'J ^^ #9 PJL It ^ ^ ^ ^^ ^ ^ 1% ^ # s 12 The Poetry of the Chinese Kew ke tsoo hivei le, Chuy suy taoii Koo-yoong ; Leaou tsln king lo king, Tseay kee keuen yeiu tsoong. Seng tuy koongjaou she ; Shan kwan pu kae yoong. Leiu leen ivang je moo, Hivuy show ti-an fang choong. " When my ancient guest first ret urns to our neighbourhood, I accompany him to the monastery Koo-yoong : We stroll alono- together, in search of pleasant walks. And then rest our weary footsteps within : The priests sit opposite, indulging their tongues in leisure talk, — We look at the distant hills, and remark the imchanging featui-es of nature. Carried on by the stream of converse, we forget the day is closing, But at last turning oiu heads homeward, we listen to the vesper bell." '^ ^ n ^ ^ ^ w ^ J^ di 1^. If ^ fe *^ g fl>] ^ ^ $^ k j>p 4 t * ^ ^^ M i^l ^ ^ j^ ^ ^ ^- ^^ ^ ^- M^ ^i m. ^ M ^ ^ Heptameters. Woo foong, ju die, tsuy seang Veen, Chang k'e Yen-chow, jpwan pi feen . Yay yii yin ho tsih sing tow, Chaou tan pi lo, loong yun yen : TIte roeinj nf the Chinese 13 Yit, yu, joo seimkoonff choong keen, Tue chii, minj ch.oo chang shang heuen : Ee she Keiv-li iig shin yi pi, Yaoutsoong hue ivaesoo Clioong-yuen. *'Seethe five variegated peaks of you moiuiUiiu, counected like the fingersof the hand, And rising up from the south, as a wall midway to heaven : At night, it would pluck, from the inverted concave, the stars of the milky way ; During the day, it explores the zenith, and plays with the clouds: The rain has ceased— and the shining summits are apparent in the void expanse ; The moon is up — and looks like a bright pearl over the expanded palm : One might imagine that the Great Spirit had stretched forth an arm. From afar — from beyond the sea — and was numbering the Nations.* The boldness of tlie imagery in tlie last example is somewhat striking, and the concluding two lines may perhaps serve to redeem it from the reproach of the bathos, to which the simile of the hand might otherwise have exposed it. Verses containing the number of six, or eight, or more words, form no part of regular poetry in modern times ; though they are occasionally found alternated with others, in pieces which do not aspire to regularity of structure, but whose figurative style elevates them abo^e the level of mere prose. — Lines of every length are used in those measured couplets, or sentences in pairs, so nicely balanced both in words and sense, which are adopted in the inculcation of ethical precepts, and of which more will be said hereafter, under the head of parallelism. In aid of the effect of metrical quantity, the Chinese possess another rule of versification, well known to Europeans, but which has never yet been noticed with reference to the subject of the present treatise. It may be premised, that no sentential pause e\ex occiu-s in the middle of a verse ; at least none which could be punctuated with anything bev ond a comma in English. Every line is complete Avithin itself: there is nothing of what the French call enjambemenf. But wliile a reference to written poetry easily establishes this point, tlie writer of the present observations thought he ' China wiis foriiierlj- iliviilcil into separate and independent states. 14 The Poetry of the Chinese could plainly perceive, in the correct recital of the longer measures by natives, a very marked ccestiral pause near the middle of the lines, Ke- peated trial tended to show, that in verses of seven words, the csesura was invariably after the fourth — and in those of Jive, after the second word. With a view to being quite clear on this subject, reference was made to a gentleman, whose profound knowledge of the language renders him a very competent judge in all matters connected mth it. He was soon per- suaded of the existence of the fact ; and a properly qualified native, being summoned into the room, was requested to read out the longer measures of verse in a low and deliberate manner. The result was, that the caesura fell exactly in the places above-mentioned, being more strongly marked in some lines than in others, but still unchangeable with regard to position — and the native himself (wlio, by the way, was a Seivtsae, i. e. had taken his degree) admitted that such was the case. While the long measures admit of, and in some degree require, this pause of the voice, all lines which contain less than five words appear, by reason of their shortness, to be entu-ely devoid of it. The existence of the ca3sural pause in a parti- cular part of each verse might of itself, be considered as deserving of notice in a treatise of this nature ; but the farther connection that it has with the structure of the verse makes it still more worthy of attention. The language of China is in a great measure composed of what, for want of a better expression, we wiU call "compound terms," consisting of two words or characters, which may be a noun with its adjective, a verb with its adverb, two nouns united — and a great many other grammatical combinations of the kind. These are always pronounced together, — as much so as parts of the same compound word in other languages. In a verse of seven words, the csesural pause being after the fourth, the first section of the line generally * consists of two of these comjjound terms. The fourth and fifth characters can never be coupled in this manner, be- cause the pause cannot take place in the middle of a compound term * Generally, because it is not meant to lie asserted that Chinese verses are always, or entirely composed of such terms : they frequently contain a number of single characters, or simple terms ; but whenever the others are used, their position in the verse is invariably as above stated. The Poetry of the Chinese 15 — but it must be the first aud second, the third and fourth, which are thus related. This being the case with regard to the first section of the verse, the last, which contains tlu-ee characters, is commonly a compound term, with the addition of a single word, whicli may either precede or come after it. But as this is a subject Avhich may best be illustrated by examples, here follow some lines of seven words, in which the verbal con- struction can be observed — together with the places of the csesural pause after the fourth word, as far as tliis may be showTi without actual recital. 4 7^^ ft # if * # ^ 3- ^ m ^^ iM $ t - ^ 7 Kl ^ ^ tt ^ 'M ^ M. flt ^ ^ -tt f it f ik m f^ n >?^ She sze nnang-man#■ iv ^ ^ Ti: ^t ^ *t f ^ Jin jin—j6 hoong tsun, Kea ktvo — ho faeping : Fang die — choong hae yu, Kxuang che — sih keen kiven. Shan se. — luoo yuen kin, ITan shan — choong je hing: Foong Iwan — suy choo kae, Hing he — 'puh che ming. " The whole people — unitedly obeying the laws, The nation, as a family — will rejoice in peace : Promulge it — to the extremities of the ocean. Extend it — to the foundations of the world ! " The tints of the hills — are confounded in their distance, As the traveller views them — to the end of his daily journey: The shapes of their peaks and ridges — alter with every change of place, Until the wanderer — ceases to know tlieir names. The Poetri/ of the Chinese 17 Our English verse of ten s}'llables derives great achantagc from the power of varying its effect, without any prejudice to its mek:)dy, by occasionally shifting the place of the ctesura, — unlike the Chinese, where it is fixed and immoveable. In this, however, the latter bears some resemblance to the French alexancWne, always divided into hemisticlies by t\\v cirsural pause, with which the sentential pause is most commonly coincident * — as well as to that law of the Latin hexameter, which seems to demand, that in a line perfecthj euphonic, the caesura should fall after the first syllable of the third foot J. 5. Of rhymes, it is chiefly to be observed, that they occur, in regular poetry, at the end of the alternate verses which answer to the even num- bers, — that is, at the termination of every second verse. The first one of all frequently gives the rhyme to the whole stanza ; but the rest of the uneven-numbered lines seem subject to no rule, and end with any sounds indifferently. The length of the stanza is determined by the recurrence of the same rhyme, and, in a poem of anj- continuity, it is generally of four lines only, — that is, a quatrain, whose second and fourth lines rliyme together ; but occasionally it consists of eight verses, of which four have the same ending. Stanzas, however, or rather short pieces of poetry, are very common of twelve, and even sixteen lines, some of which might, with no great impropriety, be assimilated to what we call sonnets. In the stanza of four lines, it cannot be objected that the rhyme is too frequent ; and even in that of eight, it should we considered, that only the second line of every couplet possesses the rhyme ; while the intermediate ones are blank, and thus afford a relief to the ear. In our own Spenserian stanza, consisting of nine lines, no less than four of them have the same ending, — that is, the second, fourth, fifth, and seventh, — while three others like- * " Que toujours dans vos vers — le sens coupant Ifs mots, Suspcnde I'hemistiche — en marque le repos. " Boil. Art Poet. t " Pui'pui'eus veluti — cum flos, succisus aratro, Languescit moriens— lassove papaveia coUo Demisere caput — pluvia cum lorte gravantur." 18 The Poetry of the Chinese wise rhyme together, — the sixth, eight, and ninth. The Chinese, however, do not seem to have a very nice ear for the perception of true rhymes ; and this inaccuracy may partly arise from theii- not possessing such precise symbols, or marks of sound, as our alphabetic letters. In the odes of the Sheekinq, as the lines and stanzas are occasionally extremely iiTegular in their length and general structure — " numeri lege soluti" — so the rhymes appear to be under no strict regulation. This seeming neglect may partly result from a change of pronimciation : but there can be little doubt that the subjection of rhyme to more rigid laws was, as well as tlie other improvements in versification, introduced in the general advancement of the art, under the T'ang dynasty. The following specimen aff'ords an example of the rhymes in two stanzas of eight lines each : — ^ it # ^ f# )A ■1 a >{k ';^ m ?^. ^X. If, ± ;s 0^ +9 !t ^ fli A ^A ± PI - m 77L m ^ '^ Ml The Poet r 11 of the Chinese 19 STANZA I. STANZA 11. San-tung tsin(j-nivcv)i ketv Yi-^il ching seaiig-ee : Mo^mo chin shan I'd, Kinrj-king teen sMh-che : Ghu)b foong yaoutang ji, Wan-wu fd-seng she : Wei heang noong-^jin shwo, Se-choiu sc^moche. Lew-se tvei chay king, Tciou-hwa ee mwayi lin Wii yetv Veen ke hoio. Woo he wang i'ceri-sin : YtH kejin hoong-laou, Shing-she II weijin : Chai-mun twy ti-li, Hiag tuo yl c/tift-yin. Felicitous Rains. 1. "The hist month of winter was for the most part clear and mihl. And now at length approach the well-timed showers : The wide-spread mist has involved yon momitain dwelling, Its dews are slowly filling each rocky hollow : The vernal winds obscure the clouded sun, It is tlie season tor all things in nature to germinate : Let us convey an exhortation to the husbandman. That he delay not the business of his western fields." 2. "The green foliage of the willows has not yet shaded the patli. But the peach-blossoms already cover the grove : Eveiy inanimate thing seems to feel the influence of the season, Shall I, then, be unmindful of the purposes of heaven ? Like some who lean on their tables, and grow unprofitably old. Who exert not their strength in the proper time ? — The rain falls in drops before my rude door-way, As I stroll about, or sit, immersed in such meditations." Rhymes, however, are by no means confined to regular verse (of which it is our particular business at present to detail the laws), being very apparent in the following citation, a species of composition called Tsze, ^, something between prose and poetry, in whicli the rhyme is repeated at the end of lines of indeterminate length. The passage is descripti\o of a field or bed of chrysanthemums, flowers which the Chinese admire on account of the brilliancy of their colours, and which they display towards winter in largo quantities about their houses : — 20 The Poetry of the Chinese m 9. tt m #•] t il n ^S f> ii|j fn -ri /|i ^ # ^ fl^ ^^ >* $. fH y^ /I: t^ « ?^ E ^i f ^ ;I t P^l 3?^ J. jn T 7^ # *a i Jb ^» j£ t f ^^ ^ Soxv-ying inwan le, soo-hcang san king, shin-shin tseen-tseen hwang seang-ying ; loo-hea tsl ying ; fce fc'o fscni foong ; yetv hivang se, shuey lean ping : ching tan taou k'o-leen laejoo sin ping; yen-yen k'ae chu tsew tsing sing: man yentsinnwchehden- h'een ; sen che she tseio Taou-kea hing, " Their slender shadows fill the enclosure, and a scattered perfume pervades the flower- beds, planted in triple rows : their deeper and lighter tints reflect a yellow light, and the leaves shine varied from beneath the drops of dew : each hungry flowret inhales the passing breeze, as it sheds around its incomparable lustre. The gazer sympathizes with the languishing blossoms, bending their heads all faint and delicate : the mourn- ful view awakes in his mind thoughts suitable to autumn. Say not that it is a sight to satiate the eyes of the indifferent beholder — know that such flowers as these once in- spired the poet Taou-yuen-ming *, as he indulged his genius amidst verses and wine." 6. The next feature in the construction of Chinese verse is perhaps the most interesting of all, as it presents a striking coincidence with what has been remarked of the poetry of another Asiatic nation. In the preliminary Dissertation on Hebrew Poetiy, prefixed to his translation of Isaiah, Bishop Lowth has treated at some length of a peculiar property which he caUs parallelism. What that is, Avill be best explained in his own words : — " The correspondence of one verse or line with another, I call parallelism. * For some acoount of Taou-ynen-ming, see " Memoires sur les C'liinois," toin. iii. The Poetry of the Chinese 21 — When a proposition is delivered, and a second is subjoined to it, or drawn under it, equivalent, or contrasted with it, in sense, or similar to it in the form of grammatical construction, these I call parallel lines ; and the words or phrases, answering one to another in the corresponding lines, parallel terms. — Parallel lines may be reduced to three sorts : parallels synonymoits, parallels antithetic, and parallels synthetic." The first kind, Dr. Lowth defines to be those "which correspond one to another by expressing the same sense in different, but equivalent terms ; when a proposition is delivered, and is immediately repeated, in the whole or in part, the expression being varied, but the sense entirely or nearly the same : " — EX.\MPLES. Because I called, and ye refused ; I stretched out my hand, and no one regarded : But ye have defeated all my counsel ; And would not incline to my reproof : I also will laugh at your calamity ; I will mock when your fear cometh. Bow thy heavens, Jehovah, and descend ; Touch the moimtains, and they shall smoke : Dart forth thy lightnings, and scatter them ; Shoot out thine arrows, and consume them. The reader is furnished below with examples from the Chinese, which will perhaps be considered as ansAvering to the above description of the Hebrew — with this only difference, that the peculiar structure of the language, of which we now treat, generally renders the parallelism much more exact, and therefore much more striking and obvious — as it is usually tvordfor uiord, the one wi'itten opposite to the other. The fiufst two lines have a figurative reference to the perfection of a person's moral character : — Pe pt, ruoo hea, ching che paou, Tsing Veen, pu yen, fa /;'e heang. Sill taou hvan she, ivoo she choo, Tsing tang koo tse, che sz pel. 22 The Poetry of the Chinese M6 Iieen te tse, yuen ting aeaon, Pu yuen kea pin, hwo ke ivei. ^ * it. ^ tL r ^ it m it ^ Jiti 'h ^f 3S The Poetry of the Chinese " Now scarce is felt the fanning air Along the \alley's sloping side ; Now winds arise, and light'nings glare, Pours the fell storm its dreadful tide ! — While fears and troiibles closely prest, By thee my love was gladly sought : But once again with quiet blest. Thou view'st me as a thing of nought ! " The faithless calm shall shift again, Another gale the bleak hill rend. And every blade shall wither then. And every tree before it bend : — Then shalt thou wail thy lonesome lot, Then vainly seek the injur'd man. Whose virtues thou hadst all forgot, And only learn'd his faults to scan." The fourth and last portion of the ancient poetical classic is called Soong, ^ — that is, eulogies or panegyrics on the ancestors of the dynasty Chow, then fiUing the throne, and on the great personages of antiquity. They appear to have been a species of hymn, sung before the emperor when he sacrificed as pontifex maximus, (which has always been the particular office of Chinese sovereigns,) in the temples of heaven and earth, or in the hall of his ancestors. Whatever may be the real character of the Sheeking on the score of poetical merit, it is at least curious, as having been compiled more than twenty centuries prior to our time, and some portions of it com- posed at a still earlier date. A pervading characteristic of the whole, as might be predicated of the early poetry of every country, is the boldness and J frequency of the figures which are introduced.* * On(! of the most striking examples appears as a quotation in Dr. Morrison's Dictionary, Part 1. page 434 : — ' ' The royal legions were numerous and imposing ; Swift, as if they flew upon wings ; Impetuous, as a torrent or a cataract ; Firm, as the base of a mountain ; The Poetry of the Chinese 39 It maybe laid down as a rule, that eveiy species of composition will be studied and perfected in exact proportion to the estimation in wliicli it is held, or the grandeur and interest of the occasions on which it is employed. When lyric compositions, like the odes of Pindar and the Carmen Seculare &c. of Horace, were displayed on great national and religious festivals, or shone forth the subjects of public or imperial patronage, — they became ob- jects to which the first geniuses of the age directed their efforts ; and the perfection which they attained was commensurate with the esteem in which they were held. In modern China, if odes are expressly composed for great court ceremonials, we have not yet met with any. Such ceremonials are frequently accompanied by music, but that there are words to the music has not been so clearly ascertained. There is a common species of composition called Ko, ^ which cannot be better rendered than by ' Song,' or ' Rhapsody.' Its structure is as wild as the thoughts and imagery which it generally contains, the lines being of every length but distinguished by recurring rhymes at intervals. Here follows a specimen : — A it ^. m T '<^' M m 'li M ^ M # ^^ ^ * ^ ^ % M '^ ^ W- B M: m M "^ m M M # >'S> ^ tl ia m \}^ \u n m h ^ ^' ^M n m m m ^ ^ m w B m m m m ^ ^y ^p ^ ^k m ^1^ m m si ^ " In my wanderings of a thousand leagues, liow many mournful thoughts afflict me Resistless, as the course of a river, Foiiningan unbroken line, in matchless order ; Their motions inserutalile, their prowess invincible, They proceeded to the conquest of the state Seu." 40 The Poetry of the Chinese on the road — I behold yon cloudy mountains piled one upon another, — the emblems of my accumulated sorrows.— Around me the dropping leaves produce an autumnal sound — In the vast expanse, the solitary wild-fowl adds to my silent grief — I brood over my cares, and my tears descend — Looking back towards the base of Matuy Hill, an involuntary melancholy fills my breast — I see the waving banners intercept the setting sun — their shadows dancing in the breeze* — My horse has stopped at the precipitous turning. — Wherefore do we linger, wherefore do we linger? — There is nought but yellow sand drifting around — The sky is growing dark and gloomy — Few are the passengers at the foot of yon arched mountain : — the cold rain, urged hy the gusty wind, is driving in my face." I Popular songs and ballads hold but a low rank in the literature of the country : and if we should even go so far as to include under this denomina- tion the detached snatches of u-regular verse (also called Keoh ^ ) which ar e met with in their drama, the truth of the position would not be materially affected. The stage, and everything pertaining to it, enjoys a lower estima- tion than in any part of Europe : and we may take occasion to notice in this place, that the Chinese cannot strictly be said to possess dramatic poetry, in the sense which the term bears among ourselves, who apply it to the whole of a dramatic composition, and chiefly to tragedy. They make no distinction be- tween tragedy and comedy in their stage pieces, the dialogue of which is composed in ordinary prose ; while the principal performer now and then chaunts fourth, in unison with music, a species of song or ' vaudeville ;' and the name of the tune or air is always inserted at the top of the passage to be sung. Here foUow a few lines from the drama J called " An Heir in Old * This alludes to a tragical event iu history, which occurred at the above-mentioned place, The emperor . Yueu-tsoong (A. D. 702) had a mistress named Yangkuei, who was discovered carrying on an intrigue with a Tartar prince or noble, called Ganloshau. The emperor abstained from punishing the guilty female , which led to i-emonstrances on the part of his ministers ; but instead of attending to them, he complied with the re- quest of Yangkuei, and gave the Tartar a military command within his dominions. No sooner liad the latter reached his destination, than he set up the standard of rebellion, and the emperor, hastily assembling a large anny, and accompanied by his favourite Yangkuei, proceeded to meet him iu Szechuen. When they had reached the base of tlie mountain Jifatioy, the soldiers mutinied, declaring that Yaugkuei was the occasion of the rebel- lion, and demanding that she should be put to death before they consented to meet the enemy. The empei'or was obliged to comply, and ordered her to be strangled on the spot — bxrt his subsequent grief for her fate was the cause of his own death. J London, 1816. French version, Paris, 1819. The Poetry of the Chinese 41 Age." The chief character in the piece, an old man who is anxious to obtain an heir before he dies, sets fire to his bonds of debt, hoping that such a sacrifice may induce the accomplishment of his wishes — and, when the papers are consumed, he breaks out thus : — " Do'st ask me why, by this rash hand, A treasure to the flames was given ? Why but t'avert, ere yet too late, The vengeance of offended heaven ! " Full sixty years, by various arts, For wealth I've toil'd, without an heir : Who knows but heaven may yet relent, And listen to a suppliant's prayer !" While it is true that the Chinese themselves make no distinction between comedy and tragedy, a translator from their language is still at liberty to apply those terms, according to the serious and dignified, or comic and familiar character of the composition Avhich he selects. The writer of this has therefore not scrupled to give the title of tragedy to a rather favourable specimen of the Chinese stage, which he lately put into an English dress. In the unity of the plot, the dignity of the personages, the grandeur and importance of the events, the strict award of what is called poetical justice, — ^nay, in the division into five principal portions or acts, it might satisfy the most fastidious and strait-laced of the old European critics. Love and war, too, constitute its whole action, and the language of the imperial lover is frequently passionate to a degree one is not prepared for in such a country as China. The nature of its civil institutions, and the degraded state of the female sex, might generally be pronounced unfavourable to the more ele- vated strains of the erotic muse. The bulk of the people, it might be thought, are too much straitened for the bare means of subsistence, through the pres- sing demands of an excessive population, to admit of their lounging about and singing after the most approved manner of idle shepherds and shepherd- esses ; and the weU-educated class, which comprehends almost all the higher ranks, or those in the employ of the government, too proud and unfeeling 1^ G 42 The Poetry of the Chinese to make love the theme of their compositions, which are doubtless chiefly confined to moral and speculative, or descriptive subjects. The Drama in question, however, if it served no better purpose, might teach us not to pronounce too dogmatically on such points by reasonings a priori, but to wait patiently for the fruits of actual research and experience. / It has been observed in Part I. that the most flourishing era of modern poetry was under the T'ang dynasty. The most celebrated poet of that age was the renowTiedLetaepih, born in the provmce Szechuen, about a.d. 720. He is made to give the foUowmg account of himself in a play called " The Golden Token," which the writer of this once thought of putting into Eng- lish, but abandoned as deficient in plot and incident. " When I was born," says the poet " my mother dreamed that the morning star shone upon lier bosom, and hence called me, Taepih, ' surpassing brightness :' Avhen the em- peror Yuentsoong commenced his reign, I was admitted to an audience in tlie imperial hall, and conversed of state aifairs : the son of heaven conferred on me a repast, and helped me with his own hand." The poetical character in China has of old been associated with the liberal use of wine. So it has, apparently, everywhere else. The poetical brain has loved the stimulus of alcohol, or tobacco, or opium, from Anacreon down to Bums, Byron, and Coleridge. Laudibiis arguitur vini vinosus Homerus, Ennius ipse pater mmquam nisi potus ad arma Prosiluit dicenda. The inimitable humour of Bj-Ton is displayed in his account of the symposium with Sheridan, when the party was "first silent, thentalky, then argumentative, then disputatious, tlien unintelligible, then altogethery, then marticulate, and then drunk." Next came the cariymg Sheridan do^^^l the " d — d corkscrew stair-case, which had certainly been constructed before the discoveiy of fermented liquors, and to which no legs, however crooked, could possibly accommodate themselves." Letaepih's intemperate propensities occasioned, it is said, his banishment from court; but he remained uncured, and at last fell overboard from the boat in which he The Poetry of the Chinr.se 43 was travelling, aud was drowned. Any one who thought it worth wliilc to know more concerning this person, and some of his cotemporaries, might find their lives (thougli without their poetry), given at some length by Father Aniyot, in the fifth volume of the " Memou-es sur les Chinois." The following is not a bad sample of an Anacreontic, and may be freely rendered as below ; '^ m ^ B ffl m ^ H >[t Iff # A M M M Old age hastens on, as each fleet hour passes, Though spring ev'ry year re-illumines the glade : So boys let's be jolly, and fill up our glasses. Ah, why should we sigh for the flowers that fade I A number of esteemed collections, called Tangshee, or "Poems of the T'ang Djuasty," are regarded, for the most part, as the compositions of Letaepih, and a few more of the better poets of that day. They contain many favourable specimens, evincing both taste and imagination, and the following passage may be considered as tolerable. A person fishing in a boat, upon a lake, is supjiosed to have been led, by the track of peach blossoms floating on the water, into a narrow creek, which he pursued to a distance, until he reached a place inhabited by beings who, from the primitive simplicity of theii' manners, seemed to have escaped, in that secluded retreat, the persecution of the celebrated tp-ant Tsiuchehwang, ^ ^ M and to have had no communication with the rest of the world since. On his return from this little Chinese paradise, the adventurous boatman related 44 The Poetrtj of the Chinese what he had seen, — or perchance only dreamed ; but on attemptmg to find the place again, it had vanished. There is a neat allusion to the famous burning of the books by the tyrant's command : — f- ik 'A 4 # 4^ ^ i)^a ^ k t^ ^ f ^ ^^ tl It 4- ^ 9 ^ ^ # ?i ^ # -f ^ fl €. -t ^ ^ M. •}!§! ♦ i4. 1^ 4- The Inlet of Peach Blossonns. Few were th' inhabitants of that fair dell, — Kemnants their manners were of other days, — Flourish'd their fields in peace, — no impost fell Midway check'd labour's fruitful course, — the lays Their children sung had 'scaped the general blaze : Adown the vale was heard the cock's shrill strain ; The watch-dog's voice welcom'd the morning rays ; Oh, could my bark those happy fields regain, Long years of toil I'd brave — nor deem my labours vain ! The following specimen is from the same collection with the preceding. The value of timely showers, to which it alludes, can only be duly felt in a hot climate and a thirsty soil like the south of China, where, accordmg to the common saying, " Three days make a short drought — five days a long one : " — The Poetry of the Chinese 45 M^fc flfe >i St n ^ t ^ 4S. 4-^ ^ k- i| .^ j^ ■$ -^« >f ^ ^^ 'B Vi-. li ^|L II ^ II # ^ $L m E ^ ^^ i # ilTi Evening Shoiver in Spring. See how the gently falling rain Its vernal influence sweetly showers, As through the calm and tepid eve It silently bedews the flowers. Cloudy and dark th' horizon spreads, Save where some boat its light is burning : But soon the landscape's tints shall glow All radiant, with the morn returning. There exist abundant materials of poetry in what may be called the heroic ages of China, when she was divided into independent states, contending against each other for sovereignty. The following lines are supposed to have been written by a certain emperor to his victorious general, of whose successes in the south he had just heard. The third and fourth lines are transposed in our version : — The South subdued. Servant, well done — the erring south restor'd, Bends to the prowess of thy glittering sword ; High as the orbs thy light'ning standard gleams. Thy drum's loud music shakes the mountain streams, And heaven's own race alights on earth again, The foe to scatter to their murky den ! Know, when with pride thy glad return we hail, Thy sovereign's hand shall loose his hero's mail ! 46 The Foetrij of the Chinese ^k ^ 'X ^ % ]^ m k ^ ^ t -t- f-^ "t -^t # ^ # * ^ ^i £ II t i i% 4 #f ^^ ii /K ;f£ t- 1^ ^ yf. a A, m m. 4 IL ^ ;3 >^ ^^^1 %. ?i fl ^ ^ >^ # ;? , No compositiou, however, to which the name of Epic could properly be Applied, has ever rewarded European research. Though poetry' exists in some shape or other all over the world, the same universality hardly attaches to that modification of it, which we style the Epopee ; and, but for the two great prototypes of Homer, there seems to be no absolute necessity for supposing that it must have arisen, or at least been so frequent, in our western literature. It was confessedly in imitation of Homer that Virgil wrote, and all subsequent epics have been more or less, in conception at least, if not in execution, imitations of these two, or of each other. Voltaire himself has informed us, that when he consulted the ad\ice of a friend previous to composing his oa^ti Henriade, he met with no better encouragement than this : "You undertake a work which is not suited to us — les Frangais n'ont pas la tete epique." — But without going farther for reasons, the first part of this treatise may perhaps have served to demonstrate, that the turn and con- struction of Chinese verse unfits it for such sustained compositions. To be esteemed good, it must be so highly elaborated, that the costliness of the \/ material may place limits to the size of the structure. It would be a tre- mendous attempt to preserve such nicely-balanced couplets through the slow length of an epic poem ; not to mention, that when the task had been The Poetry of the Chinese 47 completed, it might weary the reader as much as it had disquieted the author, and bestow upon the first all the sleep of which it had deprived the second. The only long metrical narrations of the Chinese are some novels and licentious * pieces, m which the structure of the verse is alto- gether loose — a sort of "stans pede in uno" measure — and devoid of those characteristics which constitute the chief merit of tlicir poetry. Such compositions, accordingly, do not possess that degree of estimation, nor hold that rank in literature which, as we have before observed, is necessary to the due perfection of every department of the art. f There is another description of poetry Avhich we should not look for in / China, — namely, the Pastoral, — and for every obvious reasons. It has not only been the care of the government, from the earliest ages, to give every direct encouragement to agriculture, and to the production of food for man alone, but there have always existed some absurd prejudices and maxims, not to say positive laws, against an extended consumption of flesh food. J The penal code denounces severe punishments against those who kill their own cattle without an express license. § It is a Avell known principle, that where tillage exists to a considerable extent, the rent of land reserved for pasture must, in proportion to its goodness, be equal to that of land employed in producing grain ; and this, under a rice cultivation, where three crops per annum are said sometimes to be obtained, must have such an obvious effect in raising the comparative price of meat, as must necessarily discourage its consumption among so frugal a people as the Chinese, even without the intervention of any positive law. There is accordingly no people in the * There never was any assertion more incorrect than this of Martinius, concerning tlie lighter poetry of China; "'Insunt iis qnfedam tie amando, sed castitatem niagis quam nostroram poetanim mollitiem spirautia, magna decori ubique cura." — In translating the excellent prose romance of " The Fortunate Union," othcnvise unexceptionable, the writer of this was obliged to exclude two passages in verse, which were distinguished — "minimd decori cunt." There are whole poems of the same description. + Those half-mechanical conceits, of which the principal merit consists in the imitation, in tortured verses, of some object in art or nature, as a knot, a circle, a sceptre, &c., are well known to the Chinese : but sound taste and criticism have universally consigned these difficiles nugcc to a very low rank in literature, and we therefore abandon them without further notice. t See a long paper, " Sur I'usage de la viande en Cliine." Miiiioires, torn. xi. § Bookiv., sect. 233. 48 The Poetry of the Chinese world (the Hindoos * always excepted), that consumes so little meat, or so much fish and vegetable food — nor, again, is there any country in which fewer cattle are employed for the purpose of draft and burden. Where every institution tends so fatally to keep a population up to the very utmost limits of a bare subsistance, and where neither pride nor prejudice steps in between the labourer and his work, human exertion naturally supplants every other. In the southern parts of the empire, therefore, beasts of carriage and di-aft, with the exception of a few miserable riding horses, and a few buffaloes for ploughing, are nearly unknown. Towards Peking, and the uncultivated borders of Tartary, the case becomes altered : but the Great WaU may still be considered, generally, as the boundary which separates two people, one of them exclusively pastoral, and the other as exclusively tillers of the earth. The esteem in which the business of tillage is held, may be expected to have rendered it the subject of poetical celebration : and we find the praises of fertile fields sung in such strains as the following. Years of dearth they term " years of nothingness :" — Fields that know no Years of Dearth. Though man's superfluous lahour ceas'd to till The fertile glebe, ne'er would its bounties end : Though rusting lay the abandon'd ploughshare — still O'er the fair land would wa\dng harvests bend ! Less happy soils may pine in years of dearth — Late though we sow, we early reap the field ; A thousand roods of richly-teemed earth, In verdant crops ten thousand measures yield ! Why haunt we then, the sylvans mossy shrine — 'VN'hy ask what harvest shall our toils attend ? See the sweet spring with surer presage shine, And balmy airs, and length'ning days descend ! * Bishop Heber's Journal proves that the Hindoos themselves are not so scrupulous as they have been sup. posed. They consume milk, too, which the Chinese, strange to say, never think of. The Poetry of the Chinese 49 ^ -i^ |i * ^^ A it ^ §k ^ a X~ 4 ^ Js- t 1)^ ^ 'S- \3 --<* M ^s ^ yg^. ^fl- ^A 4 -t K ;^o i£ C ^ *L jS. ^ Pi ^ ^ i^ Q ^ # # ^ IP X fl ^ -# 1 * i We have next to notice a large class of poetry, which may be properly ^ styled Moral or Didactic. The long citation from the philosopher Kwan- footsze H ^ -f^, given by Dr. Morrison at p. 147 of the Third Part of his Dictionary, comes under this head. It commences thus : — " Venerate heaven and earth ; perform the rites to the gods, Worship your ancestors : be dutiful to your parents : Observe the laws : revere your teachers and superiors. Love your brothers : and be true to your friends, &c." The whole piece bears some resemblance to the Golden verses of Pytha- goras, particularly in the commencement, which may be thus literally rendered : — 50 The Poetry of the Chinese " First, as the laws ordain, th' immortal gods Worship : observe your vows : the great of yore Next, and the manes of the dead revere : Honour your parents, and your next of kin, &c." There are innumerable poems, or rather metrical essays, whose object it is to convey the doctrines and precepts of the great national sages and V others. The whole of the well-kno^^^l work called Shing yu, ^ |^ Instruc- tions addressed to the People by the second Emperor of the present Tartar Family, has been cast into a short, rhyming verse. The example, given in Part I. at page 11, comes likewise under this head ; as do all the similar productions of the Buddhists, and other sects. We must consider these as forming a portion of the national literature in the gross, although they have nothing to do Avith Confucius or his doctrines, and are commonly held by the privileged learned in as great contempt as the superstitions to which they pertain. In the course of their lighter works, Chinese writers frequently introduce moral reflections in verse with very good efi'ect. A couplet, a quatrain, or a passage of eight or more lines, agreeably engages the reader's attention in his progress through a romance or novel, and generally accompanies the transition to some other part of the story. They are not altogether unlike the rhymes at the close of the scenes in our older plays, and usually consist, as those did, of some reflection upon what has gone before, or what is immediately to follow ; though in a narrative they certainly find a more proper place than in the drama, and are not there subject to the reproach of bad taste, which has very properly excluded such passages from our own modem stage pieces. Here foUow examples from " The Fortunate Union :" — The Poetry of the Chinese 51 )^ ^ X m fg_ ^ ^ * .1=1:. A ft ^^ M ^ i ■^ A!i -t ^ # ±. # i^ :^f ^ ^ ^a ^^ ^ >P ^ -f^ ^ J* l: # a ^ ii m 1- A- * ^a" Wn 11 'vS ^^ " Vain are the crafty villain's wiles, most vain, Often, when vaunted most — disgrace, defeat, Eush headlong in from quarters little feared ! Harken to counsel, friend, and when secure You deem yourself from mortals' purblind eyes, Think there's a heaven above, that surveys all ! " Human events in quick vicissitude Succeed each other : but true friendship's ties Gain strength from time ! Ask ye why sovereign heav'n Thus vexes mortals ? — 'Tis to try their hearts Like metal in the fiery crucible." Satire, viewed as a means of recommending virtue by discrediting vice, cannot be said to exist in any regular form, or to constitute a particular branch of literature. Some of the ancient pieces in the Sheeking have been considered as levelled at persons existing when they were composed ; but they have no more claim on this account to the name of satires, than Horace's ode " In Maevium." There is no country, at the same time, in which anonymous lampoons, and similar vehicles of invective or ridicule, are more common. They form one of the most ordinary outlets for the 52 The Poetry of the Chinese ebullitions of public feeling : and must be considered, by every person who has had opportunities of making the observation, as a very important check, under so absolute a despotism, upon the conduct of Chinese rulers. The highest oiRcers of government are not exempt fiom these covert attacks, which are constantly made, notwithstanding the severest punishments in case of detection : — " I will ease my heart. Although it be with hazard of my head." The following are specimens of satirical passages introduced in the course of a novel, to ridicule the worthless characters, both male and female : — # il ^1^ ll ^ # ^° Ml ^ % ^ %^ ^^ ^« ^ |L ^ ^ ^« A f| fp -tf m # ^ i^ *^ t ^ n "^i t -t ^ iii ^ ijt m 0^ c # ® I ^ Ip f -^ |t ^ ^ I't ^ " He thought his flattering phrases needs must prove Welcome — nor dream'd of foul repulse and shame : And had not bounteous heav'n his forehead arm'd With impudence unmatch'd, this keen rebuff Had stung him ! " " In pearls and gold all gorgeously attir'd, No arts could deck her native ugliness ; The demon king might view her as his own — She carried terror to a bridegroom's eye !" The Poet r II of the Chinese ^^ We now proceed to consider a very extensive department of Chinese ^__^ poetry, the Descriptive, which to us strangers must be the most agreeable of all, and which really possesses some attractive features. The whole language abounds in figurative expressions, derived from the most pleasing or most striking objects and circumstances in nature. Thus " Spring dreams and autumnal clouds " mean flitting visions of happiness — unattainable good is represented by " the moon's reflection in the wave " — " floating clouds obscuring the day " express the temporary shade thrown by detraction on illustrious characters — difficulty of acting is figured by " the grass and tangle in one's path " — female beauty by the obvious and common semblance of " a fair flower" — " spring" is the emblem of joy, " autumn" of sorrow — gladness is expressed by the heart's flowers being all full-blown" — the virtue of the female character is pictured under " the white gem, the pure ciystal, the cold and transparent ice" — " the season when peach blossoms are in beauty " means that of marriage, as marriages were anciently celebrated in spring — searchers after pleasure are depicted under the figure of " bees and buttei-flies among flowers" — and so on without end. There exist a great number of figurative allusions, which contain a par- X ticular reference to some event in history or romance ; and as the fiicts, or fables, at which these only hint, cannot sometimes be discovered without the assistance of a well-informed native, this circumstance constitutes a considerable obstacle, in the present state of our knowledge, to the suc- cessful study of Chinese poetry, anywhere but in the country itself. The following are examples of such allusions : — " The heart that responds to the lute" means yielding to seductive arts, and refers to the story of a young damsel named Wun keun, who, being beloved by a youth called Sze ma, was serenaded by him on the lute, with a song called Foong keio hwang, M^ ^ M, or " the bird foong in search of its mate." The story says that Ke sin foong, ^ i\j> ^, " lier heart was moved," and she eloped with her admirer towards mornuig, leaA ing the traces of her flight along the dewy pathway. r)4 The Poetry of the Chinese A grateful return for benefits is implied under these expressions : " The spirit which knit the grass" — and " the bird that brought the yellow flowers." I. An emperor of the dynasty called Chow j^, enjoined it on his son and successor to bury alive, after the old Scythian or Tartar fashon, one of his favourite mistresses in the same grave with himself. The son, however, refrained from executing this portion of the imperial will, on the ground of its cruelty, and gave away the lady in marriage to a noble. On making war against the state called Tsin ^, the new emperor was opposed by a formid- able leader ; but he dreamed at night that he saw the deceased father of the lady he had saved from death, who told him, that in return for the life granted to his daughter, he would assist him against the enemy. The result- proved the vision to be prophetic — the hostile leader was defeated, and some invisible agent so twisted the long grass which impeded his flight, as to cause his capture. 2. A person who saw a bird fall to the earth, wounded by an arrow, had the humanity to draw out the weapon, and restore the bird to liberty as soon as it recovered. Being soon afterwards sick and in danger of his life, the bird appeared to him, bearing in its bill some yellow flowers, which the patient was advised to try, and which presently restored him to health. The poetry of China is not unsupplied with mythological aids : every V / element of nature — with all the phenomena that these exhibit — each hill, stream, and wood, has its presiding spirit. There is Hwuy loo, "^ ^ , " the monarch of fire ;" Lwj koong, ^ ^ , " the thunder god ;" Liih shin, ^ %^ , " the spirit of the autumnal wave ;" and others innumerable. An interesting divinity, called Y%ie laou, ^ -^ , " the old man of the moon," deserves some notice. It is his particular business to tie together at their birth, with an invisible silken cord, all youths and maidens who are pre- destined for each other, after which the most distant separation, and apparently insurmountable obstacles, cannot prevent their ultimate union. This is what is called {Yeto yuen) -^ ^ , " having a connection in fixte." With such a variety of imaginative resources, and with some of the brightest \J leaves of the book of nature, displayed to them in an immense tract of The Poetnj of the Chinese 55 country, surpassed by none in natural advantages, this people would be dull indeed, if they could not turn to some account the materials which they possess. The muse, too, may call to her assistance the smaller race of fairies, or sprites, who are supposed to haunt the recesses of hills and Avoods, and to exercise either a benign, or a malicious influence over mortals. Possessmg but a vague notion of the ideas which the Chinese really entertained of these imaginary persons, the writer of this applied for information to his Seenseng {ox pundit, as such a character would be called less far to the east), and the reply was to this eff'ect : " They are mysterious beings who convert themselves at will into the semblance, sometimes of beautiful women, at others of ugly monsters — in infinite variety. They delight most in frustrating the attempts made by the devotees of F6, or Buddha, to reach a superhuman state, and whenever these chance to waver the least in theu' faith or practice, they become immediately possessed (" cho leaou moo "), that is, the malicious spirits acquire a dominion over them." Being asked if he believed in theu" existence, he seemed rather unprepared to answer, but observed that they possessed the greatest influence over the minds of the country-people, and the devotees of the superstition above-mentioned. It may be noticed, that Confucius neither gave the express sanction of his opinion to the existence of unembodied spirits, nor did he expressly deny the same : but transmitted these early traditions of his country exactly as he found them ; busying himself chiefly with the more important concerns of political government and morals. Several of the pieces ah-eady given might be arranged under the descriptive class. The foUomng quotation from a novel, called " The Dreams of the Red Chamber," is rather a poetical account of a yoimg Chinese profligate, although it consists of a veiy irregular species of verse, in six and seven words. The version below is lineatim, and almost verbatim, and pretends to nothing more than a very close adherence to the sense of the original ; which, it must be remarked, is not an extract from a long poem, but one of those poetical breaks, with which prose works of taste are generally embellished : 56 The Poetry of the Chinese t4 if " The paths of trouble heedlessly he braves, Now shines a wit — and now a madman raves : His outward form by nature's bounty drest, Foul weeds xisurped the wilderness, his breast ; And bred in tumult, ignorant of rule. He hated letters — an accomplish'd fool ! In act depraved, contaminate in mind, Strange ! had he fear'd the censures of mankind. ^J -f A^ ^ K t ^ 4- V M ^ ^ M f ^ % Ife ^ t $ # ii^ t - U it it- -"-f^ > ^ The Poetry of the Chinese 57 "Titles and wealth to him no joys impart — By penury pinch'd, be sank beneath the smart: Ob, wretch ! to flee the good thy fate intends, Oh, hopeless ! to thy country and thy friends ! In uselessness, the first beneath the sky, And curst, in sinning, with supremacy ! jMinions of pride and luxury, lend an ear, And shun his follies, if his fate ye fear !" The language of descriptive poetry exists in every intermediate gradation, , from the perfectly formed couplet and stanza, to those figurative compo- ' sitions, which differ from prose in little else than the brilliancy''of their imagery, or the elevation of their sentiment. Besides the Tsze, of which an example has been given in the First Part (page 19), there is a stiU less fettered species — a kind of impassioned prose, into which the writer of a narrative now and then breaks forth, when inspired by the occasion. The following example is taken from the romance of " Tlie Fortunate Union," and describes the heroine when she is first seen by her future lover. The parallelisms are marked and divided by colons in the translation : — #. i^ >4- M & f: ^ A ^^ m vf -m ID ^f ;4- ff *S i: ^ "^ ^^^ M & M ^ ^ ^l< ^ % '^ ^U ^m iif^ m '* * ^ ^'7 •■•> '^^ f^ ^^f ^ itL ^ fS M ^" i'M §i )S^ ^ ^ /^ « '^ ir • i-x) ^ A » ^ i^ ^ 1%^ ^ M -^ ?. >^ ^h % m. f) ^f ^^ t -^ ^kM^ '<^ r- $^ %% #. ^ at % m Jr ^ t ^% ML ^$ m ^K ^1 ^ i ?ji A >)r^ A n ^ ^ '4fe i^ !$. tf !*^7 M fH -fA M f 3ft # ijL ^ ^ ji^ ts B] -f .ti # ^ dL m $% m ^ 58 The Poetnj of the Chinese " With the delicacy of a flower, lier complexion displayed a clear brilliancy which put to shame the floating light of day : with the buoyant lightness of the swallow, her movements were ordered with inimitable grace and propriety. The arches of her brows were like the outlines of the vernal hills in the distance, but in their changeful expression they shamed the varying tints of even the vernal hills : the brightness of her eyes equalled that of the clear wave in autumn, but the living sentiment which flowed from them made you wonder how the autumnal wave had lost its deity.* Her waist, like a thread in fineness, seemed ready to break ; yet was it straight and erect, and feared not the fanning breeze : the shadowy graces of her person it was as difiicult to delineate, as the form of the white bird, rising from the ground by moonlight. The natural gloss of her hair resembled the bright polish of a mirror, without the false assistance of unguents : her face was perfectly lovely in itself, and needed not paint to adorn it. The native intelligence of her mind seemed to have gathered strength from retirement ; and beholding her, you might know she was of a superior order of beings : the cold and rigid strictness of her manners, severe as she herself was soft and delicate, proved her to be no ordinary inhabitant of the female apartments. Her sweet and feminine disposition, comparable to fragrant flowers, might lead one at first to class her with other fair ones : but the perfection of this pearl, the polish of this gem, discoverable on a longer acquaintance, proved that she possessed qualities not inferior to the most spirited of the opposite sex." Under the descriptive class may be properly introduced a very singular production — a poem on London, composed by a Chinese who visited England about the year 1813. Some notice of it appeared, for the first time, in the Quarterly Keview for 1817 ; but the present opportunity admits of the translation being accompanied by the original. No apology, perhaps, is needed for the insertion of the whole poem, notwithstanding its length, con- sidering that it is a native of the remotest shores of Asia who sings the glories of the British capital — " Prsesertim ciim omne studium atque omne ingenium contulerit Ai-chias, ad populi Romani gloriam laudemque cele- brandam." — The reviewer made a trivial mistake in stating that it Avas written by " a common Chinese," for the author was in a respectable station of life, and a person of good acquirements, who accompanied home an English gentleman as his instructor in the language. He was in fact a very uncommon Chinese, inasmuch as he appears to have possessed an inclination and capacity * Called Luhsldn. The Poetry of the Chinese 59 for observation, by no means usual among his travelled countrymen, who are generally of a class much inferior to himself. The remarks are. as might be expected, confined exclusively to objects which at once strike the eye, and they do not extend to the remoter points of intelligent investigation, since the author's very limited knowledge of our language, and total inability to comprehend the nature of our institutions, placed such higher objects entirely out of his reach. Being a simple description, the poem contains but few flights of fancy ; and as it would be a hopeless attempt, however well they may sound in Chinese, to give dignity in verse to matters so perfectl} domestic and familiar to ourselves, it has been judged best to subjoin a literal prose translation : — LONDON, IX Ten Stanzas. -f m '^' t # i^ M '#■ \ ^ i^ iK % ^^ m ^^ TR 4 >^ ^ -^r ^ jit 4^ # # ili II ^ ^ # # t§. # I. A ^ 1. Afar in the ocean, towards the extremities of the north-west. There is a nation, or country, called England : The clime is frigid, and you are compelled to approach the fire ; The houses are so lofty, that you may pluclc the stars : The pious inhabitants respect the ceremonies of worship. And the virtuous among them c\'er read the Sacred books : They bear a peculiar enmity towards the French nation,* The weapons of war rest not for a moment (between them). * In 1813. 60 The Poctrij of the Chinese A ii) # ^^ ;^ JK ^ ^ /. ^ i^ y^ -# ^ .41- ^^ # A ^ i :?-^ M Jc € R 0^ yl£ y@ J. # Their fertile hills, adorned with the richest luxuriance, Eesemble,in the outline of their summits, the arched eyebrows (of a fairwoman). The inhabitants are inspired Avith a respect for the female sex, 'Who in this land correspond with the perfect features of nature : Their young maidens have cheeks resembling red blossoms. And the complexion of their beauties is like the Avhite gem : Of old has connubial affection been highly esteemed among them, Husband and Avife delight in mutual harmony. 1? # % tl \i ^ S l# 4^ ^ + li 'h %~ m -p: A ^ H ^ fl^ In the summer evenings, through the hamlets and gardens beyond the town, ('rowds of walkers ramble without number : The grass is allowed to grow as a provision for horses. And enclosures of Avooden-rails form pastures for cattle. The Poetrij of the Chinese. 61 Tlie harvest is gathered in witli tlie singing of songs : The loiterers roam in search of flowers without end, And call to each other to return in good time, Lest the foggy clouds bewilder and detain them. /^ -^ S'tL ^ ^ A. 3leJ Ik Ml ^i ^ a 4^ ,»». ^ i ^ 4<^ 4. Their theatres are closed during the long days ; It is after dark that the painted scenes are displayed : The faces of the actors are handsome to behold. And their dresses are composed of silk and satin : Their voices resound in unison with stringed and wind instruments, And they dance to the inspiring note of drums and flutes : It constitutes the perfection of harmonious delight, Every one retires with a smiling countenance. ^ # ^9 Pi A -^ X ^ 'M- ■^jj- »»»y 1© 02 The Poetry of the Chinese. 5. The two banks of the river lie to the north and south, Three bridges interrupt the stream, and form a communication. Vessels of every kind pass between the arches, A\Tiile men and horses pace among the clouds : A thousand masses of stone rise one above the other. And the river flows through nine channels : The bridge of Loyang, which out-tops all in our empire. Is in shape and size somewhat like these. y > # ^a" # A ^ m ^ l^p #: ^- ^ A u? $^ K t^ >>*> It is a rich, populous, and highly adorned land, Its workmen vie with each other in the excellence of their manufactures. Within the circuit of the imperial residence is a splendid palace ; Lofty trees are immingled wdth unnumbered dweUiugs. The young gentiy ride in wheel-carriages and on horseback. And the fair women clothe themselves in silken garments : *The space in each street being devoted to ornament, AN'here is there room for tlie mere useful productions of the earth \ * Literally, " Every street being devoted to ilowers and willows, where is there space to plant mulberries ai.d hemp (to produce sUk and flax) ?" — There are explanatory notes, and a rommcntary, in the original, which we have not thought it necessary to give here. The Poetri) of the Chinese 6.3 *l ^ ^- ^ ft K5 iS ■^ r^ n ^ 7. The towering edifices rise story above story, In all the stateliness of splendid mansions : Railings of iron thickly stud the sides of e\ery entrance, And streams from the river circulate through the walls : The sides of each apartment are variegated with devices ; Through the windows of glass appear the scarlet hangings ; And in the street itself is presented a beautiful scene. The congregated buildings have all the aspect of a picture. ^ # ^ 111 3 ^1 # 3^ ^4 ^■ 11 ^I 8. In London, about the period of the ninth moon. The inhabitants delight in travelling to a distance : They change their abodes, and betake themselves to the country, Visitina; their friends in their rural retreats : 64 The Poetry of the Chinese The prolonged sound of carriages and steeds is heard through the day Then in autumn the prices of provisions fall : And the gi-eater number of dwellings being untenanted, Such as require it are repaired and adorned. ^;^ Bfu ^ ^ t ^ ^f^ A m ii^ ^ ^ it # ^^ $^ ^1 B * /- ,# 4t -f i i: 5^ ^t -S. .# -ar i^ f- i^ 1^ W M ^ -k m 3a 9. The spacious streets are exceedingly smooth and level, Each being crossed by others at intervals : On either side perambulate men and women, In the centre career along the carriages and horses ; The mingled sound of voices is heard in the shops at evening : During midwinter the heaped-up snows adhere to the pathway ; Lamps are displayed at night along the street sides, Whose radiance twinkles like the stars of the sky. TV i # ^ m 'jt ^ i^ ^ A if in ^ -^ ^ yr ^ ^ ^k -^ ^ M T^ P- ^ /|^ i. S?< ^ -^ ill ^ ^ ^ ^ "t r^ M 'il: ^^ The l'i,et)->i of the Cliiiu-sc 65 10. The climate is too cold for the cultivutiou of rice. But they have for ages been exempt from the e^^ls of famine ; With strong tea they immingle rich cream. And their baked wheaten bread is involved in unctuous lard. Here excellent meats are served in covers of silver, And fine wines are poured into gem-like cups ; The custom of the country pays respect to the cei'emony of meals. Previous to the repast, they make a change in their vestments. Of a similar description Avith the stanzas on London is another poem, not concerning the English exclusivelv, but Europeans in general, composed by a Hong merchant who has been dead some years. This person, notwith- standing his unpoetical profession, was possessed of very respectable literary acquirements, and one of his sons held a high rank in the Imperial College at Peking : — " After an intercourse of thirty years (to use his own expres- sions), which had made him tolerably familiar with the peculiarities of foreigners, he had retired, stricken in years, into solitude, and amused himself over his cups (like Le-tae-pi, of course) in composing a score of stanzas commemorative of some strange customs and opinions prevailing beyond the seas." — The production corresponds with its title, Se-ycoui tsa jjoong^ [f§ 7^ ^|| f§< " Unconnected Stanzas on Europeans," and after the perusal of the foregoing description from a person who had viewed us at home, may be deemed curious, as depicting the estimation formed of us by one who had neAcr left his own country. "N^'ith that want of minute discrimination which might be expected under sucli circumstances, the verses treat chiefly of those leading features which are common to all nations wearing hats and coats, and mingle, together with the rest, the Papist rites and ceremonies of the Portuguese at Macao. Being less interesting to Englishmen than the poem which has already been given at full length, it may suffice to present an abstract of whatcA'er observations it contains most deser\ing of notice. The retired Bard commences with lauding the good faith of the foreigners, K 'erse, that " the simple virtues of barbarians have been the subject of praise from the oldest times." It is quite true that commercial transactions of tlie largest description are freciueutly conducted at Canton on the mere faith ot promises ; and the good poet had never been in the way of seeing our legal stamps and lawyers" l)ills at home, which might have gone far to make him withdraw liis last compliment. •' When a guest arri\("s, the host helps him with his own hand to the juice of the grape ;' and it is added in a note, " they welcome visitors with Avinc, and not witlt tea," which is the Chinese fashion. " To touch glasses in (h-inking is a mark of friendship. In winter evenings they sit by the fire, and pour out rohl wine, careless of the snows which lie deep beyond the door." hi China they always warm their wine. So they sometimes do hi England, A\itiiess " Oxford Nightcaps." " Tliey make light of their lives," it is observed, " on occasions of personal coutest, and when two of tlieni (piarrel, the consequences may be very serious. They stand lace to face, and discharge fire-arms at each other on a given signal." In a note it is said, •• If one fall, the survivor is not punished: if neither fall, there is an end of the (piarrel." "They do this," adds the poet, " to show that they are not afraid — and so forth." An unconscious satire on the absurd custom of duelling, which our successors will rank with the '•trial In liattle," the cursucih :iud the diowiiiiig of witches. Our auth(U- marvels much at the comparatively late period at. which Europeans marry, but endeaNours to explain it in this way : " Their distant voyages abroad keep them long from home, and it is not until they have accumulated a fortune that they return to take a wife. Many do not marry before fifty years of age ; and if the bride be very young on these occasions, it is nothing unusual." The knowledge of tlie worthy Hong merchant on this subject seems to lia\e been much on a par with that of the St. Helena lady, who asked if I;ondon were not thrown into great excitement by the arrival of the Indian fieet.* * Mi'iitimii'il ;is luiig ago as liy Uiirucc Wiilpolc. Til (' I'd! t !■;/ of t Ik' <'J{ I nese 67 ■'111 the regulation of the ;iinmal period, tliey have no intercalary moon, but tlie new year always coiuniences ten days after the winter solstice. On this occasion they powder their heads with white dust, and all get tipsy." This e\ ideutly refers to good old times, and to manners now gone by. TIh- autlior himself adds in a note : " Tliis habit has of late years worn out. ' There is a variet} of other detached observations, less worthy of notice, and the poem concludes with mentioning, that " the foreigners had been fighting together for some twenty years ; but it was to be hoped tliey would soon make peace with one another, and all have an opportunity of improving themselves h\ an intercourse with C'liina.' Which tliey liave since done, somewhat at (liiua's expense. In some lemaiks im tlie origin and progress of this distant Literature in England,* I obser\ed that there was a favourable specimen of Poetry in the Eighth Volume of the Chinese Ilepository. The subject is the gathering ot Tea-leaves among the hills in Sprhig. Tlie young girl who sings the ballad describes the scenery, the weather, her own feelings, &c., and displays a natural and luilf-cliildish vanity which is at (jiice pleasing and amusing. A very neat English version has since been made by Mr. W. T. Mi;rcer, M.A. Oxon, and this so well conveys both the sense and the style of the original, tliat it has been printed below, stanza for stanza, page for page with the Chinese. The c(n-respondent of the llcpository states that the original was obtained from one of the merchants of the Green-tea country, being prettily printed on a square sheet of paper with a flowered red border. He remarks that ir illustrates many points in the construction of Chinese verse, pointed out in the first edition of this present treatise. But the simple and popular nature of the Ballad would ha\e rendered such niceties of construction, as have been explained in Part I., (piife out of place. The verse, accordingly, is of that careless, easy and fiowiiii;- chaijutev liest suited to the occasion. ' <'!iini'Si' Mi«''etliiiiii'.«, ji. 70. 68' The Poetr>i of the Chinese « =^ ;^ -^ o^J ^ ^ TEA-PICKING BALLAD m it ^•>t li m # 4B u ^ Pi^ t^' m ^ #j" m ft lie "t ^ M t^ ^> ^ III T T ^ ^ i^ ^ ^ ^ ^ P.lj W> *j.!. b:^ ^ ^ P 111 ^^ ;^ )M Wn "%' m w -^ n ^i j^ 14 m m s \u m m ^ m #t!- vB. f?^ r-r I'r';^ =€. O'iJ' g?> ^ /-aj i4^ *L w.f? -r v>i ^ I. Where thousand hills tlie vale enclose, our little hut is there, And on the sloping sides around, the Tea grows everywhere ; And I must rise at early dawn, as busy as can be, I'o get my daily labour done, and pluck tlic leafy tea. II. At early dawn I seize my crate, and sighing, oh, for rest. Through the thick mist I pass the door, with sloven hair half-drest ; The dames and maidens call to me, as hand in hand they go, '• What steep do you, miss, climb to-day, what steep of high Sunglo ?' III. Dark is the sky. the twiliglit dim still on the hills is set, The dewy leaves and cloudy buds may not be gather'd j'et ; Oh, wlio are they, the tliirsty ones, for wlunn this work we do ; For whom we spend our dail} toil, in bands of two and two I The Poetry of the Chinese 69 g^ it ^ - % n % ^ M Wc u m 1- [Bj w^ ?fi. >^ '^ X m. ^ ^ w "^^ m m n m m. ^n .^^ m ^ ^ u ^ ti'j ITT ffi ^ IS ^ :^ ift (nj vi IS H IS P? # jE m ^ '^ PM ?1 ^n^ M m W M: ^ m' m ^ ^ it n w s .^^ f;^ ^ .^ $ri jt ^f i ^ 5l ^i^ li .^ M tk IV. Like fellows we each other aid, and to each other say. As down we pull the yielding twigs, " Sweet sister, don't delay ; E'en now the buds are growing old, all on the bouglis atop. And then to-morrow — who can tell 1 — the drizzling rain maj' drop." V. We've picked enow, the topmost bough is bare of leaves, and so We lift our brimming loads, and by the homeward path we go ; In merry laughter by the pool, the lotus pool we hie, AVhen hark ! uprise a Mallard pair, and hence affrighted fly ! VI. Limpid and clear the pool, and there how rich the lotus- grows. And only half its opening leaves, round as the coins, it shows — I bend me o'er the jutting brink, and to myself I say, I marvel in the glassy stream, how looks my face to-day ( 70 The Poetry of the Chinese -^. ^ \t -A^ M ^ ^h m m p. m m ^^ ^ ^ B % m n ^ M /^ m m m M ^ '{)i iM ^ M i\i m M M, M. ^ II ■/? 1^ # M ^ m m. m 5^ 9 ^i ^ ^ m ^ ^ '^ m ^ X ^ m m n m ^ m ^ % i ^ m ^ ^ tn ^ m ^ M ^ n '^ ^^ m '^ ^ fx n VII. My face is dirty, out of trim my haii- is, and awry. Oh tell me where's the little girl so ugly now as 1 1 'Tis all because whole weary hours I'm forc'd to pick the tea, And driving winds and soaking show'rs have made me what you see ! VIII. With morn again come wind and rain, and though so fierce and strong, With basket big and little hat I wend my way along ; Then home once more, when all is pick'd, and eveiybody sees How muddy all our dresses are, and dabbled to the knees ! IX. I saw this morning through the door a pleasant day set in. Be sure I quickly drest my hair, and neatly fix'd my pin ; And featly sped I down the path to gain the wonted spot, But, never thinking of the mire, my working shoes forgot ! The Poetry of the Chinese 71 m 1^ m i=M H # ^ w^ tE ii vM m # # * m + ^^ ^ ?<^ ^ + ii 5i ^ ^ + ^ m # ^t — • :! ^^ ^ P3 ^ ^ n ^ t. M siJ ^ # vl ^k ir, M m 5IJ m n fi ^-(H. lia p| H ^ ^r % % X ^ ^ M ^ -lis .^>i ;^-t ItB 51^ \% # KJ ^ M M 1^ ^ir M A ^ % * fel X. The garden reach'd, my bow-shap'd shoes are soaking through and through ; And the sky is chang'd — the thunder rolls — I don't know what to do ; I'll call my comrades on the hill to pass the word with speed, And fetch my green umbrella hat, to help me in my need. XI. But my little hat does little good, my plight is very sad ! I stand with clothes all dripping wet, like some poor fisher-lad ; Like him I have a basket, too, of meshes woven fine, A fisher-lad, if I only had his fishing rod and line. XII. The rain is o'er, the outer leaves their branching fibres show, Shake down the branch, and the fragrant scent about us 'gins to blow ; Grather the yellow golden threads that high and low are found — Ah, what a precious odour now is wafted all around ' 72 The Poetry of the Chinese. iM M ^ - * It II # -f ^ p"p ^ ^ '^ B# ^ -t^ ftH jp « # + Ifl M ^ ^ + A^^-t 't^^^ ;i^^ii ;^M^~ i^^5>i^ n m B n ^ m :^ B m ^ m m ~ X m m m ')^ m m m m m m ^ b iw^ M XIII. No sweeter perfume does the wild and fair Aglaia shed, Throughout Woo-yuen's bounds my tea the choicest will be said ; When all are pick'd we'll leave the shoots to bud again in spring, But for this morning we haA'e done the third, last gathering. XIV. Oh, weary is our picking, yet do I my toil withhold 1 My maiden locks are all askew, my pearly fuigers cold ; I only wish our tea to be superior over all. O'er this one's " sparrow-tongue," and o'er the other's " dragon ball. XV. Oh, for a month I weary strive to find a leisure day, I go to pick at early da-\ATi, and until dusk I stay ; Till midnight at the firing-pan I hold my irksome place ; But may not labour hard as this impair my pretty face ? * Technical terms. •* _l_ m. /Ui* T/ie Poetry of the Chinese. 73 m m ^ m m u m ^ n ^ m m 1. ^ m m -Y m. ^ ^^ ^ -\' ^ ^ ^, tn^- !^ ^ m ^ A m — m w. ^1 m i"^ ^ m ^ m ^ B. m u M M ^ A ^ ^ fi m a m ^i '& sj # m ^ :£ # ^ gi i^ m. ^ u % ^ ^\ '^ m m m m m M m 'B m a w- m XVI. But if my face be somewhat lank, more firm shall be my mind, I'll fire my tea that all else shall be my golden buds behind ; But yet the thought arises, who the pretty maid shall be, To put the leaves in jewell'd cup, from thence to drink my tea ? XVII. Her griefs all flee as she makes her tea, and she is glad, but oh, Where shall she leani the toils of us who labour for her so ^ And shall she know of the winds that blow, and the rains that pour theirwrath, And drench and soak us through and through, as plunged into a bath. XVIII. In driving rains and howling winds the birds forsake the nest, Yet many a loving pair are seen still on the boughs to rest ; Oh, wherefore, lov'd one, with light look didst thou send me away '. I cannot, grieving as I grieve, go through my work to day. 74 The Poetry of the Chinese K ^ m. n ^ ^ '^ ^ X. t rt ^'t ^^ T ^ -- ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ m ± ft ^ r3 ^ ffi III M # * a ^1 # ^ ^l^^ -*!l ^ ^ ^ ::?' ^ ft iiT m ^^ ^ XIX. But though my bosom rise and fall, like bucket in a well, Patient and toiling as I am, 'gainst work I'll near rebel. My care shall be to have my tea fired to a tender brown, And let the flag and awl, well roll'd, display their whitish dowTJ.* XX. Hah, for my toil, ho, for my steps ! aweary tho' I be. In our poor house, for working folk, there's lots of work, I see ; When the firing and the drying's done, off at the call I go, And once again this very morn I climb the high Sung-lo ! XXI. My wicker basket slung on arm, and hair entwined with flowers, To the slopes I go of the high Sung-lo, and pick the tea for hours ; How laugh we, sisters, on the road — what a meriy turn we've got ! I giggle and say, as I point down the way — there, look, there lies our cot. * T\xflag is the name for the terminal shoots, where tliey just begin to unroll ; the awl ilesiguates those wliich are still unrolleJ, and shaip-pointed. This may be easily observed in the fmcbt black tea, called by us Pekoe, covered with a white down, Pak-ho, whence the name. The Poetry of the Chinese 75 f® ^h ^ 4^ w. L^ ^f ^ m m - ^ n M ^ gg + ^ a ^ ii + ^ ^ w ii + i^T t jf uj ly p^ 'ji ^ ^ H ^ m m m=- ^ m '^ \U iU ^ il Ji :>^ >|5 ^ # :^ t # t5. d'^ lU It # ^ ^^ m ^ Si tl ^ W "R M ¥ M # 1f ^ ^ XXII. Your handmaid 'neath the sweet green shade in shelter'd cot abides, Where the pendent willow's sweeping bough the thatchy dwelling hides : To-morrow, if you wish it so, my guests I pray you'll be ! The door you'll know by the fragrant scent, the scent of the firing tea. XXIII. Awhile 'tis cold, and then 'tis warm, when I want to fire my tea, The sky is sure to shift and change — and all to worry me : When the Sun goes down on the western hills, on the eastern there is rain! And however fair he promises, he promises in vain. XXIV. To-day the tint of the western hills is looking bright and fair, And I bear my crate to the stile, and wait my fellow toiler there : A little tender lass is she — she leans upon the rail. And sleeps — and though I hail her, she answers not my hail. 76 The Poetrij of the Chinese B!L Sp i ^ n m '^ m n ^^^t 5ij t^ A .i ::: i^ # mf tr - ^ M. W\ # - m ^ ^ n-^ r^ ^ 1^ M'^ m iM m m-^ '^' i^ m m-^ m ^ r^ m^ ^ \^ m ^^^ m m ^ ^ m ^ m M :£ M ^ ^ z^ m 3n ^' in m -^ ^ ^ m m m m m m ^ m m ^ ^^ M ^ m ^ XXV. Aud when at length, to my loudest caU, she murmurs a reply, 'Tis as if hard to conquer sleep, and with half-opened eye ; Up starts she, and with straggling steps along the path she's gone ; She brings her basket, but forgets to put the cover on! XXVL Together trudge we, and we pass the lodge of tlie southern bowers, Where the beautiful sea-pomegranate waves all its yellow flowers ; Fain would we stop and pluck a few to deck our tresses gay. But the tree is high, and 'tis vain to try to reach the tempting spray. XXYII. The pretty birds upon the bough sing songs so sweet to hear, And the sky is so delicious now, half cloudy and half clear ; While bending o'er her work, each maid wall prattle of her woe. And we talk till our hearts are sorely hurt, and tears unstinted flow. The Poetry of the Chinese 77 # 45 * fi ^ ^ m ^ m U ^(i ^ it ttl ^ m H ^ ^ Ff? p"p - ^ ji^ J:J i[J - m ^1 # A On ascending the Highest Peak, of the Leiisban.* There falls a precipitous cascade of three thousand feet ; Here the Hibiscus shades every rising summit ; The mountain touches the sky, and separates the orbs ; The drifting snows fly amidst the thunder. I am like the white bird among the clouds, I insult the winds, and iuAade the powerful abyss. — As I turn and look down on each neighbouring province. The evening smoke of the dwellings rises in blue specks. * A mountain near the Po-yang Lake, visited by the Embassy in iSlO. The Poetry of the Chinese 81 % ^ tl v;t ?* ^K ^3 -h ^^ \^^ % t W ^ JL ^ n ^ Z- ^ ^^ ^ l^ 4^ ^ ^ U '^ ^i- ^ n M m m ^i # «t ^^ t ^ On takincf leave of a Friend. Ten years have elapsed since last we parted, And no sooner have we met, than we part again : "We may bind ourselves by promises to renew this meeting, But we shall never be so young as we are now ! The shadows of the passing clouds speedily vanish — The fallen leaf returns not to its branch : Should I fly, like the wild bird, to seek you in the south. In what what part of yon blue mountains shall we meet % ^^ M. m ^ '^ y^ m X t -S: ?t m ^^ # ?f m jth f# 1$ ^ 3tf ^p A Jc n ^X M %\ ^ '4^ w^ ^ -t m K m Ki /^. On giving liberty to a Butterfly. Those variegated hues should be less rashly exposed, The recesses of the mountains are thy proper haunts : The fragrant, but short-lived herbs are there. And those airy paths wiU best suit thy flight : Thy crimson form is heavy with dew. Thy embroidered wings should expatiate in the clear breeze : Destruction here awaits thee from the fondness of the boy. Go then, and hide thy treasures from his reach. N 82 ' The Poetrji of the Chinese ■M '\% It f -^ % ^\ ^ ^ %. % ^^ % M\ ^ ;)c5r ,^ ^ # ii it n ^ * ^ $% T^ ^ ^ -f- t fH ir # ^ On a worthless Tree* 111 what year wast thou planted, vile tree ! Thy lofty, bare trunk, is truly good for nothing : Thy blossoms fly aloft incessantly, Thy falling leaves there is no sweeping away : Thou hidest the sun during the Avinter months ; The shady side of thee is overrun with old moss : Alas, that I had not an axe in my hand, To cut thee away, as thou well deservest ! -h ^ "^ -^^ ?i^ '^^ ^ ^1^ #1 f) ^ ^ M, $ ^ t- — yf :f ^ J- ^ tt> # it m ^« ^ ^t iL % m c)4 f \^ ^ ^ m Written at the Cajjital of the Island of Haeiiau. While here I travel, the Spring is drawing to a close; The blossoms fly confusedly, and leave their branches : I am a floating cloud that returns not north, I am a solitary Avildfowl, bewildered in the south : By the ocean's murmur, the rainy storm is approaching, The loudness oi the winds conceals the thunder's sound : This Keungnan is a land clean divided from my home, Here I breathe my long sighs, all perplexed and ii-resolute. * '' Ille et nefasto te posuit die," &e. Uorat. in Arborem, II. 13. The Fuetry of the Chinese 83 ^ ^ ^ ^ t ^ It ^ # # # *i ^t ^ ^ ft On a Sprig of Ejndendrum, in a Porcelain Vase. By the side of Hoongting bridge, to the east of the stream Haelo, There grows thickly the Epidendrum, making a grove of its own : Its fragrant breath fills the lonely valley, And a single sprig hath flown hither, to replenish this precious vase The solitary flower finds a companion in its own shadow, Blown by the gentle breeze that pervades my empty hall : My sleeves are scented with its morning and evening sweets, I know of none whose delight in it can equal mine. m ^ *i ^ vj^ ^ ^ m M ^ ^ % -^ ^ 84 The Poetry of the Chinese Inscribed under the Drcnviuf/ of a tvax-culoured Calycanthus. (Lamei.) Tranquilly bending, clothed in its vest of pale yellow, The flower preserves, in single seclusion, its inviolate sweets : With faintly opening mouth, its fragrance is but half exhaled, Like some half-told sorrow, still half undisclosed : It droops, with slender stalk, in delicate guise. While its close petals carry all the aspect of modesty : Deem not, that fear of the chill wiU prevents it from blowing — It reserves those vernal hues to compete with the faii-est flowers oi Keangnan. ^k ^ fk % ^^ U if - M -fir A #> Ift ^1^ i« ^*= M ^^ ?^ ^ ^x ^ 4 ^ ^'| ^ if il II ^ ii? t H ^ '4k ^ i^ % m 1^ T fli. v^ -f: -i- ^ M ^ -^ ^ "# ^ % -^ ¥■ w ^ t. % On the Drawing of a Mush-coloured Phim Blossom. (Meihwa.) One flower combines in itself all the merits of two. While a closer examination only displays its rare charms : Would you style it a rosy beauty — it is rich, too, in snowy hues ; Would you call it a pale one — it disjjlays the tints of the morning sky It resembles some fau* complexion, slightly heightened by wine — It is like some maiden, risen fresh from sleep to her morning toilet : Cease to wonder at the hesitation of the poet's pencil ; The loveliness of the object has dispersed his powers of thought !" The Poetry of the Chinese ^ -A» "^ ^ ^;fc ^ fe 85 iJs w. ^ A ' M # ^ t t J. «L C ll # X e. ^^ K M % 1^ 4 4 +^ ^ ^ % t ^^ -¥• * # ^ % M ^ ^ ^ M -k n ^ At the Nevj Year. (February.) 1. Tlie climate this season excels all seasons past; With gaily blended hues, all things in nature vie for beauty. Already surprised by the early progress of the pendent willow sprigs, I next admire the fresh luxuriance of the purple Magnolias. 2. Birds of every colour fly about in mingled confusion. And with the noise of their contentious repasts fill my hilly dwelling : The ravines of this Lofow mountain are their constant haunts, They visit not in such numbers the lofty levels of Tszeyu. 8S The Poetry of the Chinese ^ # ^ # it^ J: g ;H- 9 4 t 14 f- ^ # PI 9 X ^ +X ^M ^ iK r ^ ^l ^ iJn €^ Ji ^L 1% ?^ ^ ^ ^4 # ^ ^ H^l 3. The doors of every ^illage are opened towards the hills, And crowds on this festive day flock thence hither ; The notes of merriment on high are answered by like notes below, The mingled tumult of sounds is like the distant thunder. 4. '\^'hy do the bells and wooden instruments mingle their clamour "? The crowded giiests are assembled to partake of the lenten feast : But sovereign heaven no longer sends its showers of grain To replenish. Avorthy friends, your diurnal repasts !* * The priests of Budtlha arc assembled by tlie ringing of bells, &c., to their entertainments of herbs, fruits, and sweetmeats, being forbidden the use of flesh and wine. Their monasteries are in the recesses of hills, wherever hills prevail, and always in the most romantic spots. The two last lines allude to the following tradition. When Yoong-19, of the family called Ming, usurped the whole empire (a.d. 1400), one of his nephews, the proper heir, shaved his head, and assuming the habit of a priest, retired to the depths of the mountains. The living rock there opened, and poured out a constant supply of grain for the support of the royal refugee. After his death, the miracle still went on, until a covetous priest, not satisfied with the quantity of grain thus obtained, enlarged the hole or fissure in the stone through which it flowed, — ^when the supply immediately stopped altogether, as the proper reward of his cupidity. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY This book is BUI! on the last date stamped below HEtl • -7 )iy. HAR s m%{ DcU15 1350 JUL 3 1952 ««B ^/? 2? 1970 APR 2 8 11170 31961 ■f /"i j>*,^^ MARl9tNl Form L-9-lo»i-3.'34 UNIVERSITY of CAIJFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES LIBRARY *PL 2927 Davis - D29p Poeseo!: -a-iirf.eae com-- mentarll. -N/ :,»/ I plea'^'e: do not remove THIS book card ^^tllBRARY6k ^'JO'^ University Research Library OWT58 00 000 69 ml T910 fjjim "0 r -J TT .*>:> 1 AS 1 i 'yyyi yyyp'yy yyKyy K^^^ K >%f>f>%r>CKK>&^I>^K v;';''.':'!'.'>x>;';'X';