332
biography of Confucius and three of the Four Books of early Confucianism; namely, Ta-hsüeh, Chung-yung, and Lun-yü. While the discussion (based on the author's private correspondence with T. Korai Kitao) of the European influences in the portrait of Confucius standing with a temple of learning in the background is very interesting, the suggestion that Confucius is holding his own spirit tablet (pp. 271, 274, and 276) may be worth further investigation. The author's running criticism of the translations of the Ta-hsüeh and Chung-yung gets in the way of his presentation of Jesuit views and interpretation. One wonders why he did not include the Lun-yü in his discussion, particularly since Leibniz was particularly fond of this work (pp. 287-88).
Chapter 9 is devoted to the writings of Fr. Bouvet who arrived in China in 1688 and significantly revised the content of accommodation by discarding Ricci's Confucian-Christian synthesis in favor of a 'Chinese-Christian synthesis' focusing on the pre-Confucius portions of the I-ching. The author gives a clear picture of the different social and political circumstances under which Ricci and Bouvet laboured and how this influenced their approaches to accommodation. He shows the impact of Hermetism on Bouvet's fascination with and interpretation of the hexagrams of the I-ching as hieroglyphs which encoded the ancient and pristine religion of man. The discussion of the dissemination of Bouvet's views to Europe through his correspondence with Leibniz is most interesting, though the reading is somewhat tedious.
Chapter 10 brings down the curtain on the 17th century and the Jesuits with an examination of the extremist views found in the new accommodative compositions of Le Comte and Le Gobien which brought the Rites Controversy to a head and provoked the impeachment of their works in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1700. Finally, a four-page conclusion provides a succinct and adequate summary of the author's main points.
MELVIN P THATCHER
Cecil Beaton: Chinese Diary and Album New edition, O.U.P., Oxford, 1991 also, same author: India Diary and Album New edition, O.U.P., 1991
Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) was well-known, particularly in the