1841.
Poo Nang Che tsung sin.
451
meaning. In fact, it may be considered a hopeless task for any one man to master the written language in all its branches; and probably there is not one in the national college, who can at first sight ex- plain every book-so various are these works in their style.
Compare Chinese book-making with this art amongst other na- tions, and you will soon perceive, that it widely differs from that of any other people ancient or modern.
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As for ancient learning in the west, we have to decipher old and defective manuscripts, requiring much toil and great critical judg- ment; for they are in foreign languages, which are imperfectly under- stood, since the people who spoke them have either ceased to exist; or have totally changed their idioms. And when, after much labor, the parchment is put into the printer's hands, it contains either the deeds of heroic nations of which the very traces are lost, or alludes to manners, usages, and religion to which the readers are stangers and can feel no attachment. The most stirring orations of a Demos- thenes and Cicero have lost much of their intrinsic value, since there exists no longer a Philip or Cataline to rouse every passion and feel- ing of patriotism. Sentiment, style, grandeur of conception, contain- ed in their classical writings, can never fail deeply to interest the tasteful reader; yet those who now identify themselves with the an- cients, and are so hurried on by enthusiasm as to become Greeks and Romans for a season, seem ridiculous in the eyes of many. Even the imitators of the noble patterns of eloquence and poetry are dis- regarded, and the only thing that remains for the attentive student of Grecian and Roman classics, is to embody their spirit in his works and to exhibit all their natural beauties in modern language, adapted to existing circumstances.
With the Chinese, however, it is quite different. When they first felt the want of a written medium, they engraved their characters on bamboo; and, though it be no easy work to read a book cut out on such a hard substance, yet it better resists the gnawing tooth of time, than our present flimsy paper, which the slightest touch or the most gentle attack of a worm reduces to tatters. It is not easy to divine how that prince of literature, Confucius, managed' with his innume rable blocks, when he composed the Shoo King.
Without telling us whence he got all his bamboos, he makes up stories and repeats speeches which were uttered more than a thousand years before his day, just as if he had been present and taken them down in short hand, and every Chinese looks upon his writing as genuine history. He was a most fortunate author, for his authority has never been
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