1841.
Biographical Notice of P. Prémare.
669
a condition to discharge his duties in the provinces. We learn, by a letter* that he addressed to P. le Gobien, the 1st of November, 1700, that he was then at Yuenchow foo in Keängse. One readily per- ceives that he was still under the influence of those impressions from which a traveler finds it so difficult to secure himself at first, and to get rid of afterwards. The weak side of Chinese institutions had up to that time struck him singularly, and the abuses, inevitable in the administration of a vast empire, and of which so many superficial travelers have given descriptions more or less darkened, were all that he had time to observe.
The learned missionary had formed a very favorable opinion of the Chinese, and fully recognized the falsity of his prejudices, when he wrote the letter,† in which he refuted so completely the fables and absurdities with which the Relations, translated from the Arabic by the Abbé Renaudot, are replete, and of which the notes and ad- ditions by the translator, are far from being free. That celebrated book, many passages of which would not disgrace the collection of Arabian tales, has at all times excited the indignation of the mission- aries to China, among whom many have set themselves to correct its inaccuracies; but the refutatiou of P. Prémare is the most com- plete and the most solid. From that time, he devoted himself to the study of the Chinese language and literature, no more, like most of the other missionaries, with the single view of discharging the ordinary duties of preaching, but as a man who wished, after the ex- ample of the most distinguished among them, to put himself in a state to write in Chinese on religious subjects, and to search, for himself, in the national monuments, for weapons to rebut error, and cause the truth to triumph. His success in this new career was so remarkable, that after a few years he was able to compose some books in Chinese which are esteemed for their elegance of style.
It was while he was occupied in profound researches into Chinese antiquities, that P. Prémare found himself led to undertake a singular project which had misled several of the missionaries of China, and, what is most remarkable, precisely those who had best studied the ancient Chinese authors. The scheme was to search in the King (K), and in the literary monuments of the ages that preceded the burning of the books, for traces of traditions which were supposed to have been transmitted to the authors of those books, by the patri-
#
See Lettres Edifiantes, vol. XVI, page 392.
+ See Lettres Edifiantes, vol. XXI. page 183.-See Chinese Repository, vol. I, pages 6, 42, for an account of Renaudot's work.