Directory_and_Chronicle_1841 — Page 690

672

Biographical Notice of P. Prémare.

DEC.

ropeans have hitherto composed on the subject.* It is neither a sim- ple grammar, (as the author himself very modestly says,) nor a rheto- ric, as Fourmont has given us to understand. It is a treatise of literature nearly complete, wherein Prémare has put together, not merely all that he had collected upon the usage of particles, and the grammatical rules of the Chinese, but where he has also inserted a great number of observations upon style, phrases peculiar to the an- cient language, and the common idiom, proverbs, and the most usual tropes, the whole being supported by a host of examples cited textually, translated and commented upon when it was necessary.

Quitting the beaten track of the Latin grammarians whom all his predecessors, Varo, Fortigny, and Castorano, had taken for their models, he has struck out a method entirely new, whereby he has sought rather to render all method superfluous, by substituting for rules, the phrases themselves from which one may deduce them. This single statement comprehends at once an eulogium upon the work of Prémare, and the only well grounded criticism to which it is expos- ed. The author judged others by himself; and he believed that they would consent with him, to acquire the Chinese by practice, instead of studying it theoretically. Perhaps, as it has been said elsewhere, he considered particular cases too much, in the room of combining them in the form of general observations. His book is, in fine, one that furnishes excellent materials for a work, rather than a work really finished.

This form which Prémare gave to his Notitia, is what hindered it from being printed in China, and what will always be an objection to the European publication, because it contains in three small quarto volumes, little less than twelve thousand examples, and fifty thousand Chinese characters.

We cannot say that the plan pursued in it, is suited to an elemen- tary book designed for beginners; but when one has already a smat- tering of the language, he can get ideas on the subject from that work, which otherwise he could not obtain, but by a diligent reading of the better Chinese authors, and that for a long time.

Prémare, who from 1727 maintained with Fourmont a constant correspondence, and who showed in all his letters the greatest eager- ness to afford the academician all the aid that he asked of him, must have believed that he gave him peculiar pleasure, when he announc- ed to him, at the end of 1728, that he had sent him a grammar, by

*

Rémusat subsequently wrote a grammar, founded upon Prémare's, which is better adapted to the purposes of such a book.

Page 690Page 691