Directory_and_Chronicle_1841 — Page 692

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Biographical Notice of P. Prémare.

DEC.

ed into England, which it is said, is destined for publication; at least is there not a security from the fear, some might have entertained, that so precious a manuscript might some day or other be lost or destroyed.*

Besides this grammar, Prémare also compiled, in company with P. Hervieu, a Latin-Chinese dictionary. He put into the Chinese part of it nearly all that we find in Danet, without forgetting a single phrase that gives to the words a new sense or usage. This work formed a large quarto volume. We know not that it has ever been sent to Europe.

Prémare also translated from the Chinese a drama entitled, "the Orphan of the House of Chaou." This piece, which furnished to Vol- taire some positions for his Orphelin de la Chine, is in Du Halde; and until the publication of the comedy translated into English by Mr. Davis, was the only specimen, from which one in Europe could judge of the Chinese theatre. We besides owe to Prémare the acquisition of a great number of Chinese books, which he sent to Fourmont for the Royal Library, and among which it is proper to notice the collec- tion of a hundred dramatic pieces, composed under the Yuen dynas- ty alone, the thirteen classics, and many romances, and collections of poetry. The correspondence of Premare was very extensive, and to judge of it by the four entire letters and the various extracts from others, which have been published, it must contain many interesting details. Unfortunately, Fourmont, who was the one to whom he wrote most frequently, has preserved scarcely any of them, or at least only one has been found

his among papers.

M

·

We are aware of three works written in Chinese, by Prémare; the life of St. Joseph which he had composed in 1718 or 1719; the Luh Shoo che yih or the True Sense of the six classes of characters,—a work in which the author, upon the origin of the Chinese characters, sets forth those singular hypotheses, of which we have already spok· en; and lastly, a small tract upon the attributes of God, which he has inserted in his Notitia Lingua Sinicæ, as an example of the manner in which one might write upon religious subjects in Chinese. There are still in the Royal Library, some treatises in Latin and French, in all of which the object is to establish, develope and defend the system of explaining Chinese characters and antiquities, embrac- ed by Bouvet and Prémare. Several of these tracts are from the hand of Prémare, and composed by him, in part from materials col- lected by Bouvet. We see there also the originals of many of his

Since published at Malacca in 1831.

*