SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART
73
tions, being a translation of the Ch'eng Yu K'ao by Ch'iu Chin (A.D. 1419-1495), a famous scholar of the Ming Dynasty. It is, in Herbert A. Giles' words: 'usually the first work of reference suggested by the teacher when his pupils' acquaintance with book-Chinese passes from mere acquisition of individual characters in simple locutions to the study of the figurative and allusive language which forms the backbone of general literature'.47 The first edition of 300 copies was published in Hong Kong by Kelly and Walsh and was well received at first by such reviewers as E.J. Eitel and E.H. Parker; but an unsolicited, detailed and acerbic review by the relentless controversialist and sinologue, Herbert A. Giles, gave rise to a lengthy debate in the China Review, which reverberated through three volumes of the journal.48 This debate on the meaning of certain Chinese characters is a splendid example of odium sinologorum and furor academicus. Lockhart, after suffering Giles' first furious onslaught on his credentials as a Chinese scholar, asked Ho Kai for an opinion on Giles' linguistic strictures and the obliging doctor responded with a short letter to the China Review in which he stated of Giles' review that about one-third is correct and consequently valuable, another one-third on doubtful and trivial points not altogether right; the remaining one-third is totally wrong.”49 Giles rushed into print in a further lengthy article to crush the very judicious Ho Kai. He wrote: 'Of Dr. Ho Kai as a "competent native scholar" I had never before heard; and as he has not yet thought fit to submit to public approval any specimens of his scholarship, competent or otherwise, he may be dismissed incontinently from the case.'50 Dismissed he was for Ho Kai did not venture to re-enter the lists.
The controversy centred, among other linguistic problems, on the meaning of the characters, translated by Gustave Schlegel as 'cowcloth'. This eminent Dutch Professor of Chinese at Leyden University, co-editor with Henri Cordier of T'oung Pao, provided a magisterial summing-up in 1897 of the linguistic issues involved.51 There the controversy came to an end with, it would seem, the contestants mutually exhausted. Lockhart, who was a warm-hearted and balanced man, appears not to have borne Giles malice. In 1931 he paid Giles, by now Professor of Chinese at Cambridge University, the tribute of producing a compilation of the Chinese texts which underlay the passages published in the prose volume of Giles' Gems of Chinese Literature, the first edition of which appeared in
SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART
73
tions, being a translation of the Ch'eng Yu K'ao *## by Ch'iu Chin (A.D. 1419-1495), a famous scholar of the Ming Dynasty. It is, in Herbert A. Giles' words: 'usually the first work of reference suggested by the teacher when his pupils' acquaintance with book- Chinese passes from mere acquisition of individual characters in simple locutions to the study of the figurative and allusive language which forms the backbone of general literature'.47 The first edition of 300 copies was published in Hong Kong by Kelly and Walsh and was well received at first by such reviewers as E.J. Eitel and E.H. Parker; but an unsolicited, detailed and acerbic review by the relentless controversialist and sinologue, Herbert A. Giles, gave rise to a lengthy debate in the China Review, which reverberated through three volumes of the journal.48 This debate on the meaning of certain Chinese characters is a splendid example of odium sinolo- gicum and furor academicus, Lockhart, after suffering Giles' first furious onslaught on his credentials as a Chinese scholar, asked Ho Kai for an opinion on Giles' linguistic strictures and the obliging doctor responded with a short letter to the China Review in which he stated of Giles' review that about one-third is correct and con- sequently valuable, another one-third on doubtful and trivial points not altogether right; the remaining one-third is totally wrong.”49 Giles rushed into print in a further lengthy article to crush the very judicious Ho Kai. He wrote: 'Of Dr. Ho Kai as a "competent native scholar" I had never before heard; and as he has not yet thought fit to submit to public approval any specimens of his scho- larship, competent or otherwise, he may be dismissed incontinently from the case.'50 Dismissed he was for Ho Kai did not venture to re-enter the lists.
The controversy centred, among other linguistic problems, on the meaning of the characters, translated by Gustave Schlegel as 'cowcloth'. This eminent Dutch Professor of Chinese at Leyden University, co-editor with Henri Cordier of T'oung Pao, provided a magisterial summing-up in 1897 of the linguistic issues involved,$1 There the controversy came to an end with, it would seem, the con- testants mutually exhausted. Lockhart, who was a warm-hearted and balanced man, appears not to have borne Giles malice. In 1931 he paid Giles, by now Professor of Chinese at Cambridge Univer- sity, the tribute of producing a compilation of the Chinese texts which underlay the passages published in the prose volume of Giles* Gems of Chinese Literature, the first edition of which appeared in
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