which it is at present in my power to speak of in detail are those classified as A 1 to A 4, and as B 2.
The authenticity of these works is considered to be above reasonable suspicion; for though an emperor who reigned in the third century B. C., did indeed order (B. C. 212) that they should all be destroyed, yet this emperor died not long after the issue of his edict, which was formally abrogated after twenty-two years; and subsequent dynasties took pains to preserve and recover the missing volumes. As it is of course improbable that every individual would obey the frantic order of the emperor who enjoined their destruction, there appears to be sufficient ground for Dr. Legge's conclusion, that we possess the actual works which were already extant in the time of Confucius, or (in so far as they referred to him) were compiled by his disciples or their immediate successors.
Subdivision 1.—The Lun Yu.
1. The first of the four Books is the Lun Yu, or "Digested Conversations." From internal evidence it seems to have been compiled in its actual form, not by the immediate disciples of Confucius, but by their disciples. Its date would be "about the end of the fourth, or beginning of the fifth, century before Christ;" that is, about 400 B.C. It bears a nearer resemblance to the Christian Gospels than any other book contained in the Chinese Classics, being in fact a minute account, by admiring hands, of the behavior, character, and doctrine, of the great Master, Confucius. Since, however, it contains no notice of the events of his life in chronological order, it answers much more accurately to the description given by Papais of the "[Greek: logi]" composed by Matthew in the Hebrew dialect than to that of any of our canonical Gospels.
Biographical materials may indeed be discovered in it; but they occur only as incidental allusions, subservient to the main object of preserving a record of his sayings. In the minute and painstaking mode in which this task is performed there is even a resemblance to Boswell's "Johnson;" as in that celebrated work, we have as it were a photographic picture of the great man's conversation, taken by a reverent and humble follower.
