its songs have not lost their ancient popularity, for it is stated that they are "the favorite study of the better informed at the present remote period. Every well-educated Chinese has the most celebrated pieces by heart, and there are constant allusions to them in modern poetry and writings of all kinds" (Davis' Chinese, ii. 60).
The poems, which were collected from many different provinces, relate to a great variety of subjects. Some are political, some domestic, some sacrificial, others festive. We have rulers addressing the princes of their kingdom in laudatory terms, and princes in their turn extolling the ruler; complaints of unemployed politicians, and groans from oppressed subjects; husbands deploring their absence from their wives on military service; forlorn wives longing for the return of absent husbands; stanzas written by lovers to their mistresses, and maidens' invocations of their lovers; along with a few allusions to amatory transactions of a more questionable character. All these miscellaneous matters are treated in short, simple, and rather monotonous poems, which, if they have any beauty in the original, have completely lost it in the process of translation. There is sometimes pathos in the feelings uttered; but the expressions are of the most direct and unornamental kind, and the whole book partakes largely of that artlessness which we have noted asone of the ordinary marks of Sacred Books.
A few specimens will suffice. Here is the "protest of a widow against being urged to marry again:"—
1. "It floats about, that boat of cypress wood,
There in the middle of the Ho.
With his two tufts of hair falling over his forehead;
He was my mate;
And I swear that till death I will have no other.
O mother, O Heaven,
Why will you not understand me?
2. "It floats about, that boat of cypress wood,
There by the side of the Ho.
With his two tufts of hair falling over his forehead;
He was my only one;
