of which the Peking Gazette may be taken as a typical exemplar, would not necessarily be able to understand an historical work, while books on philosophy, on Buddhism or on Taoism would be almost unintelligible without a special study of their style. Modern literature can hardly be said to exist, and novels, as we understand them, are almost all placed under the ban of Imperial prohibition. They are to be found in limited numbers, it is true, but there are no modern society novels. Those which are procurable place the scene in a bygone dynasty, and few are free from objectionable episodes. The educated classes profess to despise fiction, but I suppose that there is not a single Chinese of the lettered class who has not read the few historical novels that are not in the "Index Expurgatorius," and are considered to be classics in their particular line.
I close these necessarily condensed remarks on the written language with a few examples illustrative of various styles of Chinese composition.
The first is the opening verse of an ode in which a gentleman deplores his disappointment in not meeting a lady according to engagement. It is selected, more or less at random, from the Shih Ching, or Book of Odes, collected by Confucius. The date is not known, but it must have been composed long before the time of Confucius, who was born B.C. 552. Against each character the meaning is placed, in order to show how it is that the Chinese language is, to a certain extent, independent of grammar or grammatical particles, and also how easy it is to arrive at the meaning of many passages of primitive Chinese. It should be noted that Chinese characters are written in columns, commencing on the right hand side of the page.
scratch 搔 love 愛 wait 俟 quiet 靜
head 首 yet 而 I 我 girl 女
undecided 踟 not 不 at 於 her 其
halt 蹰 see 見 city wall 城 beauty 姝
corner 隅
Here is the rendering given in Dr. Legge's translation[1]: -
How lovely is the retiring girl,
She was to await me at a corner of the wall.
Loving and not seeing her
I scratch my head and am in perplexity.
- ↑ The Chinese Classics, Dr. Legge, Vol. i., Part 4, p. 68.
