Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/178

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him recommended to Carlyle, and by Carlyle to John Stirling, who read it with delight, and said that the book was certainly written by a man of genius, but "a man of genius after the dragon pattern." The Ju Kiao Li,[1] as the novel is called in Chinese, is a pleasant enough book to read, but it takes no high place even among the inferior class of books of which it is a specimen. Nevertheless it is always pleasant to think that thoughts and images from the brain of a Chinaman have actually passed through such minds as those of Carlyle and Leigh Hunt.

After Rémusat followed Stanislas Julien and Pauthier. The German poet Heine says that Julien made the wonderful and important discovery that Mons. Pauthier did not understand Chinese at all and the latter, on the other hand, also made a discovery, namely that Monsieur Julien knew no Sanscrit. Nevertheless the pioneering work done by these writers was very considerable. One advantage they possessed was that they were thorough masters of their own language. Another French writer might be mentioned, Mons. D'Harvey St. Denys, whose translation of the T'ang poets is a breach made into one department of Chinese literature in which nothing has been done before or since.

In Germany Dr. Plath of Munich published a book on China, which he entitled "Die Manchurei." Like all books writen in Germany, it is a solid piece of work throughly well done. Its evident design was to give a history of the origin of the present Man-

  1. 玉嬌梨