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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2009
In the arrangement of our subject, it may perhaps be useful to preserve so much regard to method, as to treat of it separately, under the two following heads:
Part I. Versification, or the particular rules which prevail in the mere construction of lines, couplets, and stanzas; and the sources whence these derive their melody and rythm.
Part II. A general view of the style and spirit of Chinese poetry, the character of its imagery and sentiment, and the extent to which it seems to admit of a precise classification, relatively to the divisions and nomenclature adopted in European literature.
To such as should find the first portion of our treatise dry and technical in its details, the second may possibly prove more attractive: but the order of discussion could hardly be inverted with propriety.
page 394 note * Low words, of any length, are certainly out of place in poetry: but that gn English versa is much the worse for consisting of ten monosyllables, does not so clearly appear; and Pope's own poems abound in monosyllabic lines, as may be proved by the slightest examination. A few instances occur even of couplets so distinguished:
‘Ah, if she lend riot arms, as well as rules,
What can she more than tell us we are fools!’
‘Talk what you will of taste, my friend, you'll find
Two of a face, as well as of a mind.’
‘—There are who have not—and, thank heav'n, there are
Who, if they have not, think not worth their care.’
page 394 note † A writer of the Mémoires sur les Chinois asserts, that their poetry is susceptible of even imitative harmony, and this is ho doubt true: but the instance which he adduces may perhaps make the reader smile. “On vante,” says he, “l'harmonie imitative d'Homère. Elle est trèsfamilière à la poésie Chinoise: au lieu de dire, par exemple, on entend le bruit des tambours, le Chiking dit, ‘On entend le tang-tang des tambours.’ Cette citation n'est pas des plus heureuses, mais c'est la seule qui me vienne.”
page 396 note * They might more strictly, perhaps, be termed triphthongal.
page 396 note † It must be kept in mind, that we here treat of the dialect of literature, and of educated persons. In the south of the empire, words end in k and t; but provincial corruptions and vulgarisms form no part of the subject.
page 400 note * For two of the most regular odes of this collection, vide infra, Part II.
page 403 note * China was formerly divided into separate and independent states.
page 404 note * Generally, because it is not meant to be asserted that Chinese verses are always, or entirely composed of such terms: they frequently contain a number of single characters, or simple terms; but whenever the others are used, their position in the verse is invariably as above staled.
page 406 note * ‘Que toajours dans vos vers—le sisns coupant less mots, Suspende l'hemistiche—en marque le repos.’
page 407 note * ‘Purpureus veluti—cúm flos, succisus atatro, Languescit moriens—lassove papavera callo Demisere caput—pluviâ cum forte gravantur.’
page 410 note * For some account of Taou yuen ming, see Mémoires sur les Chinois, tom. iii.
page 412 note * 8vo. London, 1823.
page 414 note * Morally speaking, and meaning the mind.
page 414 note † The ‘Heir in old Age,’ page 9.
page 417 note * Edit. Robinson: page 146.
page 414 note † It is evident that this transposition ruins the peculiar beauty of expression in the Latin, arising from the immediate contiguity of the antithetic, or corresponding words in the same line, which would be impracticable in the Chinese—a language entirely devoid of all inversion.
page 418 note * In conversing with Dr. Morrison on this property of Chinese verse, and remarking that it was conwnon to other languages, fee suggested my adding to the present treatise a close comparison (like the one which I have here instituted) with the instances adduced by Bishop Lowth from the Hebrew, For the hint, therefore, I stand indebted to him.
page 419 note * The dragon and phænix are here typical of the prosperous man rising to high fame and honours.
page 419 note † Intended to shew, that true scholarship and genius are not confined to the mere knowledge of letters.
page 422 note * No. 502.
page 425 note * One of the most striking examples appears as a quotation in Dr. Morrison's Dictionary, Part I. page 434:
“The royal legions were numerous and imposing;
Swift, as if they flew upon wings;
Impetuous, as a torrent or a cataract;
Firm, as the base of a mountain;
Resistless, as the course of a river;
Forming an unbroken line, in matchless order;
Their motions inscrutable, their prowess invincible,
They proceeded to the conquest of the state Seu.”
page 426 note * This alludes to a tragical event in history, which eccwred at the above-mentioned place. The emperor Yuentsoong (A.D. 702) had a mistress named Yangktiei, who was discovered carrying on an intrigue with a Tartar prince or noble, called Ganloshan. The emperor abstained from punishing the guilty female, which led to remonstrances on the part of his ministers; but instead of attending to them, he complied with the request of Yangkuei, and gave the Tartar a military command within his dominions. No sooner had the latter reached his destination, than he set up the standard of rebellion, and the emperor, hastily assembling a large army, and accompanied by his favourite Yangkuei, proceeded to meet him in Szechuen. When they had reached the base of the mountain Matuy, the soldiers mutinied, declaring that Yangkuei was the occasion of the rebellion, and demanding that she should be put to death before they consented to meet the enemy. The emperor was obliged to comply, and ordered her to be strangled on the spot—but his subsequent grief for her fate was the cause of his own death.
page 427 note * London, 1816. French version, Paris, 1819.
page 432 note * There never was any assertion more incorrect than this of Martinius, concerning the lighter poetry of China. “Insunt iis quædam de amando, sed castitatem magis quam nostrorum poetarum mollitiem spirantia, magnâ decori ubique curâ.”—In translating the excellent prose romance of Haoukeωchuen, otherwise unexceptionable, the writer of this was obliged to exclude two passages in verse, which were distinguished—‘minimâ decori curâ.’ There are whole poems of the same description.
page 432 note † Those half-mechanical conceits, of which the principal merit consists in the imitation, in tortured verses, of some object in art or nature, as a knot, a circle, a sceptre, &c. are well known to the Chinese: but sound taste and real genius have universally consigned these difficiles nugœ to a very low rank in literature, and we therefore abandon them without further notice.
page 433 note * See along paper, ‘Sur l'usage de la viande en Chine.’ Mémoires, T. xi.
page 433 note † Book iv. sect. 233.
page 433 note ‡ Bishop Heber's Journal proves that the Hindoos themselves are not so scrupulous as they have been supposed. They consume milk, too, which the Chinese, strange to say, never think of.
page 442 note * Called Lšhshin.
page 447 note * Literally, “Every street being devoted to flowers and willows,
Where is there space to plant mulberries and hemp (to produce silk and flax)?” —There are explanatory notes, and a commentary, in the original, which we have not thought it necessary to give here.
page 452 note * ‘La langue poétique des Chinois est véritablement intraduisible; on pourrait peut-étre ajouter qu'elle est souvent ininlelligible.’—M. Rémusat.
page 453 note * A mountain visited by the Embassy in 1816.
page 455 note * Ille et nefasto te posuit die,' &c. Horat. in Arborem, II. 13.
page 460 note * The milky way.
page 461 note * The priests of Budh are assembled by the ringing of bells, &c. to their entertainments of herbs, fruits, and sweetmeats, being forbidden the use of flesh and wine. Their monasteries are in the recesses of hills, wherever hills prevail, and always in the most romantic spots, The two last lines allude to the following tradition. When Yoonglŏ, of the family called Ming, usurped the whole empire (A.D. 1400), one of his nephews, the proper heir, shaved his head, and assuming the habit of a priest, retired to the depths of the mountains. The living rock there opened, and poured out a constant supply of grain for the support of the royal refugee. After his death, the miracle still went on, until a covetous priest, not satisfied with the quantity of grain thus obtained, enlarged the hole or fissure in the stone through which it flowed,—when the supply immediately stopped altogether, as the proper reward of his cupidity.