Mr. Davis on the Poetry of the Chinese. 417 



independently of instruction:— the middle class of men {Heen, good or moral) are so 

 after instruction— the lowest order {Yu, stupid or worthless) are vicious in spite of 



instruction. 



These three classes are, strange to say, most exactly defined in the fol- 

 lowing passage from the Works and Days of Hesiod*— the sentiment could 

 scarcely be more nearly rendered. 



OJto; 1^1, nANAPI2T02, 05 avTOi ■Ko.na. ko^Vsi , 

 E20AO2 Sau KMuiti , 5; iv uwovTi Tnturxt , 

 O5 Js Ki ftrri' Ki/To; ><i£ji , [inr xXXn x.x.iui 

 Ev «ir|Kaj ^aXXriTxi , iS' xvr AXPHIOS am; . 



Of the different sorts of parallelism it is perhaps needless to observe, that 

 in no other language could they be carried to such a height as they are in 

 Chinese : the exact equality in the number of words, which form each line 

 of a poetical couplet, and the almost total absence of recurring particles 

 that encumber our European languages, admit of their being adapted with 

 pecuhar effect. There is something of an antithetic parallel in the two 

 first lines ofHorace' s well-known apologue. 



" Rusticus urbanum murem nius paupere fertur 

 Accepisse cavo, veterem vetus hospes amicuni." 



But to make this resemble the arrangement of a Chinese couplet— to 

 make the antithesis sentential as well as verbal, it would be necessary to set 

 prosody at defiance, and write the corresponding words opposite to one 

 another, somewhat in the following way : 



Rusticus mus, vetus hospes, accepisse fertur 

 Urbanum murem, veterem amicum, cavo paupere.f 



Such refinements, though to some they may appear to savour of trifling, 

 certainly contribute to iieighten the peculiar rythmus of the poetry inU) 

 which they are introduced, at the same time that they tend to increase its 

 diflSculties, and enhance the merit of the composition on the same prin- 

 ciple that makes our neighbours, the French, so tenacious of rhyming 



* Edit Robinson : page 146. 



■f- It^ is evident that tliis transposition ruins the peculiar beauty of expression in the Latin, 

 arismg from the immediate contiguity of the antithetic, or corre.sponding words in the same 

 line, which would be impracticable in the Chinese— a language entirely devoid of all inversion. 



