422 Mn. Davis on the Poetry of the Chinese. 



inclinations, to the prejudices of those who are still partial to the literal side 

 of the question. 



To take up our subject at its commencement — the earliest poetry of 

 China, like that of all other nations, appears to have consisted in songs 

 and odes, intended occasionally to be accompanied by music. Such is the 

 nature of that curious compilation, made more than two thousand years 

 since by Confucius, and illustrative of a state of things certainly very 

 different from that which exists at the present day. It is divided into four 

 portions, of which the first, the largest, and most interesting, is called 

 A'k'w foong, " the manners of different states," — that is, of the states into 

 which a portion of the present empire was then divided. These had all of 

 them a kind of feudal dependence on one sovereign, who, in order to pos- 

 sess himself of the best means of estimating the character and sentiments 

 of the various people more or less under his sway, was furnished with the 

 songs and odes most popular among each of them. This agrees in a singular 

 manner with the following remark of a writer in the Spectator.* " I have 

 heard," says he, " that a minister of state in the reign of Queen Elizabeth 

 had all manner of books and ballads brought to him, of what kind soever, 

 and took great notice how much they took with the people ; upon which 

 he would, and certainly might, very well judge of their present dispositions, 

 and of the most proper way of applying them according to his own pur- 

 ])oses." 



The bulk of these curious vestiges of antiquity in the Sheeking do not 

 rise beyond the most primitive simplicity, and their style and language, 

 without the minute commentary that accompanies them, would not be 

 always intelligible at the present day. This commentary, however, explains 

 and elucidates their meaning, and, by means of the historical associations 

 which it serves to convey, renders these songs the favourite study of the 

 better informed at the present remote period. Every well-educated Chi- 

 nese has the most celebrated pieces by heart, and there are constant 

 allusions to them in modern poetry and writings of all kinds. Each stanza 

 frequently ends with a species of repetition, or ' refrain,' common to such 

 compositions in general, and, in proof of the extreme simplicity of these pri- 

 mitive songs,one of them is presented below. In the paraphrase which fol- 

 lows, it has been necessary to embody the full sense of what is only hinted at 



• No. 502. 



1 



