428 Mr. Davis on the Poetry of the Chinese. 



While it is true that the Ciiinese themselves made no distinction between 

 comedy and tragedy, a translator from their language is still at liberty to 

 apply those terms, according to the serious and dignified, or comic and 

 familiar character of tlie composition which he selects. Tiie writer of this 

 has therefore not scrupled to give the title of tragedy to a rather favourable 

 specimen of the Chinese stage, wiiich he lately put into an English dress. 

 In the unity of the plot, the dignity of the personages, the grandeur and 

 importance of the events, the strict award of what is called poetical justice, 

 —nay, in tlie division into five principal portions or acts, it might satisfy 

 the most fastidious and strait-laced of European critics. Love and war, 

 too, constitute its whole action, and the language of the imperial lover is 

 frequently passionate to a degree one is not prepared to expect in such a 

 country as Ciiina. The nature of its civil institutions, and the degraded 

 state of the female sex, might generally be pronounced unfavourable to the 

 more elevated strains of the erotic muse. The bulk of the people, it might 

 be tliought, are too much straitened for the bare means of subsistence» 

 through the pressing demands of an excessive population, to admit of their 

 louu'nnn' about and sinmnn: after the most approved manner of idle shepherds 

 and shepherdesses ; and the well-educated class, which comprehends almost 

 all the higher ranks, or those in the employ of the government, too proud 

 and unfeeling to make love the theme of their compositions, which are 

 doubtless chicjly confined to moral and speculative, or descriptive subjects. 

 The Drama in question, however, if it served no better purpose, might 

 teach us not to pronounce too dogmatically on such points by reasonings a 

 priori, but to wait patiently for the fruits of actual research and experience. 



It has been observed in Part I. that the most flourishing era of modern 

 poetry was under the Tang dynasty. The most celebrated poet of that 

 ao-e was the renowned Letaepih, born in the province Szechuen, about 

 A.D. 720. He is made to give the following account of himself in a play 

 called the " Golden Token," which the writer of this once thought of 

 putting into English, but abandoned as deficient in plot and incident. 

 " When I was born," says the poet, " my mother dreamed that the morning 

 star shone upon her bosom, and hence called me Taepih, ' surpassing 

 brii>-htness :' when the Emperor Yucntsoong connnenced his reign, I was 

 admitted to an audience in the imperial hail, and conversed of state affairs: 

 the son of heaven conferred on me a repast, and helped me with his own 

 hand." The poetical character in Cliina has of old been associated with 



