43'2 Mn. Davis on the Poetry of the Chinese. 



that Virgil wrote, and all subsequent epics have been more or less, in concep- 

 tion at least, if not in execution, imitations of these two, or of each other. 

 Voltaire himself has informed us, that when he consulted the advice of a 

 friend previous to composing his own poem, he met with no better encou- 

 ragement than this : " You undertake a work which is not suited to us — les 

 Fran9ais n'ont pas la tete epique " — But without going farther for reasons, 

 the first part of this treatise may perhaps have served to demonstrate, that 

 the turn and construction of Chinese verse unfits it for such sustained com- 

 positions. To be esteemed good, it must be so highly elaborated, that the 

 costliness of the material may place limits to tlie size of the structure. It 

 would be a tremendous attempt to preserve such nicely balanced couplets 

 through the slow length of an epic poem ; not to mention, that when the 

 task had been completed, it might weary the reader as much as it had dis- 

 quieted the author, and bestow upon the first all the sleep of which it had 

 deprived the second. The only long metrical narrations of the Chinese are 

 some novels and licentious * pieces, in which the structure of the verse 

 is altogether loose — a sort of ' stans pede in uno ' measure — and devoid 

 of those characteristics which constitute the chief merit of their poetry. 

 Such compositions, accordingly, do not possess that degree of estimation, 

 nor hold that rank in literature which, as we have before observed, is 

 necessary to the due perfection of every department of the art.t 



There is another description of poetry which we should not look for in 

 China, namely, the Pastoral, — and for very obvious reasons. It has not 

 only been the care of the government, from the earliest ages, to give every 

 direct encouragement to agriculture, and to the production of food for man 



* Tliere never was any assertion more incorrect than this of Martinius, concerning the 

 lighter poetry of China. " Insunt iis qua:dam dc amando, sed castitatcm magis quam nostro- 

 rum poetarum raoUitiem spirantia, vmgnd decori ubique cura." — In translating the excellent 

 prose romance of HaoulcetDchuen, otherwise unexceptionable, the writer of this was obliged to 

 exclude two passages in verse, which were distinguished — ' minima decori cura.' There are 

 whole poems of the same description. 



f 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 

 diffciles nuga to a very low rank in literature, and we therefore abandon them without further 

 notice. 



