Mr. Davis on the Poetry of the Chinese. 443 



the foi-m of the white bird, rising from the <rrouiid by moonlight. The natural gloss of 

 her hair resembled the bright polish of a mirror, without the false assistance of unguents : 

 her face was perfectly lovely in itself, and needed not paint to adorn it. The native in- 

 telligence of her mind seemed to hav< gathered strength from retirement, and beholding 

 her, you might know she was of a superior order of beings : the cold and rigid strict- 

 ness of her manners, severe as she herself was soft and delicate, proved her to be no 

 ordinary inliabitant of the female apartments. Her sweet and feminine disposition, 

 comparable to fragi'ant flowers, might lead one at tirst to class her with other fair ones; 

 but the perfection of this pearl, the polish of this gem, discoverable on a longer ac- 

 quaintance, proved that she possessed qualities not inferior to the most spirited of the 

 opposite se.\." 



Under the descriptive class may be properly introduced a very singular 

 production, — a poem on London, composed by a Chinese who visited Eng- 

 land about the year 1813. Some notice of it appeared, for tlie first time, 

 in the Quarterly Review for 1817 ; but as the present opportunity admits 

 of the translation being accompanied by the original, no apology perhaps is 

 needed for the insertion of the whole poem, notwithstanding its length, 

 considering that it is a native of the remotest shores of Asia who sings the 

 glories of the British capital — ' prssertim cum oirine studium atque omne 

 ingenium contulerit Archias ad populi Romani gloriam laudemque cele- 

 brandam.' — The reviewer made a trivial mistake in stating that it was 

 written by ' a common Chinese,' for the author was in a respectable station 

 of life, and a person of good acquirements, who accompanied home an 

 Englislt gentleman as his instructor in the language. He was in fact a very 

 uixommon Chinese, inasmuch as he appears to have possessed an inclina- 

 tion and capacity for observation by no means usual among his travelled 

 countrymen, who are generally of a class much infeiior to hiinself. The 

 remarks are, as might be expected, confined exclusively to objects which 

 at once strike the eye, and they do not extend to the remoter points of 

 intelligent investigation, since the author's very limited knowledge of our 

 language, and total inability to comprehend the nature of our institutions, 

 placed such higher objects entirely out of his reach. Being a simple de- 

 scription, the poem contains but few flights of fancy; and as it would be a 

 hopeless attempt, however well they may sound in Chinese, to give dignity 

 in verse to matters so perfectly domestic and familiar to ourselves, it has 

 been judged best to subjoin a literal prose translation. 



