498 ANNUAL REGISTER, 1817. 



poetry, or those parts which have 

 been conipared with the Greek 

 chorus, and in which sentiment, 

 eloquence, passion, are all ex- 

 pressed ; that is to say, he has left 

 out the very best parts of the play. 

 Our countryman. Dr. Hurd, in 

 his " Discourse on Poetical Imi- 

 tation," formed a very different 

 opinion of this tragedy from that 

 of Voltaire. He conceived that it 

 embraces the two essentials of dra- 

 matic poetry, unity and integrity 

 of action — and a close connexion 

 of the incidents of the story ; for, 

 first, he observes " the action is 

 strictly one j the destruction of 

 the House of Chao is the single 

 event on which our attention turns 

 from the beginning j we see it 

 gradually prepared and brought 

 on ; and with its completion the 

 tragedy finishes. Secondly, the 

 action proceeds witli as much ra- 

 pidity as Aristotle himself de- 

 mands" — and having noticed its 

 resemblance in many points to the 

 Electra of Sophocles — "let me 

 add," says he, " an intermixture 

 of songs in passionate parts, 

 heightened into sublime poetry, 

 and somewhat resembling the cha- 

 racter of the ancient chorus." Had 

 Premare translated more of these 

 lyrics, he w^ould probably have 

 found the resemblance still more 

 complete. 



The comedy of an " Heir in his 

 Old Age," is the simple represen- 

 tation of a story in domestic life — 

 a plain, "unvarnished tale," in 

 which Chinese manners and Chi- 

 nese feelings are faithfully deline- 

 ated and expressed, in a natural 

 manner, and in appropriate lan- 

 guage. Two things, however, 

 must be borne in mind by the 

 European reader, to enable him to 



enter fully into the spirit of this 

 play — first, that filial piety is, 

 among the Chinese, the first of 

 virtues, and the lack of it, one of 

 the worst of crimes ; that it is the 

 grand basis on which all the reli- 

 gious, moral, and civil institutions 

 of the empire are founded ; that 

 the greatest misfortune in life is 

 the want of a son to honour and 

 console his aged parents, and to 

 visit annually their tombs when 

 dead — and, secondly, that to afford 

 every means of procuring a son, 

 a man may take inferior wives or 

 concubines, who are generally 

 purchased from poor relations ; 

 such wives having no rightsof their 

 own, and their children being 

 considered as the cliildren of the 

 first or legitimate wife, who call 

 her by the name of mother, and 

 are entitled to the same rights and 

 privileges as her own children. 



The dramatis personce of this 

 play are made up entirely of the 

 members of a family in the mid- 

 dling class of society, consisting 

 of an old man, his wife, his second 

 or inferior wife, his nephew, his 

 son-in-law, and his daughter. The 

 old man, having amassed con- 

 siderable wealth by trade, and 

 having no son to console him in 

 his old age, and to perform the 

 obsequies at his tomb, had taken 

 a second wife, whose pregnancy is 

 announced in the opening of the 

 play. In order to propitiate hea- 

 ven to favour him with a son in 

 his old age, he makes a sacrifice 

 of all the small debts due to him, 

 by burning the documents, whicli 

 at the same time serves to quiet 

 some scruples of conscience as to 

 the mode in which j)art of his 

 money had been acquired. He 

 then divides his pi-operty between 



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