THOUGHTS ON THE FORMATION, &<: 401 



the radical is a component part of the character, while occa- 

 sionally it is very difficult to see what the connexion between 

 them is. 



Again, there is no principle of arrangement under each ra- 

 dical, except according to the number of strokes of which the 

 character is composed; and in a complete Chinese dictionary 

 there would be on an average 200 characters under each radical, 

 and in some cases more than 1000. The result of this is, that 

 it is necessary to have a supplementary index of characters, of 

 which the radical is difficult to recognize, and in this there is no 

 principle of arrangement, except the number of strokes. 



Gallery, of whose improvements I am about to speak, after 

 mentioning the way in which Chinese dictionaries are con- 

 structed, remarks, that it is not wonderful that so few persons 

 attain to a knowledge of the language, and they, only after 

 years of painful labour. In fact, to be able to use a dictionary, 

 is a great part of the whole business of learning to read Chinese. 

 The principle on which Gallery proceeds, he derived from his 

 instructor, Gon^alves, whom he speaks of as the ablest of 

 Chinese scholars, and who has published several works, in which 

 it is followed, though he has nowhere fully explained it. 



Most of these works are in Portuguese, which is perhaps the 

 reason why they seem not much known. Gallery's own work 

 is in a mixture of Latin and French. It was printed at Macao, 

 and it is said that most of the copies were accidentally destroyed. 

 It consists of two parts; the first introductory, the second, a 

 dictionary of perhaps 13,000 characters, arranged according to 

 his own method, in which the principle of Gonc,alves is em- 

 ployed, in subordination to a phonetic classification. The facility 

 with which this dictionary is used seems to make it desirable 

 that no other should be constructed until it has been considered 

 whether the same method, improved, if possible, ought not to 

 be employed in it. 



The principle of Go^alves is, as he states in his Arte China, 

 not wholly new. It is based on the almost necessary con- 

 nexion which there is between learning to read and learning to 

 write Chinese. 



The early missionaries held that all Chinese characters con- 

 sisted only of six different kinds of strokes. Gon^alves increases 

 the number of elementary strokes to nine. These may be com- 



26 



