A CHINESE DICTIONARY. 411 



of works printed in the Chinese character, a class to which the 

 great mass of Chinese literature must always belong. A man 

 might give years to the study of this Stratford atte Bowe Chi- 

 nese without being able to read the commonest characters. 



A more radical reform has sometimes been proposed, namely, 

 simply to print Chinese in Eoman letters. Why are not the 

 absurd Chinese characters laid aside? has been asked in much 

 the same tone as the question one occasionally hears, of why 

 legal terms and forms should be used in conveyances ? Get rid 

 of these, it is said, and any deed might be written on a single 

 sheet of paper. The answer in the two cases is much alike. 



If it had been possible during the last six hundred years to 

 enforce brevity in legal instruments, not only the practice but 

 the theory of conveyancing would be very unlike what they 

 now are. The complicated relations which have grown up 

 amongst us, the various subtle modifications of which the idea 

 of property has been found susceptible, could never have been 

 developed on such a system. Not only the outward form, but 

 that which the form represents, would have been different. Our 

 thoughts, and the mode in which we express and record them, 

 act and react on one another. 



The influence of writing on the history of language, which 

 has been made the subject of an interesting essay by William 

 Humboldt, has been greater in China than anywhere else. The 

 hand and eye have, so to speak, brought into subjection the 

 voice and ear ; the reason of which is to be sought partly in the 

 original nature of the language, and partly in the general dif- 

 fusion of education. 



The language of China, especially the written language, is 

 in many respects what it is, in virtue of ,the character, which 

 we cannot now give up without introducing ambiguity and con- 

 fusion*. To a certain extent the Koman letters may be used, 

 and this has already been done, as for instance by Morison and 

 Gon9alves. The dialogues of the latter are particularly valuable, 

 from giving both the Mandarin and the Canton pronunciation. 



* The best plan by which indeed many of the difficulties would be removed, 

 would be to write all compound characters like fractions, I mean with the pronun- 

 ciation of the whole character above, and those of its elements below a horizontal 



line. Lin, a wood, for instance, would be denoted by 



mou, mou 



