﻿98 ON THE SECOND CLASSICAL 



in them we fee, as in a mirror, what may bell be- 

 come us, and what will be unbecoming; by their 

 influence we (hall be made focial, affable, benevo- 

 lent ; for as mufic combines founds in juft melody, 

 lb the ancient poetry tempers and compofes our 

 passions : the Odes teach us our duty to our parents 

 at home, and abroad to our prince; they instruct 

 us also delightfully in the various productions of 

 nature.' < Hast thou studied/ said the philosopher 

 o his son Peyu, ' the first of the three hundred Odes 

 on the nuptials of Prince Venvam and the virtuous 

 Tat Jin ? He who studies them not resembles a 

 man with his face against a wall, unable to advance 

 a step in virtue and wisdom.' Most of those Odes 

 are near three tboufiind years old, and some, if we give 

 credit to the Cbinefe annals, considerably older; but 

 others are somewhat more recent, having been com- 

 posed under the later emperors of the third family, 

 called Sheu. The work is printed in four volumes; 

 and towards the end of the first, we find the Ode, 

 which Couplet has accurately translated at the begin- 

 ning of the Tahio, or Great Science, where it is finely 

 amplified by the philosopher : I produce the original 

 from the Shi King itself, and from the book in which 

 it is cited, together with a double version, one verbal 

 and another metrical ; the only method of doing 

 justice to the poetical compositions of the Asiatics, 

 h is a panegyric on Vucun, Prince of Guey in the 

 province or Honang, who died, near a century old, 

 in the thirteenth year of the emperor Pingvang, seven 

 hundred and fifty-six years before the birth of Christ, 

 or one hundred and forty eight, according to Sir Isaac 

 Newton, after the taking of Troy; so that the C'inese 

 Poet might have been contemporary with Hesiod and 

 Homer, or, at least, must have written the Ode be- 

 fore the Iliad and Odyssey were carried into Greece by 

 Lycurgus. 



