314 



ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE^ 



with a forgetfulness of the old, which have hereby been suffered to become 

 obsolete, that M. de Guignes was able, in his day, to collect and put into 

 his dictionary eight thousand characters ; the six national dictionaries 

 that were chiefly in use about a century since, give from fifteen to about 

 thirty thousand ; and lastly, the Imperial Chinese Dictionary, composed 

 by order of the Emperor Kang-khee, in 1710 of our own era, comprises 

 not less than forty-three thousand four hundred and ninety-six characters I 

 Dr. Marshman, in his valuable Elements of Chinese Grammar," ob- 

 serves that, in the Imperial Dictionary these stand arj anged as follows : 



Characters ill the body of the work SI, 214 



Added, principnlly obsolete and incorrect forms of others 6,423 



Characters not before classed in any dictionary - - - 1,659 



Characters without name or meaning 4,200 



43,496 



We have here, therefore, a confession by the Chinese lexicographers 

 themselves, that upwards of ten thousand of the characters admitted into 

 the Imperial Dictionary, being nearly a fourth of the whole, are useless, 

 and for the most part unintelligible, in the present day ; independently of 

 which, " a considerable number," observes Dr. Marshman, "of the 31,214 

 characters adopted from the former dictionaries have no meaning affixed 

 to them ; but are merely given as obsolete, or current but incorrect forms 

 of other characters, to which the compilers of the dictionary have referred 

 the reader for their meaning."* Whence we may fairly conclude that, of 

 the characters which are still allowed to figure away in the written language 

 of China, nearly half of the whole convey no ideas whatever, and are alto- 

 gether representatives without constituents. 



Were we able to follow even the latest of these up to their origin, and 

 to prove that they have not issued, in the remotest manner, from the two 

 hundred and fourteen elementary marks, which Dr. Marshman has endea- 

 voured to do, we should probably still find them derived in the same man- 

 ner from forms or symbols of things, and that they were at first direct imi- 

 tations or conventional representatives ; still, as I have already shown, 

 united and compounded, or in some other way modified to express abstract 

 or complicated ideas. It must be obvious, however, that characters thus 

 constituted must be very loose and perplexing ; and such, in fact, they are 

 often found to be, by the most expert and best instructed natives. It must 

 be obvious, at the same time, that a system of picture-writing, thus con- 

 structed and perfected, may, in a considerable degree, answer the purpose 

 of alphabetic marks 5 1 and it is doubtless owing alone to the perfection 



* Elements of Chinese Grammar, vpiih a preliminary Dissertation on the Characters and 

 Colloquial Medium of the Chinese, &c. By J. Marshman, D.D. Serampore, 1814. 4to. 



t Amon^ the numerous and important Library establishments of the present day, one 

 has lately been opened by the co-operation of a committee of enlightened and public-spirited 

 individuals, for a regular coiu'se of instruction by lectures in many ot the most extensively 

 spoken languages of the East, and, among the rest, in Chinese. The President is Lord Bex- 

 ley : among the Vice-Prtsidents are Sir George Staunton, Bart., and Sir T. R. Raffles; its 

 situation is in Bartlett's Buildings, Holborn ; and while instruction in these valuable branches 

 of literature is hereby offered to every one, it is gratuitously be stowed on all Christian Mis- 

 sionaries who are desirous of taking advantage of its benefits. It is, hence, emphatically de- 

 nominated, a " Language Institution in Aid op the Propagation of Christiani- 

 TT," and few establishments of the present day are more entitled to the support of the nation^ 

 ©r of the world. 



It should be further stated, moreover, in order to excite the fullest confidence of the public ^ 



