Page:A Chinese Biographical Dictionary.djvu/649

630

their surrender. Notwithstauding these eminent serrices, he fell into disfavour with king Chao Hsiaug, because he refused to conduct a new campaign against the Chao State, and was driven to commit suicide.

Po Chtl-i S Jg ^ (T. H ^ ). A.D. 772-846. One of China's greatest poets. As a child he was most precocious, knowing a con- siderable number of the written characters at the early age of seyen months, after haying had each one pointed out only once by his nurse. He graduated as chin shih at the age of seventeen, and eutered upon an official career. He became a member of the Han-lin College, a,nd soon rose to high rank under the Emperor Hsien Tsung. However one day he was suddenly banished to Chiang-chou as Magistrate, which somewhat disgusted him with public life. To console himself, he built a retreat at ^ |X| Hsiang-shan, by which name he is sometimes called; and there, together with eight congenial com- panions, he gave himself up to poetry and speculations upon a future life. To escape recognition and annoyance, all names were dropped, and the party was generally known as ^ [If ^ ^ the Nine Old Gentlemen of Hsiang-shan. This reaching the ears of the Emperor, he was transferred to be Goyernor of J^ Chung- chou; and on the accession of Mu Tsung in 821 he was sent as Governor to Hangchow. There he built one of the great embankments of the beautiful Western Lake, still known as ^ |^ Po*s Embankment. He was subsequently Gk)yernor of Soochow, and finally rose in 841 to be President of the Board of War. His poems were collected by Imperial command and engrayed upon tablets of stone, which were set up in a garden he had made for himself in imitation of his former beloyed retreat at Hsiang-shan. In several of these he ridiculed in scathing language the preposterous claims of the Tao Ti Ching (see Lao TzU): —