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222 false sentiment, defiance of probability whether physical or moral, pedantry, pornography, puns and other meretricious ornaments of style, intolerable platitudes, impossible adventures, and weary wastes of useless detail meet us everywhere. There is no want of ability. Plenty of genuine wit and humour is to be discovered by those who know where to look for it. True pathos is to be met with in works otherwise highly objectionable; excellent moral advice is only too abundant; there are graphic descriptions of real life, prodigious fertility of invention, a style frequently not devoid of elegance, and generally a far wider range of thought in political and social matters than the hedonist literature of ancient Japan could boast. It is the writer "totus teres atque rotundus" whose absence is so conspicuous. Sane thought, sustained good writing, disciplined imagination and some sense of order, proportion and consistent method are sadly to seek in the profusion of written and printed matter which this period has left to us.

The Japanese language underwent considerable change at this time. To supply the needs of the new civilisation a vast increase of the vocabulary became necessary, and Chinese words were adopted so freely that they now far outnumber those of native origin. As in English, however, the latter retain their position for all the essentials of language. At the same time the simplification of the somewhat cumbrous grammatical system of the old language made still further progress.

In this period the colloquial speech, which had been gradually diverging from the written language so far as at last to necessitate separate grammars for its elucidation, began to show itself in literature. Whether its partisans will succeed in erecting it into a literary dialect