Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/162

150 retired into seclusion and occupied himself with poetry and with the consolations of Buddhism, in which he was a firm believer. His lines on bidding adieu to Mêng Hao-jan, when the latter was seeking refuge on the mountains, are as follows:—

The accompanying "stop-short" by the same writer is generally thought to contain an effective surprise in the last line:—

Wang Wei has been accused of loose writing and incongruous pictures. A friendly critic defends him as follows:—"For instance, there is Wang Wei, who introduces bananas into a snow-storm. When, however, we come to examine such points by the light of scholarship, we see that his mind had merely passed into subjective relationship with the things described. Fools say he did not know heat from cold."

A skilled poet, and a wine-bibber and gambler to boot, was, who graduated about A.D. 730.