Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/202

 i po CHINESE LITERATURE

Another well-known scholar is YEN SHIH-KU (579- 645). He was employed upon a recension of the Classics, and also upon a new and annotated edition of the history of the Han dynasty ; but his exegesis in the former case caused dissatisfaction, and he was ordered to a provincial post. Although nominally reinstated before this degradation took effect, his ambition was so far wounded that he ceased to be the same man. He lived henceforth a retired and simple life.

Li Po-YAO (565-648) was so sickly a child, and swallowed so much medicine, that his grandmother insisted on naming him Po-yao = Pharmacopoeia, while his precocious cleverness earned for him the sobriquet of the Prodigy. Entering upon a public career, he neglected his work for gaming and drink, and after a short spell of office he retired. Later on he rose once more, and completed the History of the Northern Ch'i Dynasty.

A descendant of Confucius in the thirty-second degree, and a distinguished scholar and public function- ary, was K'UNG YING-TA (574-648). He wrote a com- mentary on the Book of Odes, and is credited with certain portions of the History of the Sui Dynasty. Besides this, he is responsible for comments and glosses on the Great Learning and on the Doctrine of the Mean.

Lexicography was perhaps the department of pure scholarship in which the greatest advances were made. Dictionaries on the phonetic system, based upon the work of Lu Fa-yen of the sixth century, came very much into vogue, as opposed to those on the radical system initiated by Hsu Shen. Not that the splendid work of the latter was allowed to suffer from neglect. Li YANG-PING, of the eighth century, devoted much

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