Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/239

 have no ships and no carriages ; their wanderings, how- ever, are the boundless flights of the imagination."

His younger brother, Su CH (1039-1112), poet and official, is chiefly known for his devotion to Taoism. He published an edition, with commentary, of the Tao- Tt-Ching.

One of the Four Scholars of his century is HUANG T'lNG-CHiEN (1050-1110), who was distinguished as a poet and a calligraphist. He has also been placed among the twenty-four examples of filial piety, for when his mother was ill he watched by her bedside for a whole year without ever taking off his clothes. The following is a specimen of his epistolary style :

" Hsi K'ang's verses are at once vigorous and purely beautiful, without a vestige of commonplace about them. Every student of the poetic art should know them thoroughly, and thus bring the author into his mind's eye.

"Those who are sunk in the cares and anxieties of this world's strife, even by a passing glance would gain therefrom enough to clear away some pecks of the cob- webs of mortality. How much more they who penetrate further and seize each hidden meaning and enjoy its flavour to the full ? Therefore, my nephew, I send you these poems for family reading, that you may cleanse your heart and solace a weary hour by their perusal.

" As I recently observed to my own young people, the true hero should be many-sided, but he must not be commonplace. It is impossible to cure that. Upon which one of them asked by what characteristics this absence of the commonplace was distinguished. ' It is hard to say/ I replied. 'A man who is not common-

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