Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/354

 342 CHINESE LITERATURE

he so much loved to describe, that his aforesaid grandson printed and published the collection now so universally famous. Since then many editions have been laid before the Chinese public, the best of which is that by Tan Ming-lun, a Salt Commissioner, who flourished during the reign of Tao Kuang, and who in 1842 produced, at his own expense, an excellent edition in sixteen small octavo volumes of about 160 pages each.

Any reader of these stories as transferred into another language might fairly turn round and ask the why and the wherefore of the profound admiration to use a mild term which is universally accorded to them by the literati of China. The answer is to be found in the incomparable style in which even the meanest of them is arrayed. All the elements of form which make for beauty in Chinese composition are there in overwhelming force. Terseness is pushed to its extreme limits ; each particle that can be safely dispensed with is scrupulously eliminated, and every here and there some new and original combination invests perhaps a single word with a force it could never have possessed except under the hands of a perfect master of his art. Add to the above copious allusions and adaptations from a course of read- ing which would seem to have been co-extensive with the whole range of Chinese literature, a wealth of meta- phor and an artistic use of figures generally, to which only the writings of Carlyle form an adequate parallel, and the result is a work which for purity and beauty of style is now universally accepted in China as among the best and most perfect models. Sometimes the story runs plainly and smoothly enough, but the next moment we may be plunged into pages of abstruse text, the meaning of which is so involved in quotations from and allusions

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