Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/400

 388 CHINESE LITERATURE

this Emperor are very voluminous. They consist of a general collection containing a variety of notes on cur- rent or ancient topics, prefaces to books, and the like, and also of a collection of poems. Of these last, those produced between 1736 and 1783 were published, and reached the almost incredible total of 33,950 separate pieces. It need hardly be added that nearly all are very short. Even thus the output must be considered a record, apart from the fact that during the reign there was a plentiful supply both of war and rebellion. Burmah and Nepaul were forced to pay tribute ; Chinese supremacy was established in Tibet ; and Kuldja and Kashgaria were added to the empire. In 1795, on completing a cycle of sixty years of power, the Emperor abdicated in favour of his son, and three years later he died.

His Majesty's poetry, though artificially correct, was mediocre enough. The following stanza, " On Hearing the Cicada," is a good example, conforming as it does to all the rules of versification, but wanting in that one feature which makes the "stop-short" what it is, viz., that " although the words end, the sense still goes on " :

" The season is a month behind

in this land of northern breeze^ When first I hear the harsh cicada

shrieking through the trees. I look, but cannot mark its form

amid the foliage fair, Naught but a flash of shadow

which goes flitting here and there"

Here, instead of being carried away into some suggested train of thought, the reader is fairly entitled to ask " What then ? "

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