Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/89

 BOOK THE SECOND THE HAN DYNASTY (B.C. 2oo-A.D. 200)

CHAPTER I

THE "FIRST EMPEROR" THE BURNING OF THE BOOKS MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS

NEVER has the literature of any country been more closely bound up with the national history than was that of China at the beginning of the period upon which we are now about to enter.

The feudal spirit had long since declined, and the bond between suzerain and vassal had grown weaker and weaker until at length it had ceased to exist. Then came the opportunity and the man. The ruler of the powerful State of Ch'in, after gradually vanquishing and absorbing such of the other rival States as had not already been swallowed up by his own State, found himself in B.C. 221 master of the whole of China, and forthwith proclaimed himself its Emperor. The Chou dynasty, with its eight hundred years of sway, was a thing of the past, and the whole fabric of feudalism melted easily away.

This catastrophe was by no means unexpected. Some

forty years previously a politician, named Su Tai, was

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