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Rh the Former Han? It is difficult to reply to these questions categorically. What has the greatest weight with me in favour of Tso’s general credibility is the difference between his commentary and those of Kung-yang and Kuh-lëang. What of narrative belongs to the latter bears upon it the stamp of tradition, and evidently was not copied from written records but from accounts current in the mouths of men. It is, moreover, of comparatively small compass. Their Works must have been written when the memory of particular events in the past had in a great measure died out. If Tso’s sources of information had been available for them, they would, we may be sure, have made use of them. The internal evidence of the three Works leaves no doubt in the mind as to the priority of Tso’s. And as they all made their appearance early in the Han dynasty, we are carried back for the composition of Tso’s into the period of Chow. As his last entry is about an affair in the 4th year of duke Taou, who died B.C.430, and he mentions in it the Head of the Chaou family in Tsin by his honorary epithet of Sëang-tsze, which could not have been given before 424, we can hardly be wrong in assigning Tso to the fifth century before Christ. This brings him close to the age of Confucius who died in B.C.478. Tso may then have been a young man;—he could hardly be a disciple enjoying that intimate association with the sage which Lew Hin, Pan Koo, and other Chinese scholars were fond of asserting.

7. But to maintain the general credibility of Tso’s Chuen as having been taken from authoritative sources and records acknowledged as genuine among the States of China when he wrote, leaves us at freedom to weigh his narratives and form our own opinion on grounds of reason as to the degree of confidence which we ought to repose in them. There are few critics of eminence among the Chinese who do not allow themselves a certain amount of liberty in this respect. Ch‘ing E-ch‘uen laid down two canons on the subject. ‘The Chuen of Tso,’ he says, ‘is not to be entirely believed; but only that portion of it which is in itself credible.’ To this no objection can be taken; but he opens a very difficult question, when he goes on, ‘We should from the Chuen examine the details of the events referred to in the text, and by means of the text discriminate between what 33]