Page:Columbia University Lectures on Literature (1911).djvu/90

76 though it reflects apparently the orthodox views of the governing classes, — emperors, feudal lords, and officials, — it is one-sided as a purely Confucianist work. A few generations after Confucius Chinese Literature reveals characteristics of culture, folk-lore, and art which must have required cen- turies to develop, and which are entirely lost in such works as the Shu-king, because they did not fit into the orthodox frame of a Confucian classic. The records regarding that early legendary period of Chinese national life have, of course, to be studied cum grano salis: the good men shown up in them are much too good, and the bad men are much too bad, to be considered as having been drawn from life. But this need not condemn the book as entirely worthless. Hypercritical minds, which can often be proved to be the least critical, have tried to discredit the Confucian tradition to suit some sensa- tional theory. Thus we hear that the early heroes of Chinese tradition down to the time when undoubted history begins were not Chinese at all, but were Indian gods grafted on the real Chinese history; and another much too ingenious author recently wrote a book with motives quite different from those which resulted in Archbishop Whately's " Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Bonaparte," in which he tried to prove that no such personage as Confucius ever lived, and that the entire early Chinese history did not exist.

(3) The "Canon of Odes" {Shi-king), containing over three hundred poems which have been current among the people before Confucius' time. Some of these odes can be fixed in connection with certain historical facts, and many may have been sung by the nation and its bards centuries before they were collected, arranged, and edited by Confucius, who may be said to have done for them what the Grimm brothers did for the German fairy tales. The odes of the Shi-king are a mine of information for the most ancient culture of the Chinese; but they are, of course, dry reading for those who expect a literal translation. If the translation of poetry