Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/44

 city. They acquire reputation by ostentatiously extolling your Majesty, and render themselves conspicuous by an affectation of eccentricity, misleading the people by all sorts of unfounded statements. If this is not put a stop to your Majesty's power will be imperilled, and sedition will become rife; while if measures are taken in time, it will be for the good of the empire. I therefore beg that your Majesty will cause all books to be burnt, excepting those on medicine, divination, agriculture, and astronomy, and such as have been written during the present reign; but let all others, particularly poems, histories, and philosophical works, that may be privately possessed, be burnt in a heap at the city gates. If any man dare so much as to mention the two words poetry and history, let him be immolated in the market-place. If any still dare to regard ancient times as preferable to the present, let them and all their families be destroyed. If any officers hear of such offences being committed and fail to report them, let them be regarded as guilty of the same crime themselves. And let all those who have not burnt their books within thirty days after the promulgation of the Decree, be sent into penal servitude. If any persons are desirous of studying law and the Imperial decrees, let them take officers of state for their preceptors."

What a situation have we here for the historian! In what vivid colours might he not depict the consternation and alarm which such a project must have caused throughout the empire, the consultations which no doubt took place among the literati, the means devised for evading the cruel decree, and, above all, the scenes which ensued when volume upon volume of precious lore was flung into the bonfire before the very eyes of the indignant owners!