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xii this failure, due, as we are informed in the history above quoted, to his neglect of the beaten track of academic study, we owe the existence of his great work; not, indeed, his only production, though the one by which, as Confucius said of his own "Spring and Autumn," men will know him. All else that we have on record of P'u Sung-ling, besides the fact that he lived in close companionship with several eminent scholars of the day, is gathered from his own words, written when, in 1679, he laid down his pen upon the completion of a task which was to raise him within a short period to a foremost rank in the Chinese world of letters. Of that record I here append a close translation, accompanied by such notes as are absolutely necessary to make it intelligible to non-students of Chinese.

"Clad in wistaria, girdled with ivy;" thus sang Ch'&uuml;-P'ing in his Falling into Trouble. Of ox-headed devils and serpent Gods, he of the long-nails never wearied to tell. Each interprets in his own way the music of heaven; and whether it be discord or not, depends upon antecedent