University of Virginia Library

ADVERTISEMENT.

IT is the principal merit of these volumes that
they afford specimens of Chinese composition.
The Chinese are known to bestow great attention
on literature: this must excite our curiosity to examine
their productions. We have already seen
their attempts in prose, and in that species of it,
which may be called Romance: it is a natural
transition from thence to their Poetry. To enable
the Reader to form some judgment of this, we have
thrown together the following FRAGMENTS.
Few and trifling, as these may seem, they are almost
all that have been published in any European
language. But had we larger pieces of this kind,
they would after all give us a very incompetent idea
of the subject. The flowers of Poesy are of so delicate
a nature, that they will seldom bear to be
transplanted into a foreign language. From a
translation we can only judge of the sentiment,
the peculiar beauties of the expression will escape
us. Hence it is that the first artless productions
of any people will be translated with greater ease
and advantage, than those of a nation that is more
civilized and refined; as in the one, we expect
only the voice of sentiment; in the other the language
of study and reflection: in the one the pure
effusions of nature; in the other the studied refinements
of art. To be sensible of this, we need
only compare the literal versions of a psalm of
David, and of an ode of Horace: the former will

still retain much of that majestic simplicity, which
it possesses in the Hebrew: while the latter wi
be stripped of all those little nameless elegance
and graces, which charm us so in the original
This will also inform us, why a late translation
of some Erse Fragments appeared so striking an
poetical, whereas the most sprightly French
song, or the sublimest Grecian ode in a litera
prose version, would have been neglected.

The nearer any people are to a state of wila
nature, while their customs and notions are few
and simple, it is easy to conceive that their Poetry
will be easy and intelligible to other nations, because
it will contain descriptions of the most obvious
scenes, and will be animated by such images as
are fetched from the first and most striking views of
nature: whereas when a people have been long
trained up in a state of civil policy, when their
customs and manners have been carried to the
highest pitch of refinement, and their religious
notions and ceremonies become various and complicated,
their poetry will abound with such constant
allusions to their own peculiarities, as will
seem harsh and obscure to other nations. Thus
the artless beauties of a Lapland song, will have
charms for every eye, while the studied allusions
to their own customs and mythology, which so
constantly recur in the Poetry of the Greeks and
Romans, must to a plain unlearned Reader in
another language appear intolerably tedious and

insipid. And yet the learned know what beauty
those allusions have in the original.

To apply the foregoing reflections to the subject
in hand: no people live under more political restraints
than the Chinese, or have farther departed
from a state of nature: it is upwards of four
thousand years since they began to form a civilized
policed state: their civil and religious ceremonies
have in this time become infinitely complicated and
numerous: and hence their customs, manners, and
notions are the most artificial in the world. It
will follow that the beauties of the Chinese
Poetry[1] must of all other be the most incapable
of transfusion into other languages, and especially
into those, whose idioms are so remote and unsuitable
as are all those of Europe. It is hoped
therefore that our Fragments will be read with
some grains of allowance.

If there appear a great inequality of style in

the following translations, and if some of the
run less smoothly than others, it must be attribute
to the different mediums, through which they hav
been conveyed to us. The English version wa
made as literal, as possible, lest by aiming at elegance
it should depart from the sense of the Chinese
original.

P. Du Halde, tom. 3. p. 290.