Authors and their public in ancient times

WHEN Faust was puzzling his brain concerning the everlasting problem of the nature and origin of things, we find him questioning the utterance of the Hebrew seer: “In the beginning was the Word.” “No,” he says, “this must be wrong. We cannot place the word first in the scale of causation. The writer should have said ‘In the beginning was the Thought.’” On further reflection, this statement also seemed to him inadequate. Is it the Thought that creates and directs all things? Shall we not rather say “In the beginning was the Power?” Even this interpretation, however, fails to stand the test, and, after further wrestling, Faust presents as his solution of the problem the statement, “In the beginning was the ‘Deed.’”

I shall not undertake to consider in this monograph any questions concerning the line of evolution of the universe, and Faust’s questionings are recalled to me only because his final answer is in accord with the experience of man in what he knows of the development of himself, considered either as an individual or as a race.

Assuredly the first thing of which man was conscious was not the word, written or spoken, nor the thought behind the word, nor the power back of the thought, but the deed, which could be seen and felt and estimated. Conscious thought came much later, and the word spoken and the word written, later still. A mental conception, realized as such, and finally taking form as a production of the mind, is a development of a comparatively advanced stage of human existence, the youth of the individual or of the race, while for any definition of the nature of a mental production, and of its just relation to the individual by whom and to the community for which it was produced, we must look still further forward.

Literature—that is, mental conceptions in literary form—had been known for many centuries before the literary idea, and any individual ownership in the form in which such idea was expressed, had been thought out and defined. Literary property—that is, an ownership, on the part of the producer, in a definite expression of literary ideas—dates, nevertheless, from a comparatively early period, and, in one sense, may be said to have existed from the time in which the first “poet” (maker or creator) received his first compensation from a grateful public or an appreciative patron. In the more precise interpretation of the term, it is doubtless more correct, however, to say that literary property dates from the time when authors first received compensation, not from the state or from individual patrons, but from individual readers throughout the community, who were ready to make payment in return for the benefit received. The labor, however, of placing the literary production in the hands of the reader and of collecting from these the compensation for the authors, required an intermediary,—some one to create the machinery for distribution and collection, and usually also to assume the risk and investment required. Literary property could, therefore, come into an assured existence only after, or simultaneously with, the evolution of the publisher. This, then, is the chain of causation at which we have arrived: The deed, the thought awakened by the deed, the consciousness of the thought, the power, first of oral and then of written expression of the thought (usually the description of the deed), which marks the appearance of the poet, the “maker” or author; the consecration of this expression or literary production to a definite purpose, usually the glorification of an individual in the commemoration of his deed; the habit of receiving from such individual a tangible recognition; the widening of the purpose of the production and its dedication to the community as a whole; the giving, by the community in return, of a reward or honorarium; the evolution of the publisher who develops the system under which the amount of the honorarium secured for the author is proportioned (though somewhat roughly) to the number of persons benefited by his productions.

It is when the higher stage of civilization has been reached which is marked by the appearance of the publisher, that we have a true beginning of property in literature.

Centuries must, however, still elapse before we find record of any noteworthy attempts to arrive at precise definitions of the nature and origin of literary property, or to analyze the proper relations of the literary producer as well to the generation for which he originally worked, as to such later generations as derived benefit from his creations.

Months of patient labor were given to the piecing together of the thousands of scattered fragments contained in Layard’s shipment. Then, owing to the enterprise of the London Daily Telegraph (which in 1876 made a novel precedent in journalism by printing from week to week, in juxtaposition with the news of the day, decipherings of the Chaldean writings of five thousand years back), Smith was enabled to go to Mesopotamia, and in three successive journeys very largely to increase the collections of tablets, which finally comprised over 10,000 specimens.

Smith’s untimely death by fever during his third sojourn in the East put a check for a time upon both the collecting and the deciphering, but the latter was later continued by workers who became equally skilled, and of a large number of the tablets translations have been put into print. During the past ten years, a great development has been given to the collecting and deciphering of the tablets by the labors of such scholars as Dieulafoy, Fritz Hommel, John P. Peters, and others.

Smith had found specimens of Chaldean literature in such departments as agriculture, irrigation, astrology, the science of government, the art of war, prayers and invocations to the gods, and above all and most frequent, records of campaigns. There were also a few tablets which appeared to be examples of children’s primers and children’s scribbling. As far as it was practicable to judge from those fragments that have been preserved of the literature of the nation, the several works had for the most part been prepared under the instructions and often apparently for the special use of successive monarchs or of the rulers of provinces. These books existed, therefore, in strictly “limited editions,” comprising either single copies or but two or three copies for the royal residences. The writers were apparently for the most part officials in the public service and often members of the royal household. On the campaigns, the king, or the commander who took the place of the king, appears to have been accompanied by scribes, who were expected to keep note of the number of cities taken, the enemies slain, and the prisoners captured, and of the amount of the spoils appropriated, and the records of campaign triumphs form by far the largest portion of the literature discovered. These campaign narratives finally came to take the shape of annual records, often beginning with the formula “and when the springtime came, the time when kings go out to war.”

The next largest division of the Chaldean literature is made up of invocations to the gods, narratives of the doings of the gods, and prayers and psalms. Many of these last bear a very close family resemblance to the war psalms of the Hebrews, the composition of which took place ten or twelve hundred years later. This religious literature was the work of the priests whose annual stipends came from the royal treasury, augmented probably by the offerings of the faithful. Remains of these priestly libraries were discovered by Layard and Smith in the ruins of Agadê, Sippar, and Cutha.

In the records that have come down to us, there is absolutely no trace of compensation being paid for the different classes of literary undertakings except in the shape of annual stipends to the writers, whose work included other services besides their literary labors, although it is, of course, probable that special gifts may have been given from time to time for exceptionally eloquent and satisfactory accounts of successful campaigns. Whatever property existed in these productions must, therefore, have been vested in the king, but this hardly constituted a distinctive feature of literary property, as the kings claimed and exercised a complete control over all the property and all the lives within their realms.

The earliest specimen of Chaldean literature which has as yet been discovered, and which is probably the oldest example of writing at present known, is given on a tablet of baked clay now in the British Museum. This tablet was made up by George Smith out of a mass of scattered fragments which had been brought from the Assyrian mounds. In going over the collection of inscribed tiles, Smith came across a small fragment the inscription on which evidently referred to the Flood, and in the course of his own three sojourns in Mesopotamia he was fortunate enough, after many months of patient labor, to find a large portion of the fragments required to complete the tablet and to give the main portion of the narrative. Such success could hardly have been possible if the royal library of Nineveh had not contained several copies of the Flood tablet, as was evinced by the finding of duplicates or triplicates of certain of the portions. The tablet, as now put together, comprises eighteen pieces, and presents, notwithstanding a number of gaps, a fairly complete account of the Flood. The incidents are so far paralleled by those given in the Genesis narrative, that it is evident either that the two scribes derived their information from the same sources, or that the Hebrew story has been based upon the Chaldean record. According to Lenormant, Smith, and Hommel, the former was inscribed about 4000 B.C., in that case ante-dating by more than two thousand years the actual writing of the Book of Genesis. Ragozin speaks of “the ancestors of the Hebrews, during their long sojourn in the land of Shinar, having become familiar with the legends and stories contained in the collection of the Assyrian priests, and after working these over after their own superior religious lights, having shaped from them the narrative which was written down many centuries later as part of the Book of Genesis.”[1]

The earliest Egyptian writings were, with few exceptions, theological in their character and appear to have originated in the temples. First among the authors of Egypt stands, according to tradition, Thoth-Hermes, the ibis-headed god of wisdom and of literature, the “Lord of the Hall of Books.” His companion is the beautiful Ma, goddess of truth and justice, a very proper associate for the founder of a nation’s literature.

By later generations, Thoth-Hermes came to be known as Hermes Trismegistus, the god of threefold greatness or majesty. The forty-two works, the authorship of which is ascribed to Thoth or Trismegistus, formed, according to Karpeles, a kind of national encyclopædia, presenting the canon of the faith and the knowledge of ancient Egypt.

Of these so-called Hermetic books, only portions appear to have remained in existence with the beginnings of the historic period, but of these portions certain fragments have been preserved for the inspection of scholars of to-day. In the examination in 1892 of some newly discovered tombs, papyri were found which proved to contain religious writings based upon the Hermetic books, and which were themselves the work of scribes writing during the 4th dynasty, 3733-3566 B.C.

The founder of the 4th dynasty was Khufa, better known as Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid, who is also ranked as an author, and to whose reign belongs the first record of the famous Book of the Dead. This Book of the Dead consisted of invocations to the deities, psalms, prayers, and the descriptions of the experiences that awaited the spirit of the departed in the world to come, experiences that included an exhaustive analysis of his past life and his final judgment for the life hereafter. The Egyptian title of the book was, according to Karpeles, The Manifestation to the Light, that is, the book revealing the light. Rawlinson specifies for it another name, To Go Forth from Day. Portions of the book of the dead are said to have been written by Thoth, and other portions are spoken of as “the composition of a great god.” These belonged to what might be called the permanent part of the text or Ritual. Other divisions or pages containing special references to the deceased would, of course, be distinctive in each case. The copies prepared for any particular funeral were more or less comprehensive in their matter and more or less elaborate and costly in their form according to the wealth and importance of the departed, and according also to the probable buying capacities of the mourners. The material written upon was always papyrus, while for the covers, tinted or stained sheepskin was used. One copy of the book was always placed in the tomb, as a safe-conduct for the pilgrim soul on its journey through Amenti (Hades), and for its guidance in the world to come. This practice has secured the preservation in the tombs of a great number of copies of the Book of the Dead, more than one half of the existing papyri being transcripts of different portions of its text. The Book of the Dead enjoys the distinction of being the first literature of the regular sale of which there is any evidence. The undertaker, acting probably under the instructions of the priests, made a business of disposing of copies of the “book” among the mourners and friends of the deceased, for whom it served as a memorial of the departed. The Egyptian undertaker, distributing in this manner from a period three thousand years or more before the Christian era, authorized or authenticated copies of the sacred scriptures, accompanied in some cases by memorial pages concerning the deceased, must take rank as the first bookseller known to history. I speak of authenticated copies, for it is probable that the authorized text of the scriptures was kept in the temples or in the colleges of the priests, and that the copies were prepared by the priests themselves or by scribes working under their supervision and direction. In this case the proceeds of the sales were doubtless divided between the priests and the undertakers, and the priests’ portion may to some extent have found its way into the treasury of the temple. The scribes employed were sometimes assistants or students attached to the temple, but not infrequently slaves, although later the work of scribes came to be regarded as honorable and as semi-professional in its character, and some among them held high stations. The control exercised by the priests over the authorized texts of their sacred scriptures, including certain writings in addition to those belonging to the ritual of the dead, must have given to them a practical copyright of the material. The most complete copy of the Book of the Dead, ranking as one of the oldest works of literature in the world, is now in the British Museum. A small edition has been printed under the editorship of Mr. Budge, in precise fac-simile.

Apart from the Book of the Dead, the oldest book of which there is record in the literature of Egypt, and one of the oldest in the known literature of the world, is a collection of Precepts, bearing the name of Ptah-Hotep. Their author was a viceroy or governor of Egypt, and was a younger son of Assa, the seventh king of the 5th dynasty, whose reign began 3366 B.C. The Prisse papyrus, discovered at Thebes in 1856, and now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, is said by its discoverer, Chabas, to be the oldest papyrus in existence, and to have been written about 2500 B.C.[2] This papyrus contains a copy of these Precepts of Ptah-Hotep, which have apparently retained their interest for Egyptian readers for nearly nine centuries, and which now, more than five thousand years after their first publication, have been issued, for the benefit of modern readers, in French and English versions.

The Precepts are characterized by simplicity, directness, high-mindedness, great refinement of nature, and a keen sense of humor, and they give to the reader a very pleasant impression of their noble author. The great importance laid by Ptah-Hotep upon courtesy of manner and of action recall to mind Lord Chesterfield, but the courtly Egyptian had a heart and convictions. English and American readers are under obligations to the Rev. H. D. Rawnsley not only for placing before them this antique and distinctively interesting production, but also for his excellent metrical versions of some of the representative hymns of Ancient Egypt.[3] The original translation from the papyrus of the Precepts was made by P. Virey for Records of the Past. It is Virey’s impression that the Precepts were in part original with the Viceroy, and in part collected by him from older sources. In reading these pithy words of wise counsel of the shrewd and kindly old Egyptian, one naturally recalls the proverbs ascribed to King Solomon, the sayings of Confucius, and certain of the utterances of Socrates. I do not mean that Ptah-Hotep, on the strength of the fragmentary utterances that have come down to us, is to be ranked with these great teachers, but that it is interesting to note how early in literature favor was found for the form of expressing opinions, or of giving counsel in the form of maxims or proverbs. The proverbs of Solomon are said to have been written about 1000 B.C. The conversations of Confucius were held about 500 years later, and the utterances of Socrates were closed with his death, 399 B.C.

Rawnsley gives, among other renderings, metrical versions of the following specimens of early Egyptian poetry: “A Festal Dirge of King Antef,” 2533-2466 B.C.; “The Song of the Harper,” about 1700; “Hymn to Pharaoh,” about 1400; “Dirge of Meneptah,” about 1333; “Hymn to Amen Ra,” about 1300; “Hymn to the Nile,” about 1300; “Lamentations of Isis and Nepathys,” about 320; “The Poem of Penta-ur on the Exploits of Rameses II.,” written in 1326 B.C. The last-mentioned is interesting as being almost the sole example of an Egyptian epic. It is not clear whether Penta-ur won his position as court poet-laureate by the production of this poem, or whether, being already laureate, the epic was written as one of his official compositions. Under the instructions of the king, however, whose exploits it commemorated, the poem was made a national epic, and copies of it appear to have been officially distributed throughout the kingdom. The reign of Rameses, which covered the years 1350-1300 B.C., marked, according to Rawlinson and Karpeles, the culmination of a period which was important not only for success in war, but for literary production. Under Rameses, literary activity, no longer confined to the temple, was in part at least transferred to the court. He collected about him scholars and philosophers, and gave great rewards for successful literary efforts. The approval given by royalty to Penta-ur’s poem doubtless secured for the author much better results than would have come to him through the royalty enjoyed under the modern literary system.

The king took pride in the great library which had been brought together under his instructions. Over the entrance to the great hall of the library was engraved the inscription, “A place of healing for the soul.”

By some historians, Rameses II., this king of a long reign and of great exploits, the patron of literature, whose massive and well-preserved figure has only recently been disentombed, has been identified with the Pharaoh of the Exodus. I believe, however, that the better authorities have decided that the Exodus took place under the Pharaoh who was the son of the great Rameses.

Rawlinson speaks of the Egyptians as possessing at a very early date an “extensive literature, comprising books on religion, morals, law, rhetoric, arithmetic, mensuration, geometry, medicine, books of travel, and above all, novels!” He says further, however, that, as far as can be judged from the specimens which have been preserved, “the merit of the works is slight. The novels are vapid, the medical treatises interlarded with charms and exorcisms, the travels devoid of interest, the general style of all the books forced and stilted.”

Rawlinson adds that, while “intellectually the Egyptians must take rank among the foremost nations of remote antiquity, they cannot compare with the great European races whose rise was later, the Greeks and Romans.... Egypt may in some particulars have stimulated Greek thought, directing it in new lines, and giving it a basis to work upon; but otherwise it cannot be said that the world owes much of its intellectual progress to this people, about whose literary productions there is always something that is weak and childish.”[4]

On the other hand, the long list of distinguished Greeks who sought learning in Egypt shows the respect in which Egyptian culture was held. In the list of the subjects considered in Egyptian literature, Rawlinson appears also to have overlooked astronomy, in which the investigations of Egyptian scholars were certainly of the first importance. Notwithstanding the production of a very considerable body of literature, there appears to be no evidence of any compensation being secured by the authors, or of literary productions taking shape as property. The scribes, who did the copying, must of course have been paid, for the Egyptians were probably not able, as were later the Romans, to secure the labor of skilled and educated slaves. These scribes were for the most part natives and freemen, and they came to form a very important class, in which class the most important were those engaged in what might be called the civil service of the government. Of payment to the authors, however, there is no trace, and they must have written solely for their own satisfaction or for hopes of favor. There is also nothing to inform us of the manner in which the copies of the books which had been “manifolded” were distributed amongst the readers, and we can only conjecture the existence of collections or libraries from which the books could be borrowed, or a practice on the part of the wealthy writers (a practice not unknown in modern times) of a wide distribution of presentation copies to friends whose appreciation was hoped for.

The royal library of Rameses contained, says Karpeles, works under such headings as annals, sacred poetry, royal poetry (i. e., poetry addressed to the king), travels, works on agriculture, irrigation, and astronomy, correspondence and fiction.

Rawlinson speaks of some characteristic tales which were preserved from generation to generation, such as the Tale of the Two Brothers (charmingly narrated by the late Amelia B. Edwards), The Doomed Prince, The Possessed Princesses, etc. He also refers to collections of correspondence apparently preserved to serve as models or patterns, after the fashion of the “complete letter-writers” of to-day.

Karpeles points out that the early Egyptian literature was particularly rich in folk-tales, or Märchen. It is possible that in Egypt, as in Greece and Persia, the folk-tales as well as the folk-songs, and such an occasional epic as the Poem of Penta-on, were recited to the people by peripatetic reciters or rhapsodists. There are references to such recitations taking place at court and at the banquets of the rich.

It would have been interesting if it had occurred to some Hebrew scribe, endowed with a sense of humor, to send for the royal library in Thebes, as a remembrance of the guests who had gone out of Egypt, an Egyptian rendering of the Book of Exodus, or even of the Song of Miriam.

About the year 3000 B.C., the Emperor Hoang-ti is said to have invented the decimal system and the measurement of time, and also to have completed the organization of the Empire. If this date is to be relied upon, the organization of the Chinese State was taking shape about eight centuries after the time of the great Sargon of Agadê, who brought to its highest power the earlier Chaldean empire. The national ballads or folk-songs, later collected under the title of the Book of Odes, are believed by Legge to antedate the Empire—that is, to have come into circulation while the territory was still separated into a number of independent states or principalities. These folk-songs were collected by the minstrels and historiographers working under the direction of the feudatory princes, and the complete collection, when reshaped by Confucius, is said to have comprised as many as three thousand songs. The writer of the article on China in the Encyclopædia Britannica (9th edition) speaks of the collection as probably antedating any other known work of literature. The folk-songs themselves certainly existed from a very early date, but, according to Karpeles, the collection did not take the form of a book until after 1000 B.C. Karpeles believes that the earliest known work in Chinese literature is the Y-king, the Book of the Metamorphoses, or of Developments, which dates from 1150 B.C., about two centuries earlier than the generally accepted date of the Homeric poems. The author, Wang-wang, having been put into prison for some political offence, employed his enforced leisure in working out a philosophical system based upon the maxims of the Emperor Fu-hi.[5]

The Book of the Developments continued in high honor for many centuries, and early in the fifth century B.C. was reissued by Confucius, with an elaborate analysis and commentary, serving to make its teachings available for later generations. He also issued a “final edition” of the Book of Songs, which comprised, out of the three thousand of the old collection, the three hundred which were best worth preservation. Confucius takes rank in China as practically the founder of its literature, of its system of morals, and of its religious ideal or standard. The name Confucius is the Latinized form of Kung Fu-tsze—Kung, the teacher or master. He was free, says one of his disciples, from four things: foregone conclusions, arbitrary determinations, obstinacy, and egoism. A good American of the present time may express the regret that Confucius, or some disciples like him, had not been spared to occupy seats in the Senate Chamber at Washington.

What is known as the religion of Confucius, comprises in substance the old-time national or popular faith freshly interpreted into the thought and language of the later generation, and shaped into a practical system of morals as a guide for the action of the state and for the daily life of the individual citizen.

It is interesting to compare the different forms taken by the earliest literary traditions of the different peoples of antiquity. The Greek brings to us as the corner-stone of his literature and of his beliefs, the typical epics, the Iliads and the Odyssey; poems of action and prowess, commemorating the great deeds of the ancestors, and describing the days when men were heroes, and heroes were fit companions and worthy antagonists for the gods themselves.

The imagination of the East Indian has evolved a series of gorgeous and grotesque dreams, in which all conditions of time and space appear to be obliterated, and in which the universe is pictured as it might appear in the visions of the smoker of haschisch. It is difficult to gather from these wild fancies of the earlier Indian poets (and the earlier writers were essentially poets) any trustworthy data concerning the history of the past, or any practical instruction by which to guide the life of the present. The present is but a tiny point, between the immeasurable æons of the past and the nirvana of the future, and seems to have been thought hardly worthy the attention of thinking beings.

The Egyptian literary idea has apparently been thought out in the temple, and it is from the priests that the people receive the record of the doings of its gods and of the immeasurable dynasties of monarchs selected by the gods to express their will, while it is also to the priests that the people must look for instruction concerning the duty of the present.

The Assyrian records read, on the other hand, as if they were the work of royal scribes, writing under the direct supervision of the kings themselves. The gods are described, and their varied relations to the world below are duly set forth. But the emphasis of the narrative appears to be given to the glory and the achievements of such great monarchs as Sargon and Asshurbanipal, as if a long line of scribes, writing directly for the king’s approval, had continued the chronicles from reign to reign.

The early literary and religious ideals of China took a very different form. We find here no priestly autocracy, controlling all intellectual activities and giving a revelation as to the nature of the universe, the requirements of the gods, and the obligations of men, obligations which have never failed to include the strictest obedience to the behests of the priests, the representatives of the gods. There are no court chronicles, dictated under royal supervision, and devoted not to the needs of the people, but to the glorious achievements of the monarchs. Nor is there any great epic, commemorating the deeds of heroes and demi-gods. In place of these we find what may be called a practical system of applied ethics. Confucius was evidently neither a visionary dreamer nor a poet, nor did he undertake to establish any priestly or theological authority for his teaching. He gives the impression of having been an exceptionally clear-headed and capable thinker, who devoted himself, somewhat as Socrates did a century later, to studying out the problems affecting the life of the state and of the individual. With Socrates, however, the chief thing appears to have been the intellectual interest of the problem, while with Confucius, the controlling purpose was evidently the welfare of his fellow-men. It was his aim, as he himself expressed it, through a rewriting of the wise teachings left us by our ancestors, so as to adapt them to the understanding of the present generation, to guide men to wise and wholesome lives, and to prepare them for a better future.[6]

The work of Confucius stands as the foundation-stone of the literature, the morals, and the state-craft of China. It was continued by such writers as Mencius, 350 B.C., and Tsengtze, 320 B.C.

The works of the earlier authors secured, we are told, an immediate circulation, but we have no knowledge as to the methods employed for their distribution. It seems probable that in the earlier as in the later centuries, the authors whose works found approval with the authorities received directly from the state compensation for their literary and philosophic labors.

The material used for the earliest known writings was made from bamboo fibre, and was prepared in the shape of tablets. Early in the third century B.C. (curiously enough, during the reign of Hwang-ti, the destroyer of literature), brushes were invented, with which characters could be traced upon silk. The bamboo was either scratched upon with a sharp stylus, or the characters were painted upon it with a dark varnish. Sometimes also the characters were burned into the bamboo, with a heated metal stylus. India ink was first used in the seventh century. The invention of paper took place about 100 B.C., the first material utilized for the manufacture being bark, fishing-nets, and rags. Printing from solid blocks was done as early as the first century A.D. The invention of the art of printing from movable type is credited to a blacksmith named Pi-Shing. The blacksmith’s first books were turned out towards the close of the tenth century A.D., or early in the eleventh century, more than three centuries before the presses of Gutenberg began their work in Mayence.

The movable type used by Pi-Shing were made of plastic clay. At the same time, or shortly thereafter, porcelain type were utilized. The printing from movable type never seems to have developed to such extent as to supersede block printing. The Emperor Kang-He had engraved about two hundred and fifty thousand copper type, which were used for printing the publications of the government. These type were afterwards melted for use as cash, but were replaced by his grandson with type made from lead.[7]

There is record of books being printed in Corea (at that time a province of the Empire) from movable clay type, as early as 1317 A.D.[8]

Literature has always been an honored profession in China, and seems even in the earliest times to have attracted a larger proportion of workers than, during the same period, were engaged in literary pursuits in any other countries in the world. The mass of literature was very much added to after the introduction of Buddhism into the country, which took place during the first century of the Christian era. Karpeles states that a selection of the early Chinese classics, with commentaries, undertaken under the direction of one of the emperors in the eighteenth century, would, it was calculated, comprise when completed, 163,000 volumes. By the year 1818, there had been published of the series, 78,731 volumes.[9] From this enormous mass of material a few books only stand out as possessing distinctive importance by reason of their influence on the thought and the life of many generations.

There are the five King and the four Schu, or “books.” The term “king” means literally a web, a thing woven, or fabricated. Its use in this connection recalls the ῥαπτός of the Greek rhapsodists, a term which, originally meaning a thing spun or a yarn, came also to stand for a literary production of a certain class, a “yarn” that could be recited. The five King were the “webs” or productions of wise and holy writers, but the names of these writers have not been preserved, even as a tradition. The first in order is the Y-king, already mentioned, the Book of the Developments, which is much the oldest in the series. The second is the Schu-king or Book of Chronicles, which begins its narrative with the time of Noah, and gives the record of the dynasties from 2400 to 721 B.C. In addition to the historical chronicles, the Schu-king contains, in the form of dialogues between the emperors and the councillors, the instruction in the principles of state-craft, in philosophy, in the science of war, in music, in astronomy, and in general culture. The headings of some of the chapters recall the matters treated in The Prince of Machiavelli. The following “royal maxims” do not, however, sound Machiavellian: “Virtue,” says the great councillor Yih, speaking to the emperor, “is the foundation of your realm”; “The ruler must lead his people in the paths of virtue”; “Guard yourself from false shame, and if you have committed an error, hasten to make frank acknowledgment of the same. Otherwise you will mislead your subjects.”[10]

The third of the canonical books is the Schi-king or Book of Songs, already referred to. This presents the selection made by Confucius of the hymns, ballads, and folk-songs collected from the earliest generations. The fourth is the Tschun-tshien, or Spring and Autumn Year-Book, which is ascribed to Confucius. It is a brief chronicle of events covering a space of 240 years. The fifth is the Li-ki, or Book of Ritual, or of Conduct. This gives detailed instructions concerning the proper ceremonials for all events of life, from the cradle to the grave.

With these classics should be grouped certain books prepared by the followers of Confucius, the most important of which, the Lün-yü, or Conversations, is a record of the instruction given by Confucius to his pupils in the form of talks. In these conversations we find questions shaped in a method quite Socratic. With this should be grouped the Mengtsze, the record of the work of the philosopher Mencius. His instruction seems, like that of his great forerunner, to have been very practical in its character. Associated with the earlier teachings of Confucius, the instruction of Mencius was accepted as the basis of the moral and the educational system of the nation.

The enormous respect which the Chinese have given to the works produced during their classical period is believed by authorities like Williams and Wade to have exercised an influence on the whole detrimental to the development and to the originality of their later literature.

The first active literary period preceded Confucius, 500 B.C. From this period have been preserved the classics already referred to. The next important epoch is that of the “interpreters,” the counsellors and the lawgivers, extending from Confucius to Mencius, 350 B.C. They were followed by a long line of annalists and commentators, whose work came to an abrupt close with the reign of the Emperor Che Hwang-ti, 221-226 B.C. Hwang-ti was evidently a man with opinions of his own. He objected to what seemed to him an exaggerated and mischievous reverence for the “good old times,” and he proposed to discourage the laudator temporis acti. He issued an edict directing all books to be burned excepting those treating of medicine, divination, and husbandry. This index expurgatorius (possibly the earliest in history) included all the writings of Confucius and Mencius, comprising both their original work and their compilations and editions of the earlier classics. It was further ordered that any one who dared to mention the Book of History or the Book of Odes should be put to death. Any one possessing, thirty days after the issue of the edict, a copy of the books ordered destroyed, was to be branded and put to labor for four years upon the great wall. This is probably the most drastic and comprehensive policy for the suppression of a literature that the world has ever seen. Fortunately, like similar attempts in later centuries, it was only partially successful. While the destruction of books was enormous, and while, of long lists of works, it is probable that all existing copies actually did disappear, the texts of the most important, including the specially obnoxious Book of History and Book of Songs, were preserved. According to one tradition, a large number of the songs were saved only by having been retained in the memory of public reciters and their hearers. After the death of the Emperor Che, the text of these was taken down and again committed to writing. This instance is, one recalls, fully in line with the methods by which in Greece, before the general use of writing, the earlier classics were preserved in the memories of the rhapsodists and their hearers.

It is the opinion of Dr. Williams that the command of the Emperor Che for the destruction of all books was so thoroughly executed that “of many classical works not a single copy escaped destruction. The books were, however, recovered in great part by rewriting them from the memories of old scholars.... If the same literary tragedy should be enacted to-day, thousands of persons might easily be found in China who could rewrite from memory the text and the commentary of their nine classical works.”

Williams is also my authority for the statement that not only were the books destroyed as far as copies could be found, but that nearly five hundred literati were burned alive, in order that no one might remain to reproach in his writings the emperor for the commission of so barbarous an act.[11]

One of the most celebrated female writers in China was Pan Whui-pan, also known as Pan Chao, the sister of the historian Pan Ku, who wrote the history of the Han dynasty. She was appointed historiographer after the death of her brother, and completed, about A.D. 80, his unfinished annals. A little later she wrote the first work in any language on female education, which was called Nü Kiai or Female Precepts, and which has formed the basis of many succeeding books on female education. In the writings of this and of other Chinese authoresses, instructions in morals and in the various branches of domestic economy are insisted upon as the first essentials in the education of women, and as more important than a knowledge of the classics or of the annals.[12]

1050 A.D. Wang Pih-ho, of the Sung dynasty, compiled for his private school a horn-book or manual of education, entitled the San-tsz’ King. The manual is interesting not merely as giving a general study of the nature of man and the existence of modes of education, but because it includes a list of books recommended for the student, a list which gives an impression of the extent of the education and literature of that date.[13]

The golden age of Chinese literary production is fixed by Sir Thomas Wade at the period of the Tang dynasty, 620-907 A.D. In 922 A.D. an edition of the classical writers was printed and published under the instructions of the Emperor. The tendency of writers since the tenth century has been to devote their energies to commentaries on the ancient works, and to analyses and interpretations of these rather than to original production. The writing of historical annals has, however, gone on with great regularity, and the series of Chronicles of the Kingdom is very comprehensive in its completeness.

The rewards of authors are given in the shape of official appointments and preferments, and of honors and honorariums bestowed directly by the state. It seems probable that in modern as in ancient times the writers of China could look for no direct returns from the circulation of their productions. It is nevertheless the case that from the time of Confucius to the present day, that is for a period of two thousand four hundred years, the direct influence of scholars, thinkers, and writers has been greater in China than in any other part of the world. The state as a whole and the individual citizen, from the Emperor down, have, as a rule, been ready to recognize and accept the authority and the guidance of literary ideals and of intellectual standards. The case would be paralleled if the French Academy had existed from the time of Charlemagne to the present day, if the counsellors and rulers of the state had always been appointed from the forty, and if the remaining officials of all grades had been selected by competitive examinations, instituted and supervised by the forty. The parallel would not be complete, however, unless the Academy of to-day were still basing its examinations on a codex of Charlemagne.

The imperial government of China and the Chinese community as a whole have for many centuries, apparently ever since the time of the book-burning Hwang-ti, rendered a larger measure of honor (and also of direct reward as far as this could be given by official station) to students and scholars, than has been given by any state in the history of the world. The literary ideal and the literary productions, the study of which has thus been honored, have, however, been in the main those of a thousand years or more back. The fact, says Legge, that the earlier literary period was so fruitful, and that the works produced in it have been held by later generations in so great honor, is one cause why original or creative literary productiveness has been discouraged, and why the later literary activities continue in so large proportion to take the shape of commentaries. It has also, he thinks, been an important influence in keeping the language in an inflexible and undeveloped condition. It was the language of the fathers, and it would be sacrilege to modify it.