It might reasonably be inferred, judging from the attention paid to learning, and the honors conferred upon its successful votaries, that the literature of the Chinese would contain much to repay investigation. Such is not the case, however, to one already acquainted with the treasures of Western science, and, in fairness, such a comparison is not quite just. Yet it has claims to the regard of the general student, from its being the literature of so vast a portion of the human species, and the result of the labors of its wisest and worthiest minds during many successive ages. The fact that it has been developed under a peculiar civilization, and breathes a spirit so totally different from the writings of Western sages and philosophers, perhaps increases the curiosity to learn what are its excellences and defects, and obtain some criteria by which to compare it with the literature of other Asiatic or even European nations. The language in which it is written—one peculiarly mystical and diverse from all other media of thought—has also added to its singular reputation, for it has been surmised that what is “wrapped up” in such complex characters must be pre-eminently valuable for matter or elegant for manner, and not less curious than profound. Although a candid examination of this literature will disclose its real mediocrity in points of research, learning, and genius, there yet remains enough to render it worthy the attention of the oriental or general student.

Some of its peculiarities are owing to the nature of the language, and the mode of instruction, both of which have affected the style and thoughts of writers: for, having, when young, been taught to form their sentences upon the models of antiquity, their efforts to do so have moulded their thoughts in the same channel. Imitation, from being a duty, soon became a necessity. The Chinese scholar, forsaking the leadings of his own genius, soon learned to regard his models as not only being all truth themselves, but as containing the sum total of all things valuable. The intractable nature of the language, making it impossible to study other tongues through the medium of his own, moreover tended to repress all desire in the scholar to become acquainted with foreign books; and as he knew nothing of them or their authors, it was easy to conclude that there was nothing worth knowing in them, nothing to repay the toil of study, or make amends for the condescension of ascertaining. The neighbors of the Chinese have unquestionably been their inferiors in civilization, good government, learning, and wealth; and this fact has nourished their conceit, and repressed the wish to travel, and ascertain what there was in remoter regions. In judging of the character of Chinese literature, therefore, these circumstances among others under which it has risen to its present bulk, must not be overlooked; we shall conclude that the uniformity running through it is perhaps owing as much to the isolation of the people and servile imitation of their models, as to their genius: each has, in fact, mutually acted upon and influenced the other.

The “homoglot” character of the Chinese people has arisen more from the high standard of their literature, and the political institutions growing out of its canonical books (which have impelled and rewarded the efforts of students to master the language), than from any one other cause. This feature offers a great contrast to the polyglot character which the Romans possessed even to the last, and suggests the cause and results as interesting topics of inquiry. The Egyptian, Jewish, Syriac, Greek, and Latin languages had each its own national literature, and its power was enough to retain these several nations attached to their own mother tongue, while the Gauls, Iberians, and other subject peoples, having no books, took the language and literature of their rulers and conquerors. Thus the kingdom, “part iron and part clay,” fell apart as soon as the grasp of Rome was weakened; while the tendency in China always has been to reunite and homologate.

In this short account of the Chinese tongue, it will be sufficient to give such notices of the origin and construction of the characters, and of the idioms and sounds of the written and spoken language, as shall convey a general notion of all its parts, and to show the distinction between the spoken and written media, and their mutual action. They are both archaic, because the symbols prevented all inflexion and agglutination in the sounds, and all signs to indicate what part of speech each belonged to. They are like the ten digits, containing no vocable and imparting their meaning more to the eye than the ear.

Chinese writers, unable to trace the gradual formation of their characters (for, of course, there could be no intelligible historical data until long after their formation), have ascribed them to Hwangtí, one of their primeval monarchs, or even earlier, to Fuh-hí, some thirty centuries before Christ; as if they deemed writing to be as needful to man as clothes or marriage, all of which came from Fuh-hí. A mythical personage, Tsang-kieh, who flourished about B.C. 2700, is credited with the invention of symbols to represent ideas, from noticing the marking on tortoise-shell, and thence imitating common objects in nature.

The Japanese have tried to attach their kana to the Chinese characters to indicate the case or tense, but the combination looks incongruous to an educated Chinese. We might express, though somewhat crudely, analogous combinations in English by endeavoring to write 1-ty, 1-ness, 1-ted, for unity, oneness, united, or 3-1 God for triune God.

At this crisis, when a medium for conveying and giving permanency to ideas was formed, Chinese historians say: “The heavens, the earth, and the gods, were all agitated. The inhabitants of hades wept at night; and the heavens, as an expression of joy, rained down ripe grain. From the invention of writing, the machinations of the human heart began to operate; stories false and erroneous daily increased, litigations and imprisonments sprang up; hence, also, specious and artful language, which causes so much confusion in the world. It was for these reasons that the shades of the departed wept at night. But from the invention of writing, polite intercourse and music proceeded; reason and justice were made manifest; the relations of social life were illustrated, and laws became fixed. Governors had laws to which they might refer; scholars had authorities to venerate; and hence, the heavens, delighted, rained down ripe grain. The classical scholar, the historian, the mathematician, and the astronomer can none of them do without writing; were there no written language to afford proof of passing events, the shades might weep at noonday, and the heavens rain down blood.”[290] This singular myth may, perhaps, cover a genuine fact worthy of more than passing notice—indicating a consentaneous effort of the early settlers on the Yellow River to substitute for the purpose of recording laws and events something more intelligible than the knotted cords previously in use. Its form presents a curious contrast to the personality of the fable of Cadmus and his invention of the Greek letters.

The date of the origin of this language, like that of the letters of Western alphabets, is lost in the earliest periods of post-diluvian history, but there can be no doubt that it is the most ancient language now spoken, and along with the Egyptian and cuneiform, among the oldest written languages used by man. The Ethiopic and Coptic, the Sanscrit and Pali, the Syriac, Aramaic, and Pehlvic, have all become dead languages; and the Greek, Latin, and Persian, now spoken, differ so much from the ancient style, as to require special study to understand the books in them: while during successive eras, the written and spoken language of the Chinese has undergone few alterations, and done much to deepen the broad line of demarkation between them and other branches of the human race. The fact, then, that this is the only living language which has survived the lapse of ages is, doubtless, owing to its ideographic character and its entire absence of sound as an integral factor of any symbol. Their form and meaning were, therefore, only the more strongly united because each reader was at liberty to sound them as he pleased or had been taught by local instructors. He was not hindered, on account of his local brogue, from communicating ideas with those who employed the same signs in writing. Upon the subsequent rise of a great and valuable literature, the maintenance of the written language was the chief element of national life and integrity among those peoples who read and admired the books. Nor has this language, like those of the Hebrews, the Assyrians, and others already mentioned, ever fallen into disuse and been supplanted by the sudden rise and physical or intellectual vigor of some neighboring community speaking a patois. For we find that alphabetic languages, whose words represent at once meaning and sound, are as dependent upon local dialects as is the Chinese tongue upon its symbols; consequently, when in the former case the sounds had so altered that the meanings were obscured, the mode of writing was likely to be changed. The extent of its literature and uses made of it were then the only safeguard of the written forms; while as men learned to read books they became more and more prone to associate sense and form, regarding the sound as traditionary. We have, in illustration of this, to look no further than to our own language, whose cumbersome spelling is in a great measure resulting from a dislike of changing old associations of sense and form which would be involved in the adoption of a phonetic system.

The Chinese have had no inducement, at any stage of their existence, to alter the forms of their symbols, inasmuch as no nation in Asia contiguous to their own has ever achieved a literature which could rival theirs; no conqueror came to impose his tongue upon them; their language completely isolated them from intellectual intercourse with others. This isolation, fraught with many disadvantages in the contracted nature of their literature, and the reflux, narrowing influence on their minds, has not been without its compensations. A national life of a unique sort has resulted, and to this self-nurtured language may be traced the origin of much of the peace, industry, population, and healthy pride of the Chinese people.

The Chinese have paid great and praiseworthy attention to their language, and furnished us with all needed books to its study. Premising that the original symbols were ideographic, the necessities of the case compelled their contraction as much as possible, and soon resulted in arbitrary signs for all common uses. Their symbols varied, indeed, at different times and in different States; it was not until a genuine literature appeared and its readers multiplied that the variants were dropped and uniformity sought. The original characters of this language are derived from natural or artificial objects, of which they were at first the rude outlines. Most of the forms are preserved in the treatises of native philologists, where the changes they have gradually undergone are shown. The number of objects chosen at first was not great; among them were symbols for the sun, moon, hills, animals, parts of the body, etc.; and in drawing them the limners seem to have proposed nothing further than an outline sketch, which, by the aid of a little explanation, would be intelligible. Thus the picture moon would probably be recognized by all who saw it as representing the moon; that of fish as a fish; and so of others. It is apparent that the number of pictures which could be made in this manner would hear no proportion to the wants and uses of a language, and therefore recourse must soon be had to more complicated symbols, to combining those already understood, or to the adoption of arbitrary or phonetic signs. All these modes have been more or less employed.

Chinese philologists arrange all the characters in their language into six classes, called luh shu, or ‘six writings.’ The first, called siang hing, morphographs, or ‘imitative symbols,’ are those in which a plain resemblance can be traced between the original form and the object represented; they are among the first characters invented, although the six hundred and eight placed in this class do not include all the original symbols. These pristine forms have since been modified so much that the resemblance has disappeared in most of them, caused chiefly by the use of paper, ink, and pencils, instead of the iron style and bamboo tablets formerly in use for writing; circular strokes being more distinctly made with an iron point upon the hard wood than with a hair pencil upon thin paper; angular strokes and square forms, therefore, gradually took the place of round or curved ones, and contracted characters came into use in place of the original imitative symbols. In this class such characters as the following are given:

altered to

The second class, only one hundred and seven in number, is called chí sz’, i.e., ‘symbols indicating thought.’ They differ from the preceding chiefly in that the characters are formed by combining previously formed symbols in such a way as to indicate some idea easily deducible from their position or combination, and pointing out some property or relative circumstance belonging to them. Chinese philologists consider these two classes as comprising all the symbols in the language, which depict objects either in whole or in part, and whose meaning is apparent from the resemblance to the object, or from the position of the parts. Among those placed in this class are,

xi seal script moon half appearing, signifies evening; now written 夕
dan seal script sun above the horizon, denotes morning; now written 旦
gan seal script something in the mouth, meaning sweet; now written 甘

The third class, amounting to seven hundred and forty characters, is called hwui í, i.e., ‘combined ideas,’ or ideographs, and comprises characters made up of two or three symbols to form a single idea, whose meanings are deducible either from their position, or supposed relative influence upon each other. Thus the union of the sun and moon, ming seal script ming, expresses brightness; xian seal script kien, a piece of wood in a doorway, denotes obstruction; two trees stand for a forest, as lin seal script lin; and three for a thicket, as sen seal script săn; two men upon the ground conveys the idea of sitting; a mouth in a door signifies to ask; man and words means truth and to believe; heart and death imports forgetfulness; dog and mouth means to bark; woman and broom denotes a wife, referring to her household duties; pencil and to speak is a book, or to write. But in none of these compounded characters is there anything like that perfection of picture writing stated by some writers to belong to the language, which will enable one unacquainted with the meaning of the separate symbols to decide upon the signification of the combined group. On the contrary it is in most cases certain that the third idea made by combining two already known symbols, usually required more or less explanation to fix its precise meaning, and remove the doubt which would otherwise arise. For instance, the combination of the sun and moon might as readily mean a solar or lunar eclipse, or denote the idea of time, as brightness. A piece of wood in a doorway would almost as naturally suggest a threshold as an obstruction; and so of others. A straight line in a doorway would more readily suggest a closed or bolted door, which is the signification of 閂 shan, anciently written shuan seal script; but the idea intended to be conveyed by these combinations would need prior explanation as much as the primitive symbol, though it would thenceforth readily recur to mind when noticing the construction.

It is somewhat singular that the opinion should have obtained so much credence, that their meanings were easily deducible from their shape and construction. It might almost be said, that not a single character can be accurately defined from a mere inspection of its parts; and the meanings now given of some of those which come under this class are so arbitrary and far-fetched, as to show that Chinese characters have not been formed by rule and plummet more than words in other languages. The mistake which Du Ponceau so learnedly combats arose, probably, from confounding sound with construction, and inferring that, because persons of different nations, who used this as their written language, could understand it when written, though mutually unintelligible when speaking, that it addressed itself so entirely to the eye, as to need no previous explanation.

The fourth class, called chuen chu, ‘inverted significations,’ includes three hundred and seventy-two characters, being such as by some inversion, contraction, or alteration of their parts, acquire different meanings. This class is not large, but these and other modifications of the original symbols to express abstract and new ideas show that those who used the language either saw at once how cumbrous it would become if they went on forming imitative signs, or else that their invention failed, and they resorted to changes more or less arbitrary in characters already known to furnish distinctive signs for different ideas. Thus yu you seal script the hand, turning toward the right means the right; inclined in the other direction, as tso zuo seal script it means the left. The heart placed beneath slave, 怒 signifies anger; threads obstructed, as sunder, means to sunder; but turned the other way, as continuous, signifies continuous.

The fifth class, called kiai shing, i.e., ‘uniting sound symbols,’ or phonogram, contains twenty-one thousand eight hundred and ten characters, or nearly all in the language. They are formed of an imitative symbol united to one which merely imparts its sound to the compound; the former usually partakes more or less of the new idea, while the latter loses its own meaning, and gives only its name. In this respect, Chinese characters are superior to the Arabic numerals, inasmuch as combinations like 25, 101, etc., although conveying the same meaning to all nations using them, can never indicate sound. This plan of forming new combinations by the union of symbols expressing idea and sound, enables the Chinese to increase the number of characters without multiplying the original symbols; but these compounds, or lexigraphs, as Du Ponceau calls them, do not increase very rapidly. In Annam they have become so numerous in the course of years that the Chinese books made in that country are hard to read. The probable mode in which this arose can best be explained by a case which occurred at Canton in 1832. Immature locusts were to be described in a proclamation, but the word nan, by which they were called, was not contained in any dictionary. It would be sufficient to designate this insect to all persons living where it was found by selecting a well-understood character, like 南 south, having the exact sound nan, by which the insect itself was called, and joining it to the determinative symbol chung 虫 insect. It would then signify, to every one who knew the sound and meaning of the component parts, the insect nan; and be read nan, 蝻 meaning this very insect to the people in Kwangtung. If this new combination was carried to a distant part of the country, where the insect itself was unknown, it would convey no more information to the Chinese who saw the united symbol, than the sounds insect nan would to an Englishman who heard them; to both persons a meaning must be given by describing the insect. If, however, the people living in this distant region called the phonetic part of the new character by another sound, as nam, nem, or lam, they would attach another name to the new compound, but the people on the spot would, perhaps, not understand them when they spoke it by that name. If they wrote it, however, both would give it the same signification, but a different sound.

In this way, the thousands of characters under this class have probably originated. But this rule of sounding them according to the phonetic part is not in all cases certain; for in the lapse of time, the sounds of many characters have changed, while those of the parts themselves have not altered; in other cases, the parts have altered, and the sounds remained; so that now only a great degree of probability as to the correct sound can be obtained by inspecting the component parts. The similarity in sound between most of the characters having the same phonetic part is a great assistance in reading Chinese, though very little in understanding it, and has had much influence in keeping the sounds unchanged.

There are a few instances of an almost inadvertent arrival at a true syllabic system, by which the initial consonant of one part, when joined to the final vowel of the other, gives the sound of the character; as ma and fí, in the character 靡, when united in this way, make mí. The meanings of the components are hemp and not, that of the compound is extravagant, wasteful, etc., showing no relation to the primary signification. The number of such characters is very small, and the syllabic composition here noticed is probably fortuitous, and not intentional.

The sixth class, called kia tsié, i.e., ‘borrowed uses,’ includes metaphoric symbols and combinations, in which the meaning is deduced by a somewhat fanciful accommodation; their number is five hundred and ninety-eight. They differ but little from the second class of indicative symbols. For instance, the symbol 字 or zi seal script, meaning a written character, is composed of a child under a shelter—characters being considered as the well-nurtured offspring of hieroglyphics. The character for hall means also mother, because she constantly abides there. The word for mind or heart is sin xin seal script, originally intended to represent that organ, but now used chiefly in a metaphorical sense. Chinese grammarians find abundant scope for the display of their fancy in explaining the etymology and origin of the characters, but the aid which their researches give toward understanding the language as at present used is small. This classification under six heads is modern, and was devised as a means of arranging what existed already, for they confess that their characters were not formed according to fixed rules, and have gradually undergone many changes.

The total number in the six classes is twenty-four thousand two hundred and thirty-five, being many less than are found in Kanghí’s Dictionary, which amount to forty-four thousand four hundred and forty-nine; but in the larger sum are included the obsolete and synonymous characters, which, if deducted, would reduce it to nearly the same number. It is probable that the total of really different characters in the language sanctioned by good usage, does not vary greatly from twenty-five thousand, though authors have stated them at from fifty-four thousand four hundred and nine, as Magaillans does, up to two hundred and sixty thousand eight hundred and ninety-nine, as Montucci. The Chinese editor of the large lexicon on which Dr. Morrison founded his Dictionary, gives it as his opinion that there are fifty thousand characters, including synonyms and different forms; and taking in every variety of tones given to the words, and sounds for which no characters exist, that there are five thousand different words. But even the sum of twenty-five thousand different characters contains thousands of unusual ones which are seldom met with, and which, as is the case with old words in English, are not often learned.

The burden of remembering so many complicated symbols, whose form, sound, and meanings are all necessary to enable the student to read and write intelligibly, is so great that the result has been to diminish those in common use, and increase their meanings. This course of procedure really occurs in most languages, and in the Chinese greatly reduces the labor of acquiring it. It may be safely said, that a good knowledge of ten thousand characters will enable one to read any work in Chinese, and write intelligibly on any subject; and Prémare says a good knowledge of four or five thousand characters is sufficient for all common purposes, while two-thirds of that number might in fact suffice. The troublesome ones are either proper names or technics peculiar to a particular science. The nine canonical works contain altogether only four thousand six hundred and one different characters, while in the Five Classics alone there are over two hundred thousand words. The entire number of different characters in the code of laws translated by Staunton is under two thousand.

The invention of printing and the compilation of dictionaries have given to the form of modern characters a greater degree of certainty than they had in ancient times. The variants of some of the most common ones were exceedingly numerous before this period; Callery gives forty-two different modes of writing pao, ‘precious;’ and forty-one for writing tsun, ‘honorable;’ showing the absence of an acknowledged standard, and the slight intercourse between learned men. The best mode of arranging the characters so as to find them easily, has been a subject of considerable trouble to Chinese lexicographers, and the various methods they have adopted renders it difficult to consult their dictionaries without considerable previous knowledge of the language. In some, those having the same sound are grouped together, so that it is necessary to know what a character is called before it can be found; and this arrangement has been followed in vocabularies designed principally for the use of the common people. One well-known vocabulary used at Canton, called the Făn Yun, or ‘Divider of Sounds,’ is arranged on this plan, the words being placed under thirty-three orders, according to their terminations. Each order is subdivided into three or four classes according to the tones, and all the characters having the same tone and termination are placed together, as kam, lam, tam, nam, etc. As might be supposed, it requires considerable time to find a character whose tone is not exactly known; and even with the tone once mastered, the uncertainty is equally troublesome if the termination is not familiar: for singular as it may seem to those who are acquainted only with phonetic languages, a Chinese can, if anything, more readily distinguish between two words ♯ming and ♭ming, whose tones are unlike, than he can between ♯ming and ♯meng, ♯ming or ♯bing, where the initial or final differs a little, and the tones are the same.

An improvement on this plan of arrangement was made by adopting a mode of expressing the sounds of Chinese characters introduced by the Buddhists, in the Yuh Pien, published A.D. 543, and ever since used in all dictionaries. This takes the initial of the sound of one character and the final of another, and combines them to indicate the sound of the given character; as from li-en and y-ing to form ling. There are thirty-six characters chosen for the initial consonants, and thirty-eight for the final sounds, but the student is perplexed by the different characters chosen in different works to represent them.[291] The inhabitants of Amoy use a small lexicon called the Shih-wu Yin, or ‘Fifteen Sounds,’ in which the characters are classified on this principle, by first arranging them all under fifty finals, and then placing all those having the same termination in a regular series under fifteen initials. Supposing a new character, chien, is seen, whose sound is given, or the word is heard in conversation and its meanings are wanted, the person turns to the part of the book containing the final ien, which is designated perhaps by the character kien, and looks along the initials until he comes to ch, which is indicated by the character chang. In this column, all the words in the book read or spoken chien, of whatever tone they may be, are placed together according to their tones; and a little practice readily enables a person speaking the dialect to use this manual. It is, however, of little or no avail to persons speaking other dialects, or to those whose vernacular differs much from that of the compiler, whose own ear was his only guide. Complete dictionaries have been published on the phonetic plan, the largest of which, the Wu Ché Yun Fu, is arranged with so much minuteness of intonation as to puzzle even the best educated natives, and consequently abridge its usefulness as an expounder of words.

The unfitness of either of these modes of arrangement to find an unknown character, led to another classification according to their composition, by selecting the most prominent parts of each character as its key, or radical, and grouping those together in which the same key occurred. This plan was adopted subsequently to that of arranging the characters according to the sounds, about A.D. 543, when their number was put at five hundred and forty-two; they were afterward reduced to three hundred and sixty, and toward the close of the Ming dynasty finally fixed at two hundred and fourteen in the Tsz’ Lui. It is now in general use from the adoption of the abridged dictionary, the Kanghí Tsz’ Tien; though this number could have been advantageously reduced, as has been shown by Gonçalves, its universal adoption, more than anything else, renders it the best system. All characters found under the same radical are placed consecutively, according to the number of strokes necessary to write them, but no regularity is observed in placing those having the same number of strokes. The term primitive has been technically applied to the remaining part of the character, which, though perhaps no older than the radical, is conveniently denoted by this word. The characters selected for the radicals are all common ones, and among the most ancient in the language; they are here grouped according to their meanings in order to show something of the leading ideas followed in combination.

The number of characters found under each of these radicals in Kanghí’s Dictionary varies from five up to one thousand three hundred and fifty-four. The radical is not uniformly placed, but its usual position is on the left of the primitive. Some occur on the top, others on the bottom; some inclose the primitive, and many have no fixed place, making it evident that no uniform plan was adopted in the original construction. They must be thoroughly learned before the dictionary can be readily used, and some practice had before a character can be quickly found.[292] The groups occurring under a majority of the radicals are more or less natural in their general meaning, a feature of the language which has already been noticed (page 375). Some of the radicals are interchanged, and characters having the same meaning sometimes occur under two or three different ones—variations which seem to have arisen from the little importance of a choice out of two or three similar radicals. Thus the same word tsien, ‘a small cup,’ is written under the three radicals gem, porcelain, and horn, originally, no doubt, referring to the material for making it. This interchange of radicals adds greatly to the number of duplicate forms, which are still further increased by a similar interchange of primitives having the same sound. These two changes very seldom occur in the same character, but there are numerous instances of synonymous forms under almost every radical, arising from an interchange of primitives, and also under analogous radicals caused by their reciprocal use. Thus, from both these causes, there are, under the radical ma, ‘a horse,’ one hundred and eighteen duplicate forms, leaving two hundred and ninety-three different words; of the two hundred and four characters under niu, ‘an ox,’ thirty-nine are synonymous forms; and so under other radicals. These characters do not differ in meaning more than favor and favour, or lady and ladye; they are mere variations in the form of writing, and though apparently adding greatly to the number of characters, do not seriously increase the difficulty of learning the language.

Variants of other descriptions frequently occur in books, which needlessly add to the labor of learning the language. Ancient forms are sometimes adopted by pedantic writers to show their learning, while ignorant and careless writers use abridged or vulgar forms, because they either do not know the correct form, or are heedless in using it. When such is the case, and the character cannot be found in the dictionary, the reader is entirely at fault, especially if he be a foreigner, though in China itself he would not experience much difficulty where the natives were at hand to refer to. Vulgar forms are very common in cheap books and letters, which are as unsanctioned by the dictionaries and good usage, as cockney phrases or miner’s slang are in pure English. They arise, either from a desire on the part of the writer to save time by making a contracted form of few strokes instead of the correct character of many strokes; or he uses common words to express an energetic vulgar phrase, for which there are no authorized characters, but which will be easily understood phonetically by his readers. These characters would perchance not be understood at all outside of the range of the author’s dialect, because the phrase itself was new; their individual meaning, indeed, has nothing to do with the interpretation of the sentence, for in this case they are merely signs of sound, like words in other languages, and lose their lexigraphic character. For instance, the words kia-fí for coffee, kap-tan for captain, mí-sz’ for Mr., etc., however they were written, would be intelligible to a native of Canton if they expressed those sounds, because he was familiar with the words themselves; but a native of Shensí would not understand them, because, not knowing the things intended, he would naturally refer to the characters themselves for the meaning of the phrase, and thus be wholly misled. In such cases, the characters become mere syllables of a phonetic word. Foreign names are often transliterated by writers on geography or history, and their recognition is no easy task to their readers.[293]

In addition to the variations in the forms of characters, there are six different styles of writing them, which correspond to black-letter, script, italic, roman, etc., in English. The first is called Chuen shu (from the name of the person who invented it), which foreigners have styled the seal character, from its use in seals and ornamental inscriptions. It is next to the picture hieroglyphics, the most ancient fashion of writing, and has undergone many changes in the course of ages. It is studied by those who cut seals or inscriptions, but no books are ever printed in it.

The second is the lí shu, or style of official attendants, which was introduced about the Christian era, as an elegant style to be employed in engrossing documents. It is now seen in prefaces and formal inscriptions, and requires no special study to read it, as it differs but slightly from the following.

The third is the kiai shu, or pattern style, and has been gradually formed by the improvements in good writing. It is the usual form of Chinese characters, and no man can claim a literary name among his countrymen if he cannot write neatly and correctly in this style.

The fourth is called hing shu, or running hand, and is the common hand of a neat writer. It is frequently used in prefaces and inscriptions, scrolls and tablets, and there are books prepared in parallel columns having this and the pattern style arranged for school-boys to learn to write both at the same time. The running hand cannot be read without a special study; and although this labor is not very serious when the language of books is familiar, still to become well acquainted with both of them withdraws many days and months of the pupil from progress in acquiring knowledge to learning two modes of writing the same word.

The fifth style is called tsao tsz’, or plant character, and is a freer description of running hand than the preceding, being full of abbreviations, and the pencil runs from character to character, without taking it from the paper, almost at the writer’s fancy. It is more difficult to read than the preceding, but as the abbreviations are somewhat optional, the tsao tsz’ varies considerably, and more or less resembles the running hand according to the will of the writer. The fancy of the Chinese for a “flowing pencil,” and a mode of writing where the elegance and freedom of the caligraphy can be admired as much or more than the style or sentiment of the writing, as well as the desire to contract their multangular characters as much as possible, has contributed to introduce and perpetuate these two styles of writing. How much all these varieties of form superadd to the difficulty of learning the mere apparatus of knowledge need hardly be stated.

The sixth style is called Sung shu, and was introduced under the Sung dynasty in the tenth century, soon after printing on wooden blocks was invented. It differs from the third style, merely in a certain squareness and angularity of stroke, which transcribers for the press only are obliged to learn. Of these six forms of writing, the pattern style and running hand are the only two which the people learn to any great extent, although many acquire the knowledge of some words in the seal character, and the running hand of every person, especially those engaged in business, approaches more or less to the plant character. But foreigners will seldom find time or inclination to learn to write more than one form, to be able to read and communicate on all occasions.

Besides these styles, there are fanciful ones, called ‘tadpole characters,’ in imitation of various objects;[294] the Emperor Kienlung brought together thirty-two of them in an edition of his poem, the Elegy upon the City of Mukden.[295]

All the strokes in the characters are reduced to eight elementary ones, which are contained in the single character 永 yung, ‘eternal.’

Each of these is subdivided into many forms in copy-books, having particular names, with directions how to write them, and numerous examples introduced under each stroke.[296]

The Chinese regard their characters as highly elegant, and take unwearied pains to learn to write them in a beautiful, uniform, well-proportioned manner. Students are provided with a painted board upon which to practise with a brush dipped in blackened water. The articles used in writing, collectively called wan fang sz’ pao, or ‘four precious things of the library,’ are the pencil, ink, paper, and ink-stone. The best pencils are made of the bristly hair of the sable and fox, and cheaper ones from the deer, cat, wolf and rabbit; camel’s hair is not used. A combination of softness and elasticity is required, and those who are skilled in their use discern a difference and an excellence altogether imperceptible to a novice. The hairs are laid in a regular manner, and when tied up are brought to a delicate tip; the handle is made of the twigs of a bamboo cultivated for the purpose. The ink, usually known as India ink, is made from the soot of burning oil, pine, fir, and other substances, mixed with glue or isinglass, and scented. It is formed into oblong cakes or cylinders, inscribed with the maker’s name, the best kinds being put up in a very tasteful manner. A singular error formerly obtained credence regarding this ink, that it was inspissated from the fluid found in the cuttle-fish. When used, the ink is rubbed with water upon argillite, marble, or other stones, some of which are cut and ground in a beautiful manner. Chinese paper is made from bamboo, by triturating the woody fibre to a pulp in mortars after the pieces have been soaked in ooze, and then taking it up in moulds; the pulp is sometimes mixed with a little cotton fibre. Inferior sorts are made entirely from cotton refuse; and in the North, where the bamboo does not grow, the bark of the Broussonetia, or paper mulberry, furnishes material for a tough paper used for windows, wrappings, and account books, etc. Bamboo paper has no sizing in it, and is a frail material for preserving valuable writings, as it is easily destroyed by insects, mildew, or handling.[297]