tural history, with their peculiar theory of the circulation, and the materia medica of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, as contained in that voluminous work, the Pun-tsaou. Considering the little intercourse that the Chinese have had with other countries, it is perhaps quite as surprising that they should know so much, as that they should know no more; for everything they possess, with the exception of the two departments of astronomy and geography, may fairly be considered as their own.

Reserving the lighter literature of China, (its belles lettres,) as poetry, drama, and romance, for a separate chapter, we may observe that specimens of more serious works have, in the course of rather more than a century, been but scantily presented, in various European translations, to the knowledge of the western world. It was as early as 1711 that Père Noel's Latin version of the four books, with two other subordinate classics, was printed; at a long interval after that date, appeared Gaubil's translation of the Shoo-king; and in 1785 was published Mailla's voluminous work, in fourteen quartos, entitled "Histoire générale de la Chine," being a version of the native annals, called Tong-kien-kang-mo. Fresh translations of several portions of the "four books" have since been made; among the rest, Mencius, by M. Stanislas Julien; while a complete English version of the whole issued from the Anglo-Chinese press in 1828. A French translation of the ancient ritual, and ceremonial code of China, is

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said to be at present in preparation by M. Julien.

66

Of some of the missionary translations, especially those of our own country, it may be observed, that if there is much that is obscure or worthless in the original works, this has been rendered still worse by the wretched attempt to render word for word, thus exhibiting the whole in a jargon which has not inaptly been distinguished as missionary English." This of course must be anything but a faithful picture of the originals, which with all their defects in point of matter, are well known to be, in respect to manner and style, the models of the language in which they were composed. It is to this foolish and injudicious system of translation that we must attribute the following harsh judgment on that particular department of Chinese letters, which appeared some years ago in a critical work. "The specimens which have reached us through the medium of the missionaries are not the best adapted to convey information respecting the present state of the ChiTheir labours are sufficiently voluminous, but their choice of subjects is not always the most happy. We may find an apology for the Chinese in endeavouring to make sense of their ancient records; but we cannot conceive what interest a few insulated Europeans can possibly take in toiling to unravel the inextricable confusion of their king, or canonical books." The fact is, that the confusion of the originals has occasionally, by means of uncouth translation, been made "confusion worse confounded."

nese.

S

"THE Chinese stand eminently distinguished," says a writer very correctly in the Quarterly Review,1 "from other Asiatic nations, by their early possession and extensive use of the art of printing-of printing, too, in that particular shape, the stereotype, which is best calculated, by multiplying the copies and cheapening the price, to promote the circulation of Hence they every species of their literature. are, as might be expected, a reading people; a certain quantity of education is universal among even the lower classes—and, among the higher, it is superfluous to insist on the great estimation in which letters must be held under a system where learning forms the very threshold of the gate that conducts to fame, honours, and civil employment. Amidst the vast mass of printed books, which is the natural offspring of such a state of things, we make no scruple to avow that the circle of their Belles Lettres, comprised under the three heads of Drama, Poetry, and Romances or Novels, has always possessed the highest place in our esteem and we must say that there appears no readier or more agreeable mode of becoming intimately acquainted with a people from whom Europe can have so little to learn on the score of either moral or physical science, than by drawing largely on the inexhaustible stores of their ornamental literature."-We may therefore proceed to consider Chinese belles lettres, in the threefold division of Drama, Poetry, and prose Fiction.

In a moderate collection of Chinese books belonging to the East India Company, there are no less than two hundred volumes of plays, and a single work in forty volumes contains just one hundred theatrical pieces. The government of the country, though it does not (like that of imperial Rome) provide

1 Vol. xli. p. 85.

spectacles for the people at its own cost, gives sufficient countenance and encouragement to such amusements, by permitting them to be erected in every street by subscriptions among the inhabitants. On some particular days the mandarins themselves supply the funds. The principal public occasions of these performances are certain annual festivals of a religious nature, when temporary theatres, constructed with surprising facility of bamboos and mats, are erected in front of their temples; or in open spaces through their towns, the spectacle being continued for several days together. The players in general come literally under our legal definition of vagabonds, as they consist of strolling bands of ten or a dozen, whose merit and rank in their profession, and consequently their pay, differ widely according to circumstances. The best are those who come from Nanking, and who sometimes receive very considerable sums for performing at the entertainments given by rich persons to their friends.2

To prove the rage of the Chinese for their theatrical exhibitions, we insert an account of the expenses annually incurred at Macao, which is partly a Portuguese town, and contains few rich Chinese, on account of playacting. In front of the large temple, near the barrier wall that confines the Portuguese, twenty-two plays are performed, the acting of

3

2 The female parts are never performed by "No women ever women, but generally by boys. appeared on the Greek and the Roman theatres; but the characters in the dramas of the latter, as (occasionally) in those of China, were sometimes played by eunuchs. The soft and delicate female characters of Shakspeare had not the advantage of being played by a female during his life; Mrs. Betterton, about 1660, being the first, or nearly the first, female who played Juliet and Ophelia."-Erief View of the Chinese Drama, p. 14.

3 Chinese Gleaner, 1821, p. 60.

which alone amounts, without including the expenses of erecting the theatre, to 2200 Spanish dollars. At the Chinese temple near the entrance of the inner harbour, there are annual performances, for which 2000 dollars are paid; and various lesser exhibitions through the year make up the total expenditure under this head to upwards of 6000 dollars, or 15001., among a small population of mere shopkeepers and artisans. A circumstance, however, occurred at Macao in 1833, which must have impressed the Chinese with the notion that Europeans were fully as much devoted to such amusements as themselves. A party of Italian opera-singers from Naples, consisting of two women and five men, after having exercised their vocation with success in South America, proceeded on their way across the Pacific westward towards Calcutta, as to a likely and profitable field. Circumstances having occasioned their touching at Macao, they met there with inducements to remain some six months, until the season should admit of their prosecuting the voyage; and a temporary theatre having been contrived, they performed most of Rossini's operas with great success. The Chinese were surprised to find what, in the jargon of Canton, is called a Sing-song, erected by the foreigners on the shores of the celestial empire, and in that very shape, too, which most nearly resembles their own performances, a mixture of song and recitative. As the nearest way home from Calcutta, for these Italians, was by the Cape of Good Hope, they were a singular instance of the Opera performing a voyage round the world.

Before touching on the subject of their dramatic compositions, we will say a word regarding the mere scenic exhibitions of the Chinese, which may at any time be viewed by strangers who visit the country, and of which even persons ignorant of the language can form a sufficient judgment. "They have no scenical deception (observes the editor of the Heir in Old Age) to assist the story, as in the modern theatres of Europe; and the odd expedients to which they are sometimes driven by the want of scenery, are not many degrees above Nick Bottom's bush of thorns and a lantern, to disfigure or to present the person of Moonshine-or the man with some

6

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plaster, or some loam, or some rough-cast about him, to signify wall." Thus, a general is ordered upon an expedition to a distant province; he brandishes a whip, or takes in his hand the reins of a bridle, and striding three or four times round the stage in the midst of a tremendous crash of gongs, drums, and trumpets, he stops short, and tells the audience where he has arrived. A tolerable judgment may be formed of what little assistance the imaginations of an English audience formerly derived from scenical deception, by the state of the drama and the stage as described by Sir Philip Sidney about the year 1583. "Now you shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By and by we have news of shipwreck in the same place; then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon the back of that comes out a hideous monster with fire and smoke; and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave; while in the meantime two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field."

It is very true (as observed in the journal before quoted), that "the Chinese in their theatres leave more to the imagination than we do. They neither contrive that the action should all proceed on one spot, as in most specimens of the Greek tragedy, nor do they make use of shifting scenes. 'You can never bring in a wall,' says Snug the Joiner, -so say the Chinese; and though their contrivances are not quite so outrageously absurd as those in the Midsummer Night's Dream, they are scarcely more artificial." The truth, however, on this subject seems to be, that though scenery and other adventitious aids of the kind no doubt tend to aid the illusion, they are by no means absolutely necessary to it; and in fact it is better to trust altogether to the imagination of the beholder than to fall into those palpable errors which even Dennis successfully ridiculed in Addison's Cato, resulting as they did from a rigid adherence to the unity of place. The best scenic preparation that ever was devised must still call largely on the imagination for assistance; and the whole philosophy of the

subject is summed up in the words of the chorus to Shakspeare's Henry V.

-"But pardon, gentles all, The flat unraised spirit, that hath dar`d On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object. Can this cock-pit hold The vasty field of France, or may we cram, Within this wooden O, the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? O pardon since a crooked figure may Attest, in little space a million; And let us, cyphers to this great accompt, On your imaginary forces work :Suppose within the girdle of these walls Are now confin'd two mighty monarchies, Whose high upreared and abutting fronts The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder; Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts, Into a thousand parts divide one man, And make imaginary puissance;" &c.

It is very possible that the delicate taste of the Greeks, alive to this difficulty, chose rather to evade than encounter it, by that rule which confined the number of interlocutors, at one time on the stage, to three per

sons.

But then mark the consequence; half the events of the drama must be told to the audience, and in lieu of the stirring and active scenes which keep attention alive, and prevent the performance from flagging, we have those interminably long stories, which may be beautiful taken by themselves, and constitute a fine dramatic poem for the closet, but are quite unsuited to the stage. In one of the plays of Eschylus, the "Seven before Thebes," there is a spy, or messenger, who comes in and describes in a speech, of we forget how many pages, the details of the whole siege, with the arms and accoutrements of the besiegers!

The costume, at least, of the Chinese stage is sufficiently appropriate to the characters represented, and on most occasions extremely splendid. Their gay silks and embroidery are lavished on the dresses of the actors, and as most of the serious plays are historical, and for obvious reasons do not touch on events that have occurred since the Tartar conquest, the costumes represent the ancient dress of China, which in the case of females is nearly the same now as ever; but, as regards men, very different. The splendour of their theatrical wardrobe was remarked by Ysbrandt Ides, the Russian ambassador, as long ago as 1692.

"First entered a very beautiful lady, magníficently dressed in cloth of gold, adorned with jewels, and a crown on her head, singing her speech with a charming voice and agreeable motion of the body, playing with her hands, in one of which she held a fan. The prologue thus performed, the play followed, the story of which turned upon a Chinese Emperor, long since dead, who had behaved himself well towards his country, and in honour of whose memory the play was written. Sometimes he appeared in royal robes, with a flat ivory sceptre in his hand, and sometimes his officers showed themselves with ensigns, arms, and drums," &c.

As the Chinese make no regular distinction between tragedy and comedy in their stage pieces, the claims of these to either title must be determined by the subject, and the dialogue. The line is in general pretty strongly marked; in the former by the historical or mythological character of the personages, the grandeur and gravity of the subject, the tragical drift of the play, and the strict award of what is called poetical justice; in the latter, by the more ordinary or domestic grade of the dramatis persona, the display of ludicrous characters and incidents, and the interweaving of jests into the dialogue. Some of their stage pieces are no doubt of a vulgar and indecent description; but these in general constitute the amusement of a particular class of society, and are generally adapted to the taste of those who call for them at private entertainments as already noticed. A list of the plays, which the company of actors is prepared to represent, is handed to the principal guest, who makes his selection in the way most likely to be agreeable to the audience.

The early travellers, as Bell and others, who have given an account of the impressions which they received from the Chinese theatrical performances, were able to judge of little more than the mere spectacle before them, and, being ignorant of the language, could give no account of the merits of the dramatic dialogue. The first specimen of a play was translated into French by the Jesuit Prèmare, who although actually resident at Peking, and a most accomplished Chinese scholar (as appears from his Notitia Linguæ Sinica), did not give more than the prose parts, leaving

out the lyrical portions, or those which are sung to music, because, as he observes, "they are full of allusions to things unfamiliar to us, and figures of speech very difficult for us to observe." Voltaire made Prèmare's translation of the Orphan of Chaou the groundwork of one of his best tragedies, L'Orphelin de la Chine: it is founded on an event which occurred about a hundred years before the birth of Confucius. A military leader having usurped the lands of the house of Chaou, is determined on exterminating the whole race. A faithful dependant of the family saves the life of the orphan, and male heir, by concealing him and passing off his own child in his stead. The orphan is brought up in ignorance of his real condition, until he reaches man's estate, when the whole subject being revealed to him by his tutor and guardian, he revenges the fate of his family on the usurper, and recovers his rights. In this plot, Dr. Hurd remarked a near resemblance in many points to that of the Electra of Sophocles, where the young Orestes is reared by his pædagogus, or tutor, until he is old enough to enact summary justice on the murderers of his father Aga

memnon.

It would be easy to point out a number of instances in which the management of the Chinese plays assimilates them very remarkably to that of the Greek drama and they may both be considered as originals, while the theatres of most other nations are copies. The first person who enters generally introduces himself to the audience exactly in the same way, and states briefly the opening circumstances of the action. These prologues (observes Schlegel) make the beginnings of Euripides plays very monotonous. It has a very awkward look for a person to come forward and say, 'I am so and so, this and that has been done, and what comes next is thus and thus."" He compares it to the labels proceeding from the mouths of the figures in old paintings; and there certainly appears the less need for so inartificial a proceeding on the Greek stage, inasmuch as the business of the prologue or introduction, might have been transferred to the chorus. The occasional though not very frequent or outrageous, violation of the unities in the Chinese drama may easily be matched in most other languages, and

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examples of the same occur even in some of the thirty-three Greek tragedies that remain to us; for the unity of action is not observed in the Hercules furens of Euripides; nor that of time in the Agamemnon of Eschylus, the Traychynians of Sophocles, and the Suppliants of Euripides; nor that of place in the Eumenides of Eschylus. The unimportance, however, of a rigid attention to these famous unities has long since been determined, and it is admitted that even Aristotle, to whom they have all been attributed, mentions only that of action at any length, merely hints at that of time, and of place says nothing what

ever.

Premare's specimen of the Chinese stage was followed, at the distance of about a century, by the author's translation of the 'Heir in Old Age,' which is in fact a comedy from the same collection (the hundred plays of Yuen), that had afforded the former sample. In this the translator supplied, for the first time, the lyrical or operatic portions which are sung to music, as well as the prose dialogue, having endeavoured, as he observes in the introduction, "to render both into English in such a manner as would best convey the spirit of the original, without departing far from its literal meaning." This was the more likely to be efficiently performed as he was then resident in the country, and could avail himself of native references. The Heir in Old Age' serves to illustrate some very important points connected with Chinese character and customs. It shows the consequence which they attach to the due performance of the oblations at the tombs of departed ancestors, as well as to the leaving male representatives, who may continue them; and at the same time describes the ceremonies at the tombs very exactly in detail. play serves, moreover, to display the true relation of the handmaid to the legitimate wife, and proves a point on which we have before had occasion to insist, that the former is merely a domestic slave, and that both herself and offspring belong to the wife, properly so called, of which a man can legally have only one.1

The

1 In the Penal Code, there are some express safeguards for the rights of a wife, and it is provided