A History of Chinese Literature. Giles Herbert Allen

upon one occasion of his son; and on receiving an answer in the negative, immediately told the youth that until he did so he would be unfit for the society of intellectual men. Confucius may indeed be said to have anticipated the apophthegm attributed by Fletcher of Saltoun to a “very wise man,” namely, that he who should be allowed to make a nation’s “ballads need care little who made its laws.” And it was probably this appreciation by Confucius that gave rise to an extraordinary literary craze in reference to these Odes. Early commentators, incapable of seeing the simple natural beauties of the poems, which have furnished endless household words and a large stock of phraseology to the language of the present day, and at the same time unable to ignore the deliberate judgment of the Master, set to work to read into countryside ditties deep moral and political significations. Every single one of the immortal Three Hundred has thus been forced to yield some hidden meaning and point an appropriate moral. If a maiden warns her lover not to be too rash —

      “Don’t come in, sir, please!

      Don’t break my willow-trees!

      Not that that would very much grieve me;

      But alack-a-day! what would my parents say?

      And love you as I may,

      I cannot bear to think what that would be,” —

      commentators promptly discover that the piece refers to a feudal noble whose brother had been plotting against him, and to the excuses of the former for not visiting the latter with swift and exemplary punishment.

      Another independent young lady may say —

      “If you will love me dear, my lord,

      I’ll pick up my skirts and cross the ford,

      But if from your heart you turn me out …

      Well, you’re not the only man about,

      You silly, silly, silliest lout!” —

      still commentaries are not wanting to show that these straightforward words express the wish of the people of a certain small State that some great State would intervene and put an end to an existing feud in the ruling family. Native scholars are, of course, hide-bound in the traditions of commentators, but European students will do well to seek the meaning of the Odes within the compass of the Odes themselves.

      Possibly the very introduction of these absurdities may have helped to preserve to our day a work which would otherwise have been considered too trivial to merit the attention of scholars. Chinese who are in the front rank of scholarship know it by heart, and each separate piece has been searchingly examined, until the force of exegesis can no farther go. There is one famous line which runs, according to the accepted commentary, “The muddiness of the Ching river appears from the (clearness of the) Wei river.” In 1790 the Emperor Ch’ien Lung, dissatisfied with this interpretation, sent a viceroy to examine the rivers. The latter reported that the Ching was really clear and the Wei muddy, so that the wording of the line must mean “The Ching river is made muddy by the Wei river.”

      The following is a specimen of one of the longer of the Odes, saddled, like all the rest, with an impossible political interpretation, of which nothing more need be said: —

      “You seemed a guileless youth enough,

      Offering for silk your woven stuff; 1

      But silk was not required by you;

      I was the silk you had in view.

      With you I crossed the ford, and while

      We wandered on for many a mile

      I said, ‘I do not wish delay,

      But friends must fix our wedding-day …

      Oh, do not let my words give pain,

      But with the autumn come again.’

      “And then I used to watch and wait

      To see you passing through the gate;

      And sometimes, when I watched in vain,

      My tears would flow like falling rain;

      But when I saw my darling boy,

      I laughed and cried aloud for joy.

      The fortune-tellers, you declared,

      Had all pronounced us duly paired;

      ‘Then bring a carriage,’ I replied,

      ‘And I’ll away to be your bride.’

      “The mulberry-leaf, not yet undone

      By autumn chill, shines in the sun.

      O tender dove, I would advise,

      Beware the fruit that tempts thy eyes!

      O maiden fair, not yet a spouse,

      List lightly not to lovers’ vows!

      A man may do this wrong, and time

      Will fling its shadow o’er his crime;

      A woman who has lost her name

      Is doomed to everlasting shame.

      “The mulberry-tree upon the ground

      Now sheds its yellow leaves around.

      Three years have slipped away from me

      Since first I shared your poverty;

      And now again, alas the day!

      Back through the ford I take my way.

      My heart is still unchanged, but you

      Have uttered words now proved untrue;

      And you have left me to deplore

      A love that can be mine no more.

      “For three long years I was your wife,

      And led in truth a toilsome life;

      Early to rise and late to bed,

      Each day alike passed o’er my head.

      I honestly fulfilled my part,

      And you – well, you have broke my heart.

      The truth my brothers will not know,

      So all the more their gibes will flow.

      I grieve in silence and repine

      That such a wretched fate is mine.

      “Ah, hand in hand to face old age! —

      Instead, I turn a bitter page.

      O for the river-banks of yore;

      O for the much-loved marshy shore;

      The hours of girlhood, with my hair

      Ungathered, as we lingered there.

      The words we spoke, that seemed so true,

      I little thought that I should rue;

      I little thought the vows we swore

      Would some day bind us two no more.”

      Many of the Odes deal with warfare, and with the separation of wives from their husbands; others, with agriculture and with the chase, with marriage and feasting. The ordinary sorrows of life are fully represented, and to these may be added frequent complaints against the harshness of officials, one speaker going so far as to wish he were a tree without consciousness, without home, and without family. The old-time theme of “eat, drink, and be merry” is brought out as follows: —

      “You have coats and robes,

      But you do not trail them;

      You have chariots and horses,

      But