BONZES AND BONZESSES
In Asia there are many more mystic dreamers and poets than is generally supposed. A Chinese mystic is called a bonze, or talapoin, the former word being of Japanese origin, introduced to China by Europeans. Women who devote themselves to a religious life are called bonzesses, but as certain abuses crept in of a kind which can readily be imagined, a very wise law was passed some time ago forbidding any woman to become a priestess till after her fortieth year, and certain censors have long advocated a yet further higher limit of age.
Amongst young women of the higher classes in the remote East, especially amongst those whose beauty destines them for the harem, poetry is held in high esteem. On the richly-lacquered screens and on the delicately-coloured fans so popular in China, are many representations of frail Chinese or Japanese beauties, tracing certain letters of the Mandarin alphabet with a fine pencil held in their tapering fingers with the characteristic pink nails. The words formed by these letters make up poetic phrases imbued with all the freshness and grace of the fair young girls who transcribe them. In them are sung the praises of the flowers of the hawthorn, the peach-tree, the sweet-briar, and even of a certain savoury tea. More than one Chinese Emperor has done homage to the Muses, and the most celebrated of these crowned poets was Khian-Lung, of the Tartar Manchu dynasty, who died at the end of the eighteenth century, and to whom Voltaire addressed the celebrated letter in verse of which the royal recipient was probably only able to understand, and that with considerable difficulty, the last few lines of which are quoted here:
Receive, Celestial King, the compliments I write
To one whose mighty throne stands on a double height!
The western world knows well, in spite of all my crimes,
I have a deep regard for monarchs who make rhymes.
O thou whose soul is lit by Art's poetic fires,
I pray thee tell me if your prosody requires
That you in far Pekin, like us, must e'en submit
To bind your thoughts in rules to make the tenses fit?
Thus, if you choose to take the Alexandrine beat.
Two equal lines must walk on six plain, equal feet,
And so, one half for rhyme, the other for the sense,
The whole of one great work to half you may condense!
The fame of two other Chinese poets, who flourished in the eighth century of our era, has also come down to us. These were Tchu-Fu and Li-Tai-Pé, who, as was Malherbe in France, were the first to reform poetry in their native land, laying down certain rules, which are still observed in the present day.
The peace enjoyed for so long a period by the country under consideration has led to the profession of arms being held of small account. Until quite recently all the "warriors" had to do was to put down local revolts, or to win for themselves a good drubbing from some aggrieved foreigner.
THE CHINESE ARMY
