Willingly I would feed their horses;
Han’s breadth be sure, etc.
Many many mixed faggots,
Willingly I cut the artemisia;
Those girls going home,
Willingly I would feed their colts;
Han’s breadth be sure, etc.
The highest range of thought in the odes is contained in Part IV., but the whole collection is worthy of perusal, and through the labors of Dr. Legge has been made more accessible than it was ever before. The amount of native literature extant, illustrative, critical, and philological, referring to the Book of Odes[311] is not so large as that on the Yih King; but the fifty-five works quoted in his preface[312] contain enough to indicate their industry and acumen. These works will elevate the character of Chinese scholarship in the opinion of those foreigners who remember the disadvantages of its isolation from the literature of other lands, and the difficulties of a language which rendered that literature inaccessible.[313]
THE THREE RITUALS.
The fourth section in the Catalogue contains the Rituals and a list of their editions and commentators, but only one of the three is numbered among the King and used as a text-book at the public examinations. This is the Lí Kí, or ‘Book of Rites,’ the Mémorial des Rites, as M. Callery calls it in his translation,[314] and one of the works which has done so much to mold and maintain Chinese character and institutions. It is not superior in any respect to the Chau Lí and the Í Lí, but owes its influence to its position. They were all the particular objects of Tsin Chí Hwangtí’s ire in his efforts to destroy every ancient literary production in his kingdom; the present texts were recovered from their hiding-places about B.C. 135. The Chau Lí, or ‘Ritual of Chau,’ is regarded as the work of Duke Chau (B.C. 1130), who gives the detail of the various offices established under the new dynasty, in which he bore so prominent a part. The sections containing the divisions of the administrative part of the Chinese government of that day have furnished the types for the six boards of the present day and their subdivisions. So far as we now know, no nation then existing could show so methodical and effective a system of national polity.