be wholly changed by the successful establishment of the system here advocated, can hardly be doubted. The beneficence so characteristic of this nation, and which first prompted the establishment of the poor-laws, and has so long tolerated their abuse, would then operate unchecked, and readily and amply supply, by voluntary aid, what may, in cases of peculiar hardship, be required, and not furnished by the previous savings from the sufferer's earnings. This supplementary assistance will be afforded by the poor-laws, whilst they are permitted to exist; and, perhaps, their existence, with such a corrective as parochial banks, may be deemed almost harmless. But if they should wholly be abolished, and it should not be found safe to trust especial cases of hardship to individual charity, even unchilled as it will then be by enforced contributions to worthless objects, a very small portion of the deposits of each individual might be carried to a general fund appropriated to relief in such emergencies.

The effects of the present system on the character of the pauper' himself have been so often, so ably, and so eloquently pourtrayed,* that we need not add to the length of this article, (the brevity of which it is hoped may attract more numerous readers,) by entering into any details on the subject. But in justice to the argument, we must state our conviction, that the institutions now recommended are calculated to prevent, if not to correct, that utter depravity of the idle and the spendthrift, which seems to make him feel even malignant delight in his right to extort as much as possible from the earnings of the industrious, in order to supply the waste of his own. The rich man and the poor will be no longer set in hostile opposition against each other, like the athletæ, in the contest of the Restis, where both were united only by the bond of strife, where each was twisting with all his might at his own end of the rope, that the other might be forced to quit his hold. Occasion would no longer exist for that general abjectness, with all its train of vices and miseries, which results from hopeless dependence; more especially where the nefarious practice above alluded to prevails, by which the able, and even the willing, workers are compelled, for the mean purposes of their employers, to class themselves with the impotent, the idle, and the dissolute, and become alike the pensioners of their parish. In a political point of view, such men are the very tools for demagogues to work with— the quisquilliæ seditionis,' from which, when so generally prevalent in a country, society can never be secure. But give your labourer a feeling of the value of your institutions, by the inde

* And never more so than in 'Considerations on the Poor Laws, by John Davison, M.A.' reviewed in the eighteenth volume of this Journal, p. 259, where several of his most striking observations will be found extracted.

pendent

pendent comfort they secure for him, and a knowledge that the earnings of his past industry, and the support of his future life, are inseparably connected with the stability of these institutions, and you will convert a factious brawler, and ready rebel, into a faithful subject and strenuous defender. As Vegetius, in the passage before cited, describes his soldier, Knowing that his property is deposited with the standards, in the public chest, he never thinks of desertion—becomes attached to his standards, and in battle fights more bravely for them; according to the nature of man, who has always his heart where his treasure is.'

If, in this disquisition, we seem to have spoken harshly of the character of our pauper population, let it be permitted us to observe, that we only describe what all, who chuse to look, must see; that we entertain no kind of animosity to the individuals, or the class, but certainly no very measured indignation at the continuance of a system, that has made them what they are; and our sole object, consequently, has been to suggest a better: Ut nos pauperibus præcepta feramus amica.

ART. VI.-1. The Affectionate Pair, or the History of SungKin. A Chinese tale, translated from the Chinese by P. P. Thoms. London. 1820.

2. Chinese Courtship, in Verse; to which is added an Appendix, treating of the Revenue of China, &c., &c. By Peter Pering Thoms. London. 1824.

WE

E are old enough to remember the time when an Englishman considered two things as hopelessly inaccessible— namely, the Chinese language, and the Egyptian hieroglyphics; but opportunity and perseverance are powerful helps; and their united influence has been strikingly exhibited in regard to one, if not both, of those figurative or symbolical languages.

The embassy of Lord Macartney to China afforded the means of breaking down the barrier that denied access to the former ; and Dr. Young, Mr. Salt, and M. Champollion, by the help of the Rosetta stone, and other monuments, have been able, if not wholly to remove, at least to draw up a corner of the dark veil which for so many ages had forbidden all approach to the latter. For the knowledge we now possess of the Chinese language, which has of late years become familiar to many of the East India Company's servants in China, to most of the Oriental missionaries, and to several individuals in England and France, we are much indebted to Sir George Staunton, the translator of the Statutebook of China, and various other works of a lighter kind; and

we

we take some little credit to ourselves for having endeavoured to explain the nature of that language, and to evince the great utility which a knowledge of it would give to those who conduct our valuable commercial concerns with the celestial empire.*

Unlike the Egyptian hieroglyphics, which, though evidently not intended to be alphabetical, have, in later ages, as it would seem, been made partially subservient to the purposes of an alphabet, the Chinese characters have never been employed in that way; and though alphabetic writing is by no means unknown to the Chinese, as is evident from the preface to Kang-shi's dictionary, these singular people have always strenuously resisted every attempt at its introduction from the upper parts of India and Tartary; being content to employ their own symbols syllabically, whenever it was found necessary to write down foreign names or words ;and they are undoubtedly right; for, as we have heretofore observed, the adoption of an alphabet would not only infallibly and utterly destroy their system of symbols, but render the few meagre monosyllables which constitute their spoken language, a confused and unintelligible jargon, until stretched out into polysyllables, by applying to them the mechanism of inflexion and declension. This will appear evident, even to those who are not conversant with the subject, when it is stated, that about twelve hundred monosyllables constitute the whole phonetic language, and are represented by some sixty or seventy thousand characters; or, in other words, that for every monosyllabic sound in the Chinese language, there are, on an average, fifty different characters to represent it.

It was this enormous number of symbols which so long deterred Europeans from any attempt to acquire a knowledge of a language apparently so obscure and difficult; and yet Scapula's Lexicon, Ainsworth's Latin, and Johnson's English, Dictionaries, contain each of them not fewer than 45,000 words; a number far beyond what is necessary to a Chinese, either for epistolary writing or the reading of books. The combinations indeed of the 214 elements, or keys, as they are called, of the language are almost infinite; but we believe that a competent knowledge of about 4,000 of these combinations or characters in most common use, will enable the student to comprehend such of their works as are not absolutely unintelligible to the foreigner;-such as those filled with astrological jargon or the superstitious nonsense and dreams of the priests of the two prevailing sects of Fo and Taotsé. As we apprehend there is no work in the English language (dictionaries and encyclopedias excepted) that contains 10,000 different words,

* In Nos. VI., VIII., X., XXV., and XXX. of this Journal, VOL. XXXVI. NO. LXXII.

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SO

so there is said to be none in the Chinese that has as many even as 5,000 characters or words. Dr. Marshman, the translator of the works of Confucius, says, that the number of distinct characters in the whole of the writings of this great moralist do not amount to 3,000; and Sir George Staunton estimates the number of different characters in the great work of the Laws of China,' at somewhat less than 2,000. We understand that the missionaries of the Chinese College of Malacca (now of Singapore) have caused 5,000 metal types to be cast, which they reckon sufficient for the Herculean task of printing a translation of the Bible into that language. It is not, therefore, the multitude of characters, on which so much stress has been laid by the Jesuits, that constitutes the difficulty of acquiring this language.

In point of fact, the prose writings of the Chinese may be considered as extremely simple, and easy enough to be understood; it is in their poetic flights that the difficulty mostly occurs. In prose we are generally assisted by auxiliary characters to designate the number, gender, or tense; but in poetry a single character, for the most part, represents a complete idea, and that idea is conveyed in a metaphor, or in some allusion to local customs, or to authentic or fabulous history; and it admits of none of the aforesaid auxiliaries; each verse of eight, and sometimes only four, indeclinable monosyllables, constituting a complete sentence.

It is obvious, therefore, that in poetry every character must be chosen with peculiar care, as the beauty and excellence of the verse will mainly depend on the strength, expression, and fitness of the symbol made use of the eye being not less consulted in the choice than the ear. Hence the all but impossibility of rendering Chinese poetry into a foreign language. If verbally translated, it must be bald, and probably unintelligible in the bargain; if paraphrastically, the spirit of the original will have evaporated; perhaps the translator will make use of a less expressive idiom, perhaps even, in some instances, of a revolting idea. A metaphor,' says Sir George Staunton, which is extremely happy in the original, may be very trite and vulgar in English-or, it may be so remote and obscure in its allusion as to be almost unintelligible-or, what is worse, it may convey a totally different idea. As, for instance, a Chinese, speaking of the qualities of the heart, generally means those we should rather term intellectual, or of the mind.' The difficulty of translating Chinese poetry is further increased by the singular habits of the people; their sentiments and their superstitions being peculiar to themselves, and often at variance with those of Europeans: it is enhanced also by an extreme veneration for their ancient poetry, to which perpetual recurrence is made, and without a knowledge of which,' says the author above

quoted,

quoted, the grounds on which all their associations of ideas are formed will be constantly liable to be mistaken.'

A single example will be sufficient to explain the difficulty to which we are alluding. In Mr. Thoms's Poetical Work, the heroine, feeling the imprudence of being with her lover alone in the garden, and the suspicion to which such a meeting might give rise, is made to say, 'We have met beneath the plum-tree, and among the melons.' A Chinese would immediately comprehend the full meaning of this expression as readily as we know what is meant by under the rose,' because, as a precept against conduct that might give rise to suspicion, he has a proverb in familiar use which says, in a field of melons, do not pull up your shoe; under a plum-tree do not adjust your cap.'

The frequent use of allegories, or figurative expressions, in their poetry, is the source of almost insurmountable difficulties to a foreigner. Thus to pass the blue bridge,' is to attain to the summit of one's wishes. The names of a species of water-fowl, yuen and ying, (the male and female of the mandarin duck,) are considered and made use of as emblems of conjugal fidelity, from a notion, whether true or false, that the survivor never pairs again after the death of its mate. To paint the tiger,' is an expression for getting drunk; and a lady when walking, which Chinese ladies seldom do, is said to move the golden lilies;' and sometimes her little foot is figuratively called a water-lily.' The fondness of the Chinese for proverbs and moral maxims, which they introduce on all occasions into their writings and conversation, and hang up in large letters on the sides of their rooms, as we do pictures, is another circumstance that stands greatly in the way of a translator of their poetry. Lord Chesterfield said, that 'Men of fashion never have recourse to proverbs or vulgar aphorisms.' This, however, was not always the case in England; in Shakspeare's time we were less fastidious in this respect, and perhaps not less fond of proverbs and parables then, than the Chinese have always been: in his time, not only the Justice of 'fair round belly with good capon lined,' but men of fashion' also were full of wise saws and modern instances.' The only difference between us and them is, that we are a changeable people, and alter the tone and terms of our conversation with the cut of our coats; whereas the Chinese write, speak, think and dress, at this moment, just as their ancestors were pleased to do two or three thousand years ago, when society was nearer to a state of infancy.

With regard to those fragments of wisdom,' of which we have been speaking, we rather agree with Lord Bacon, who was an abler judge of human nature than Lord Chesterfield, that the

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genius,