After a long period of political disturbance and comparative intellectual sterility following the fall of the House of Tian, there arose the Tang Dynasty t A.D. 600-900), which China may he said to have reached the zenith of its intellectual life. "Poetry," declares a Chi nese critic. "began with the Shih, developed with the Li Sao, burst forth and became perfect under the 'Pangs. Attie]] excellent work was achieved under the Han and Wei dynasties: their writers appear to have selected good subjects. but their language was unequal to its expression." It was notably the age of lyric verse, expressed in a lan guage which had by this time become refined and adapted to the highest literary purposes. Long flights are almost never attempted, the epic hieing a product altogether alien to the Chinese mind: hut as tests of skill under great teehnieal diffi culties the eight-line poem and the still harder four-line epigram or 'stop-short' have remained favorite forms. Professor Giles describes the invariable arrangement of the two conventional tones in the latter stanza as follows: Sharp sharp flat tlat sharp Flat tint sharp sharp flat Flat flat flat sharp sharp Sharp sharp sharp flat fiat "The effect produeed by these tones." he says. "is very marked and pleasing to the ear, and often makes up for the faultiness of the rhymes, which are simply the rhymes of the odes as heard 2500 years ago, many of them of course being no longer rhymes at all. Thus there is as much artificiality about a stanza of Chinese verse as there is about an Altaic stanza in Latin. But in the hands of the most gifted this artificiality is altogether concealed by art, and the tram mels of tone and rhyme appear to be necessary aids and adjuncts to success." The names of famous poets in this era are legion, and it would be difficult as well as useless to .enumerate them. Anthologies of the period are numerous, and always studied for their fatuous poems, as they are set as standards for imitation. The 'Com plete Collection,' published in 1707. contains nearly 50.000 poems of all sorts arranged in 900 hook. Chief among their poets must, however, be mentioned Li Po (705-762) and Tu En (713 77o). The former, a sort of Chinese Anacreon, enjoyed immense popularity, became a spoiled child of the imperial palace. where he performed prodigies of impromptu verse-making when too drunk to stand. fell a victim to Court intrigue, and was drowned at last, very appropriately, in a maudlin attempt to kiss the moon's reflection in a river. Bather curiously, the Chinese, though a temperate people, are passionately fond of songs in praise of wine and rejoiee in a long array of poets who were more or less drunkards. On the other hand, their literature as a whole is singularly pure. standing in this respect high among those of Orientals. though social life among them is far from clean, and obscenity in familiar intercourse is often if not always con doned. Li Po's contemporary. Tu Fu. was also a Court officer and favorite, and likewise com pelled to retire. His career resembled that of llon and ended in the mire, but his name has been for a thousand years a household word in .Asia. One of his verses will serve as a sample of the summum bonam of Chinese poetic art and as an illustration of what is admired in the four line lyric epigram: *. White gleam the gulls across the darkling tide, tin the green hills the scarlet flowers burn: Alas! I see another spring has died ...
When will it conic, the day of my return 7" it is perhaps creditable to Chinese institutions that many of their great writers have been inert of official rank. in a land where the road to office has long lain through the study of letters this has resulted in efforts more or less serious on the part of every mandarin to 'write,' and produced in the aggregate a long list of respect able works. Among these the poet. philosopher,
and statesman Han (7t3S-S2-1). of the dynasty of rang, stands prePminent as a model of nobility of character, ability in high office, and remark able elevation of literary style. His career is familiar to every well-read Chinaman. one of his compositions being customarily read by the bier a, a part of the funeral service, while an other, his protest to the Emperor on the subject of receiving a bone of Buddha with imperial honors, an ode which valise(' him a long banish ment. is one of the favorite 'pieces' for reading in the language. Several women emerge from the ob scurity of female life in this time and take their places among the famous men of letters in China, a galaxy which know-, neither creed nor sex, which stands or falls only by the great test of an approved style.
The literary life of China decreases in origi nality and power after the great rang period, but some phases of its later periods are notable for various reasons. The Sung and some minor dynasties cover the Tenth and Twelfth centuries, during which renewed attention was paid to his tory, and Sz'-ma Kwang (1019-66) and Chu llsi (1130-1200) flourished. The latter, one of the most remarkable minds China ever produced, is famous not only as a historian, but as a philoso pher, and it is his original interpretations of the classics that constitute the system or code com monly called Confucianism by foreigners. The rise of metaphysical speculation may be said to be the distinguishing mark of this era, within which, howeler, no phase of literature or learn ing was neglected and during which the inven tion of block printing (Tenth Century) gave great impetus to book-making and the formation of libraries. The Mongols themselves added nothing to China's intellectual life, but their dynasty is marked by the introduction of the drama and of novels. Both of these forms of literature are as important now in China as elsewhere, and it is remarkable, in view of the passion common to all Asiatics alike for the story, that the art of fiction in its two high est forms should have been so tardy in develop ing here. Chinese plays, contrary to the notion accepted in thh West, are usually very short, their plots being often ingenious and highly melodramatic, but seldom complicated. No scen ery is used, and some of the accepted conventions are naively frank. The plays each other without change of scene or intermission, the ses sions, like school hours in China, lasting all day long. Novels under the Ming (1368-1644) and present dynasties absorb increasing attention and show great ability, though the plots are often too long and intricate and the characters too nunmer ous to suit the taste of Europeans. Their short stories are, at their best, altogether admirable. if their almost invariable introduction of the su pernatural lie allowed, some of them, like the Strange Stories (1679), ranking among the world's best conies. China, like modern Europe, has during recent centuries passed through the encyelopaslic age, when scholars have devoted themselves to amassing great repertories of the literature, knowledge, and wit of past genera tions. No country, in fact, surpasses this em pire in the wealth and variety of her diction aries and eneyelopfedias of all kinds, but these can hardly be called literature. Nor does the often scurrilous wit of their proverbs and gross wall-literature—anonymous placards frequently found on street-corners—call for mention in an account of Chinese letters. The intelleetual rec ord of the raee is, on the whole, one to lie proud of and deserves inure attention than it has yet received from Western scholars.