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From The Edinburgh Review.
CONFUCIUS.*

ple and vigorous diction of the English Bible, the study of which Coleridge said was sufficient to keep any one's style from becoming vulgar, would have been the best model for the translator of Confucius, and would have given weight and dignity to the treasured sentences of the Sage. As it is, verbal anachronisms and impertinences often mar our enjoyment of the text, and it is not easy to trace the author's drift in the proverbially obscure Doctrine of the Mean.' But in spite of these blemishes, the ordinary reader who takes average pains to compare the renderings in the text with the versions in the notes, will find himself rarely at a loss to understand the scope and spirit of his author.

It must be confessed that books on China in the European languages are scarcely ever attractive. The elaborate compilation of Dr. Williams is rather a book of reference than a book for continuous perusal. The Chinese Repository,' which contains a mass of miscellaneous information, is very difficult to meet with. The published volumes in which the Jesuit missionaries have recorded the results of their labours are disfigured with statements from which the philosophic mind revolts; and Sir John Davis, whose book is the most readable one ever written on the subject by an Englishman, was unfortunate in being restricted to a limited field of observation. Of slighter Dr. Legge has, however, a fault which is works it is needless to speak. An examina- not the less vexatious because it is unusual. tion of the books we have named will, we He is possessed with a passion the very are assured, convince our readers that the converse of that which usually besets biogindifference to the interests of the Flowery raphers. The more closely he examines his Land is to be attributed in large measure to hero the less he likes him. Familiarity apthe difficulty of obtaining accurate informa- pears almost to have bred contempt. The tion about it. But the translation of Con- intimacy which has lasted for twenty-one fucius by Dr. Legge, which we have placed years ends in coldness. The Doctor is disat the head of this article, is really a valua- pleased with the peculiarities of his characble addition to our sources of knowledge. ter. The sight of the Sage in his carriage It is an elaborate and a conscientious trans- is an abomination. Punctilious etiquette lation. The six preliminary chapters are he cannot away with, and the chapter on singularly interesting, and the notes from his influence and opinions concludes in a the various Chinese commentators on the strain of abrupt unfriendliness which seems text of the Analects lucid and numerous. to us unjustifiable. But I must now leave From the first hundred pages of the Pro- the Sage,' he writes. I hope I have not legomena the reader will learn more about done him injustice; but after long study of the great philosopher of China, than from his character and opinions, I am unable to any other English book hitherto published. regard him as a great man. He was not As a translator Dr. Legge goes to a great before his age, though he was above the extent beyond his critics, for few foreigners mass of the officers and scholars of his time. have attained that familiarity with the Lun- He threw no light on any of the questions Yo and its successors, which is derived from which have a world-wide interest. He gave a devoted though not unbroken study of no impulse to religion. He had no sympatwenty-one years. When placed side by thy with progress. His influence has been side with other renderings, those of the wonderful; but it will henceforth wane. latest translator seem generally perspicuous, My opinion is, that the faith of the nation though little care has been bestowed upon in him will speedily and extensively pass the more subtle felicities of style. The sim-away.' This passage recalls the saying of

Northcote, who, when an ignorant admirer was extolling Raffaelle to the skies, exclaimed, 'If there was nothing in Raffaelle but what you can see in him, we should not have been talking of him to-day.' But it Would be unfair to apply this story to Dr. Legge, for elsewhere he shows himself able

to see many of the excellences of Confucius, | period rendered illustrious by the birth of and indicates his appreciation by eulogiums an extraordinary number of great men. as discerning as they are numerous. But The East and the West in this remarkable he will not let his admiration have free era vied with each other in producing sages course. He deems it a duty, we think destined to exercise a vast influence on most unnecessarily, to be always weighing human thought. Within the space of a Confucius in the balance of the sanctuary.' hundred years Greece saw Xenophanes and The sayings of the Chinese Sage are per- Pythagoras; Persia, Zoroaster; India, Sakpetually thrown into disadvantageous com- yamouni; China, Confucius. We shall parison with the lessons of the Founder of endeavour, in the following pages, to make Christianity, and his shortcomings and the English reader better acquainted with deficiencies are exhibited with merciless the life and teachings of the last of these minuteness. This is hardly fair, and the philosophers, and, without attempting a injustice is doubled by another incon- continuous parallel or exaggerated contrast, sistency. Dr. Legge begins by arraigning to throw such side-lights upon his portrait Confucius for failing to coincide with a as the lives of his great contemporaries may teacher who lived five hundred years after supply. he was buried, and who had divine oppor- At the period when Confucius was born, tunities for acquiring light to which he the political state of China resembled that never pretended; but when it unfortunately of Japan at the present time. The reignhappens that on one or two important doc- ing dynasty was that of Chow, which contrines several very plausible points of tinued to exercise a nominal sway for nearly agreement between Christ and Confucius nine hundred years, but many of its princes may be alleged, he will not endure it for a were weak, dissolute, or insignificant, and moment. Words are to lose their wonted the more vigorous of them had great diffisense, and a resemblance as clear as the culty in preserving their authority from the sun in heaven is to be pronounced a diver- encroachments of the feudal princes. The gence as wide as the poles, rather than that nobles gave limited allegiance to their suzea single anticipation of Christianity shall be rain, and engaged in repeated wars with found in Confucius. It is needless to point each other. Intricate intrigues, violated out the injustice of this treatment. To truces, savage massacres, are dimly disrevile a writer for not coinciding with cerned through the mists of centuries; but another in general, and when you find a if, in the judgment of David Hume, the hiscasual agreement to alter his obvious mean-tory of our own Saxon princes is only the ing in order to deprive him of the chance scuffling of kites and crows,' it is clear that of being right, seems unkind treatment even the quarrels of rival chieflets, who bore from an adversary, but from a biographer names that scarce twenty living Europeans it is sheer inhumanity. can pronounce correctly, and who were This is, in our judgment, the head and nearly all cut to pieces fifty years before front of the Doctor's offending. On many the Battle of Marathon, must be utterly grounds he deserves the gratitude of his destitute of interest to the readers of the countrymen. We thank him cordially for the mass of material he has collected, and we wish him health and strength for the completion of his gigantic task. For the present, however, instead of a critical analysis of the writings of Confucius, we shall be content to indicate, briefly, the names and character of the works which he compiled. Our special object is to present the reader with a general sketch of his life, and a glance at some of the more salient features of his philosophy.

present generation. Yet it is necessary to indicate the political conditions of the country at this epoch, as they materially affected the early career of the Sage, gave emphasis and point to some of his most characteristic sayings, and contributed to throw that gloom over his latter years which, had his lot been cast in less evil days, might never have fallen on them. His birthplace and parentage were alike distinguished. The fertile region which, under its present name of Shantung, has been celebrated The sixth century before Christ was a as the last stronghold of the Nienfei

of the essence of water.' The dignified title of the throneless king' is the earliest declaration of the royalty of intellect, an idea which has appeared in subsequent ages in languages of which Confucius never dreamed.

Rebellion, was renowned even in those parent purity of his character) a fanciful early days for the fierceness with which claim was given to the appellation, ‘Son rival clans fought in its mountain passes, and carried or defended with sword and spear the breaches of its many populous and well-fortified cities. In that land of military achievements, the gallantry of a warrior named Heih at the siege of a place called Peig-yang, was specially conspicuous. It was recounted in tent and cottage with a pride similar to that with which Jewish minstrels recalled the valour of David, and Roman matrons the heroism of Horatius. Indeed, the bravery of the Chinese champion compares favourably with that of Israelite or Latin. Heih's friends, it appears, had made their way into the city by a gateway left purposely open. No sooner had they passed the portal than the portcullis was dropped. The hero caught the massive structure with both hands, raised it by dint of main strength, and, standing exposed with his breast to the enemy, held the heavy beams up until the last of his companions had passed out in safety. This act of prowess made Heih the wonder of his day; but his name would have been forgotten centuries ago, had it not been for his illustrious son, for from the second marriage of the hero of Peihyang was born Confucius.

The authentic records of his childhood are scanty and unsatisfactory. His father died when he was three years old. Where he was educated is uncertain. A gravity similar to that which characterized the youth of Mahomet is said to have distinguished him. One peculiarity of his early years is recorded. We read that as a boy he used to play at the arrangement of sacrificial vessels and at postures of ceremony: practices which remind one of the boy Athanasius imitating the Sacrament of Baptism in his play on the sand at Alexandria, and of the young Goethe making his father's redlackered music-stand into an altar.

At

At nineteen Confucius married. He had one son, whom he does not seem to have treated with special kindness, and there is reason to believe that he was divorced from his wife. He apparently held at this time the government appointment of keeper of grain-stores; but how long his tenure of this office lasted is not known to us. Legends not dissimilar to those which twenty-two-eight years before he had gather around the cradle of Zoroaster are brought his system to anything like comwoven around that of our hero. Magic pleteness-he began to take pupils. He dreams announced the future greatness of did not pretend to any originality in his both. A fabulous animal, having one lessons, but simply professed to teach the horn and the scales of a dragon,' appeared doctrines of former days. I am not to Ching-tsae, the wife of Heih, in a vision, one,' he said, who was born in possesand cast forth from its mouth a jewel with sion of knowledge. I am one who is fond this inscription - The son of the essence of Antiquity, and earnest in seeking it of water shall succeed to the withering there.' On his mother's death he went Chow, and be a throneless king.'* Tra- to Loo, and there continued to instruct dition asserts that the child was bathed im- youth. He gave much attention at this mediately after his birth in a stream which period, it seems, to music. For some time bubbled up miraculously from the floor of his reputation had been gradually rising, the cave in which his mother brought him but many years elapsed before he was forth, and thus (and not from the trans- placed in a position worthy of his ability. The state of the Empire was such as to excite the gravest anxiety in the breast of a patriot; and the consciousness that he possessed many of the qualities that would constitute a practical reformer, must have made the son of Heih eager for a wider sphere than he had hitherto enjoyed. The

• We give Dr. Legge's translation. A writer in the Chinese Repository,' vol. xviii. p. 341, renders the

legend thus: Water Crystal's child succeeds decaying Chow and plainly rules. The meaning evidently is, A child of perfect purity shall be born at a time when the Chow dynasty is on the decline, and shall restore it and prolong its lustre, reigning without the insignia of royalty.'