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The subject of Kien-Lung's poem is, The Conquest of the Miao-ts, or the mountaineers who border on the western provinces of China, particularly on those of Se-tchuen and Koeitcheou, which borderers, however, by a trifling geographical error, occasioned, it would seem, by a laudable desire to correct a supposed mistake of Sir George Staunton, (Note, p. 4.) Mr. Weston, has unluckily placed in Hou-nan, in the very heart of China.'— The Miao-fee mentioned by Sir George Staunton were a set of rebellious subjects in Hou-nan; the Mioa-tsé were an independent horde on the borders of China; so little reliance is to be placed in Chinese monosyllables written in any of the European letters. The history of these hordes of independent people is briefly as follows: About the beginning of the reign of Kien-Lung the Miao-tsé had occasioned very serious alarm to the neighbouring provinces by their incursions and depradations. A large army was in consequence sent against them; but the Chinese gene al was baffled in all his attempts to subdue them, ultimately defeated, and, as a matter of course, recalled to the capital, where he lost his head. The officer who succeeded to the command, instead of carrying on a destructive war with these hardy mountaineers, sent presents to their chiefs, and thus contrived to keep them in order, while the Court of Pekin was easily persuaded that the Miao-tsé had submitted to the arms of the Emperor, and acknowledged his authority. This state of tranquillity, however, was but of short duration. These restless tribes once more sallied forth, and a favourite general, at the head of 120,000 men, was sent to reduce them to submission. Ignorant however, of the nature of the country, as well as of the temper of the enemy, he pushed through the narrow defiles of the mountains, and so entangled his army among the woods and fastnesses, that the greater part of it was either cut off by the natives, or perished for want of supplies. At length, however, a general was selected, who, after five years' campaign, was fortunate enough to succeed in reducing the tribe Miao-tsé, bordering on Se-tchuen, to do homage to the Emperor of China; and this event is the ground-work of the Imperial poem by Kien-Lung, entitled, a Choral Song of Harmony for the first Part of the Spring.'

One of the thirty stanzas (and we shall take the first of them) will be quite sufficient for us to transcribe as a specimen of KienLung's poetical powers, and of Mr. Weston's metaphrastic translation, which, by the way, is the only sort of translation that can convey a just idea of the original.

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Pen

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mo

vouen

koon pau

Principal made strange how could I believe army reward.

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early morning night

voaen Kien-tchée

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see.'

To which stanza, with the help of a few winged words,' and other auxiliaries, Mr. Weston has contrived to give the following ineaning:

'It was on the twenty-fourth of the eighth moon, between the second and the third watch, in the middle of the night, in the camp of Mou-lan, that they came to tell me of the arrival of a messenger from the army with a red flag. How could I believe that this night I should see the certain sign of victory, and have so early an occasion of pro. claiming the glory and reward of my army.'

Our readers would not thank us for obtruding on their patience any more specimens of Kien-Lung's thirty musical bulletins, or of Mr. Weston's translation of them. The poor old Emperor is so much amused with the arrival of the 'red flag,' that it is paraded through no less than seven stanzas. He can neither put off his clothes during the night, nor sleep for joy; (p. 29.) his attendants are equally delighted, and cry out, no more fighting! no more soldiers! no more war weapons!' (p. 42.) In fine, having subdued the rebellious foe that fled like wild geese before them,' (p. 44.) his troops are to receive the rewards of their toils; the robe of peace with its scaly dragons of cerulean hue,' is assigned to the general; and 'baldricks, that stream like the belt of the heavens' are to be distributed among his officers.

In a verbal translation from a language like that of China, it would be idle to look for elegance of expression, strength of diction, or powers of versification; a language so remarkably scanty in words cannot possess any of these qualities; but it is sufficiently copious to express both feeling and sentiment, and very capable of conveying, by its compound characters, new and striking images; yet, if Mr. Weston's translation be correct, as we make no doubt it is, nothing of the kind appears in the whole poem. It is true the Emperor utters something like a moral feeling, where he says, 'that he has now sent the ox to graze, and the horse to his stable, as it was ever his pure intention,' (p. 44.) At the same time this apparent mildness of disposition is destroyed by the ferocious delight he seems to anticipate in the execution of the rebel, or rather hostile chiefs, who, under promise of pardon, had been allured to Pekin, (p. 48.) The few images which he introduces, and the comparisons he makes use of, bear no stamp of an imperial origin. In his Ode on Tea, we have heard him talk of boiling water long

enough to turn lobsters red; here he says, 'The blast of his artillery choaked up the embrazures of their fortresses, as the breath of a fish is stopped when thrown into a cauldron of boiling water,' (p. 33.) In fact, Kien-Lung, like the eating heroes of the Iliad, seems to have had a taste for culinary matters, and could probably have served up a perpetual chine as dexterously as Agamemnon himself. In another place he tells us that the enemy,, 'like flies of a larger size, preys upon men,' (p. 49.) We are not aware that any of our travellers have noticed these anthropophagous flies. Mr. Weston, perhaps, may have made some little mistake, and given the literal for the metaphorical sense. It is possible, however, that although these similes savour a little of the vulgar to us, they may, to a native, partake of the sublime and beautiful. They are at least Imperial, and that consideration is quite enough to give them currency among the Chinese.

We would just hint to Mr. Weston, that it is by no means necessary a book on a particular subject should be eked out with 'shreds and patches' which have no relation whatever to it. We would not have recommended, for instance, that an Imperial poem on a military campaign should be prefaced with a shopkeeper's card, stating the price of his silks, nor with a translation of the common inscription on the small tablets of China ink. Nor can we conceive that his book would have suffered materially had he omitted the appendix of one page, purporting to give a list of certain words in the European languages that bear an accidental resemblance to the names of Chinese characters, both in sound and sense ;' more especially as out of the twelve words in the European languages of which it is composed, five of them are stated to be Persian and Arabic. We are also much at a loss to discover, under another part of the appendix, entitled, a specimen of modern Chinese characters that have some likeness to the things they stand for,' what possible degree of similitude there can exist between the character Kien, (compounded of the character Woman thrice repeated,) and its signification adultery, and holding communication with the enemy. This, it may be recollected, is one of those compound characters, concerning which in our review of the 'penal code,' we confessed our inability to trace the connexion between the component parts of the character and its signification. Mr. Weston, however, finds no difficulty, but boldly asserts that Kien, three women, (neu) means adultery, and communication with the enemy; because he who has to do with three women, to one of whom he is married, communicates with the enemies of his wife.' This explanation may perhaps be satisfactory to Mr. Weston, though it is rather beyond our comprehension. Perhaps, however, it may be as he says in Europe, but they order these things better' in Asia In this delightful region of the world, where there is no such thing as love, and consequently

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none of the tormenting pangs of jealousy, the first, or equal wife, contrives to be comfortable enough with all the inferior wives whom her good husband may think proper to introduce into his household establishment. The Chinese indeed have a common maxim, that three wives are more easily managed then two.' We would just observe, that in this list of modern characters, we verily believe not one of them to be less than two thousand years old; many of them probably date their origin from the foundation of the empire. The signature of Confucius, for instance, which is one of them, must have been in use since the fifth century before the Christian era. We notice these little lapses and inconsistencies merely as the effect of carelessness and hasty composition; which, however, both for the sake of the reputation of the author, as well as for the prevention of erroneous impressions on the reader, should be avoided as much as possible.

ART. VI. Essays on the Picturesque, as compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful; and, on the Use of studying Pictures, for the purpose of improving, real Landscape. By Uvedale Price, Esq. 3 vols. 8vo. pp. 1200. London. Mawman. 1810. MR. PRICE'S opinions have been a considerable time before the public; and if all have not been convinced by his theory, few have failed to receive gratification from the justness of his taste and ingenuity of his remarks. We hasten therefore to notice his new edition, in which several parts of the former 'are entirely new modelled; the trouble of which, Mr. Price adds, he shall think well bestowed, if he shall be less open to those criticisms which must have presented themselves to every reader of a methodical turn of mind.' Pref. p. xviii. His pains have not been unsuccessfully employed. The subject is opened, the ideas of the writer disclosed, and the principle pursued with so much regularity, that the reader may, with ordinary attention, trace the course of the argument, and meet its return after partial concealments and windings: more me. thod than this, we fear, will be in vain expected in a work on taste.

If the features, however, are cast in a new mould, the expression remains the same. Mr. Price, it is generally known, adds a third to the graces which are supposed to embellish natural forms, and completes the triple knot by joining the picturesque to the sublime and beautiful. The application of this idea to landscape gardéning would lead us into too wide a field of discussion; but we cannot resist the opportunity of entering somewhat fully upon the consideration of the general principle.

The word picturesque is in general applied to every object, and every kind of scenery, which has been or may be represented with good effect in painting. The theoretical part of Mr Price's work

is intended to shew, that the picturesque has a character not less separate and distinct than either the sublime or the beautiful, nor less independent of the art of painting.

It does not imply any assent to Mr. Burke's principles, when we allow that certain objects in nature and art are, by common consent, termed beautiful, and others, of a contrary character, are generally acknowledged to be sublime: nor can we refuse to agree with Mr. Price, that there are numberless objects which give great delight to the eye, and yet differ as widely from the one as from the other. Such are the ruins of Grecian, and the entire buildings of Gothic architecture; symmetry, which in works of art particularly accords with the beautiful, being in the same degree adverse to the picturesque' such are many buildings, highly interesting to all who have united the study of art with that of nature, in which beauty and grandeur are equally out of the question; as 'hovels, cottages, mills, insides of old barns, stables, &c. wherever they have any marked and peculiar effect of form, tint, or light and shadow.' In water, that of which the surface is broken, and the motion abrupt and irregular; and among trecs, not the smooth young beech, nor the fresh and tender ash, but the rugged oak, or knotty wych elm, is picturesque: nor is it necessary they should be of great bulk; it is sufficient if they are rough and mossy, with a character of age, and with sudden variations of their forms. Among animals, the ass is generally thought to be more picturesque than the horse; and among horses, it is the wild and rough forester, or the worn-out cart horse, to which that title is applied. In our own species, objects merely picturesque are to be found among the wandering tribes of gypsies and beggars, who, in all the qualities which give them that character, bear a close analogy to the wild forester and the worn-out cart horse, and again to old mills, hovels, and other inanimate objects of the same kind.' Ch. 3.

These objects, Mr. Price argues, are neither beautiful nor ugly, but picturesque; since, though far less universally pleasing and alluring than those which possess the qualities of beauty, they have nevertheless qualities of their own, which are not only highly suited to the painter and his art, but attractive also to the rest of mankind, whose minds have been at all cultivated or improved.

This statement, we conceive, cannot be denied ; and the circumstances are sufficiently striking and universal to call for some solution. Mr. Price finds this in the characteristic qualities of the objects themselves.

According to Mr. Burke, he says, one of the most essential qualities of beauty is smoothness: now as the perfection of smoothness is absolute equality and uniformity of surface, wherever that prevails there can be but little variety or intricacy. Another essential quality of beauty is gradual variation: but it requires little reflection to perceive,

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