together with a
translation and explanatory notes. His materials were ready, but
there was the difficulty of finding the funds necessary for so costly
an undertaking. Scarcely, however, had Dr. Legge's wants become known
among the British and other foreign merchants in China, than one of
them, Mr. Joseph Jardine, sent for the Doctor, and said to him, 'I
know the liberality of the merchants in China, and that many of them
would readily give their help to such an undertaking; but you need not
have the trouble of canvassing the community. If you are prepared to
undertake the toil of the publication, I will bear the expense of it.
We make our money in China, and we should be glad to assist in
whatever promises to be a benefit to it.' The result of this
combination of disinterested devotion on the part of the author, and
enlightened liberality on the part of his patron, lies now before us
in a splendid volume of text, translation, and commentary, which, if
the life of the editor is spared (and the sudden death of Mr. Jardine
from the effects of the climate is a warning how busily death is at
work among the European settlers in those regions), will be followed
by at least six other volumes.

The edition is to comprise the books now recognised as of highest
authority by the Chinese themselves. These are the five King's and the
four Shoo's. King means the warp threads of a web, and its application
to literary compositions rests on the same metaphor as the Latin word
textus, and the Sanskrit Sutra, meaning a yarn, and a book. Shoo
simply means writings. The five King's are, 1. the Yih, or the Book of
Changes; 2. the Shoo, or the Book of History; 3. the She, or the Book
of Poetry; 4. the Le Ke, or Record of Rites; and 5. the Chun Tsew, or
Spring and Autumn; a chronicle extending from 721 to 480 B.C. The four
Shoo's consist of, 1. the Lun Yu, or Digested Conversations between
Confucius and his disciples; 2. Ta Heo, or Great Learning, commonly
attributed to one of his disciples; 3. the Chung Yung, or Doctrine of
the Mean, ascribed to the grandson of Confucius; 4. of the works of
Mencius, who died 288 B.C.

The authorship of the five King's is loosely attributed to Confucius;
but it is only the fifth, or 'the Spring and Autumn,' which can be
claimed as the work of the philosopher. The Yih, the Shoo, and the She
King were not composed, but only compiled by him, and much of the Le
Ke is clearly from later hands. Confucius, though t