ART. II. Dictionnaire Chinois, Français et Latin, publié d Ordre de sa Majesté l'Empereur et Roi Napoléon le G Par M. de Guignes, Résident de France à la Chine, attac Ministère des Relations extérieures, Correspondant de la mière et de la troisième Classe de l'Institut. A Paris, 1

THE honour of giving to Europe the first printed diction the Chinese language has been reserved for M. de Gu Under the auspices of Napoléon le Grand,' and the more eff aid of a grant of money from the imperial treasury, he has duced a very splendid volume, which will be handed down to terity among the number of those false and fallacious memori his patron's love of literature and the fine arts. Though he nothing for either, he judged, wisely enough, that the public n was not ill bestowed when it afforded food for the vanity of the mists, mathematicians and other savans of Paris, and, at the time, purchased their adulation in prefaces and dedications, he knew how to receive with decorous contempt for the authe them.

'Nol mostra gia, benchè in suo cor ne rida."

The savans, however, as credulous as the rest of the Pari who believe that Buonaparte built the Louvre, thought h earnest; and, in his disgrace, took no pains to conceal their affe for their patron, Next indeed to the perjured and rapaciqu diery, the Jacobins of the Institute were avowedly the most dis fied with the restoration of the ancient dynasty, and among the to greet the tyrant's return.

At the voice of one man,' says M. de Guignes, learning res its ordinary course, the schools are crowded, talents and the fin dazzle with new splendour-palaces rear up their heads-bridges the rivers-canals and roads reunite the provinces-activity and e tion prevail on all sides.-In short, France, but recently borne by the weight of factions, now raises majestically her head, and c casts her regards upon her peaceful provinces.'

In this golden age of France, when, as M. de Guignes tel nothing was neglected that could give to the nation new splen and éclat, it was impossible that the want of a Chinese dicti should be overlooked: the deficiency was no sooner hinted at the imperial mandate issued-Let there be a Chinese dictiona A foreigner was immediately engaged to repair from London to to conduct the undertaking, who, after four years' residence, a sudden departure without having even commenced it. Th reigner, we presume, was a German of the name of Hager, v quackeries we have had frequent occasion to notice. In 1808 an foreigner was proposed to M. Cretet; but this minister, says N

Guignes, 'deeming it fit that a Frenchman only should have the credit of bringing out a work for which the nation had already paid the cost of engraving the characters, refused to engage him.' M. de Guignes had the happiness of being that Frenchman, and, by a decree of Napoleon, was appointed to the superintendence of this national work; he received, at the same time, an order to complete it within three years. No inquiry was made as to the practicability of executing it within the prescribed time; with Buonaparte all things were possible. The limitation in point of time had the good effect, however, of stimulating those concerned in the undertaking; and it speaks not lightly in favour of the assiduity of M. de Guignes, that a work of so novel and difficult a nature, occupying more than one thousand pages of imperial folio, and consisting of nearly fourteen thousand characters, with explanations in French and Latin, should be accomplished within five years.

The dies or stamps for the characters, it is true, were ready cut; but they were to be examined, numbered, and properly arranged, so that the numerous references from the table of keys or indices to the page, from the verbal index at the end of the book to the characters, and from one character to another, should be made correctly; and we can venture to say that, after taking the trouble of making some thousand references, we have not discovered a single

error.

It is now just one century since Fourmont commenced, by order of the French government, the cutting of those dies for the characters in question: as specimens of neat workmanship they are entitled to no praise; but they are, we believe, with very few exceptions, correctly made; in the copy, which the author has presented to the Royal Society of London, we perceive he has amended several of them with a pencil, and has added, in a MS. note at the end of the book, that the copy is free from errors. We noticed in a former article, the different hands through which the dies of these characters had passed with a view to their being compiled and classified into the shape of a regular Chinese dictionary. It is singular that the son of one of these persons, with little reputation as a learned man, and without pretensions to that character, should accomplish a task, in the execution of which the father, who was unquestionably one of the most learned and ingenious men in Europe, totally failed. M. de Guignes thus modestly speaks of himself.

It only remains for me to solicit the indulgence of my readers, and I flatter myself I shall obtain it when they consider that the Chinese dictionary, which should long ago have been published by MM. Fourmont and De Guignes, both of them distinguished in all Europe as well for their erudition as by their respective works, is now brought out by one who would not presume to pretend to the title of being

learned,

learned, but whose only claim is that of the honour of having been se lected by His Majesty, and of being connected with a distinguished office in the state, many of whose members are highly estimable for their talents and knowledge.'

M. de Guignes's preface exhibits the same inconsistency in his estimation of the literary and moral character of the Chinese, which, in the early part of our labours, we pointed out in his Voyage de Pékin,' where the frequent encomiums lavished upon this people were as frequently contradicted by the occurrences stated to have happened to himself. His narrative, indeed, coupled with the two goodly quartos of Van Braam, corroborated almost all the strictures contained in the shrewd and ingenious conclusions of the author of 'Recherches sur les Chinois.'-Yet here again M. Pauw is attacked by our author, who seems to entertain an hostility towards him, which can scarcely have arisen from a mere difference of opinion. The late M. de Guignes wrote several elaborate essays to prove that the Chinese not only derived their origin from the Egyptians, but that their ancient records had been brought from Egypt; and that these records contained in fact the history of that country, and not of China. This favourite hypothesis was maintained by many ingenious arguments, grounded on fanciful data; and supported by a skilful endeavour to prove a close analogy between the language, the religion, the arts, the metaphysics and the manners of the ancient Egyptians and modern Chinese.* But the philosopher of Berlin at once overturned this ingenious theory, by shewing that no two nations on earth could possibly disagree more in their moral and physical character, in their language, learning, arts, and institutions, than the Chinese and Egyptians:-perhaps hinc illa lachrymæ.

M. de Guignes sets out, in his preface, with the very common error of considering the Chinese as a nation of sages, at a period when all the rest of mankind were mere savages; though in the course of a few pages he proves, from their own records, that they were scarcely advanced beyond the rudest state of society, when religion and literature appear, from the Inspired Writings, to have already shed their benign influence on other nations of the eastern world. Among the Chinese,' says M. de Guignes, from the moment that a man is learned, (lettré,) he ceases to be classed among simple citizens; and, if he makes himself remarkable for erudition or talent, he may obtain a high consideration, and even arrive at the first offices in the state." Now if this were as true as we believe it to be the reverse, is China, we would ask, the only country in the world where the influence of learning and talents is felt and encouraged? When we look at the exalted characters which in all times have filled, and continue to fill

* Histoire de l'Académie des Inscrip. Art. Mém. de Littérature.--Tom. xxix. xxxiv. et xl. 'the

'the first situations' in our own government, we, at least, see no occasion to envy the good fortune of the learned men of China, millions of whom enjoy neither consideration nor office, while, on the other hand, thousands are employed who can boast of neither learning nor talent. The late Emperor Kien-lung made a common soldier, with whose appearance he was struck while standing sentinel at the palace gate, his prime minister. This man soon found the means of governing his master and all China; and such was the influence which he had acquired, by filling all the higher offices in the state with his friends and relations, whether learned or unlearned, that the present emperor, on succeeding to the throne, did not think it safe to suffer him to live. The Tartars, when they conquered China, were unacquainted with its language and literature, yet all the high offices were immediately filled with Tartars; and still continue to be so. We might go still farther back, and adduce the celebrated barbarian Gengis-khan, who could neither read nor write any language; yet he and his posterity contrived to govern China for nearly a century, by filling the subordinate offices with Chinese, who merely knew how to handle a pencil, and transact the most ordinary details of business.

But though M. de Guignes overrates the learning and virtues of this ingenious people, for ingenious they certainly are, we must do him the justice to observe that he is by no means carried away with the absurd and exaggerated accounts of the early jesuit missionaries, as we find them in Père du Halde and the Abbé Grozier: though he thinks them lettered, he neither mistakes them for men of science, nor believes in the reports of their profound knowledge in astronomy, mathematics, &c. of which, he assures us, not one word is to be found in the only records of the country that can be called ancient. We must analyse the singular and picturesque language in which these are shut up, if we would know the truth, and not confide in the periphrastic translations, interpolations and alterations of the missionaries. Without meaning to level a general censure against these devout men, it may be safely averred that if we absolve them of wilful misrepresentation they cannot be acquitted of weakness; since they appear to be led away by every idle tale that the artful Chinese imposed on their credulity.

The readers of the Asiatic Researches will recollect how successfully the crafty pundits of Benares supplied the zealous Wilford with the whole genealogy of Noah; how accurately they furnished him with the identical names of Shem, Ham, and Japhet, all of them legitimately registered in the Devanagari character. Père Gaubil, however, was the dupe of his own forgeries: having assented to the discovery of Noah in the person of Fo-she, the supposed founder of the Chinese empire, it became necessary, in the next

place,

place, to supply the accompaniment of the universal deluge, without which the identity of the new Noah could not be maintained. The Chinese sages had nothing to fabricate-they merely referred him to the Shoo-king, where a dreadful inundation is described to have happened in the time of Yao, who (supposing their annals to be authentic) reigned about thirteen hundred years subsequent to Noah's flood. This little discrepancy, however, in point of time, was easily adjusted by making Yao to speak retrospectively of a deluge that overwhelmed all China, though the very next sentence uttered by him is an inquiry after some skilful person to repair the damage under which they were then suffering. M. de Guignes proves, by a close examination of the characters, that the meaning of the passage has been totally perverted by the missionaries, and that it has no other reference than to the frequent occurrence of the Yellow river having burst its embankments.

The analysis of the characters further shews that this Emperor Yao of the missionaries, with his provinces, and cities, and palaces, was only the chief of a tribe inhabiting a small district where his people lived in camps, and he himself in a house covered with thatch. A Chinese city is, in fact, at the present day, little more than a collection of tents, distributed into a regular encampment, and surrounded by a high wall.

6

With regard to the sciences, there is nothing in their books that warrants the translations of Gaubil and the other French missionaries, which tell us that Hoang-ty was a great astronomer, and that he appointed officers to observe the heavenly bodies.' The character chen, which they render to observe, simply means to foretel future events'-so that these state officers were a sort of astrologers or fortune tellers, as indeed they still are. But (say they) Hoang-ty caused a celestial sphere to be made; and, lest the truth of this exploit should be called in question, we are favoured by Grozier with an exact drawing of it, made about 4,500 years ago, with its equinoctial and ecliptic, its tropics, colures, meridians, &c. as neatly and accurately executed as if the whole had been taken from a globe by Messrs. Adams or Dolland. The character kay, out of which this celestial globe has been constructed, has no other signification than a cover an abstract-a compendium.

With regard to arithmetic they never had, nor can have, the least knowledge of it beyond the mechanical operations performed by the swan-pan or abacus. It is remarkable enough that the character by which these operations are represented is composed of a demon or spirit repeated a double devil-in allusion, perhaps, to the ratio of the powers of the balls on the wires of the two compartments of the swan-pan, which is, in fact, a table of notation and multiplication: their numeral characters are, notwithstanding, when written, incapable