sons should speak tenderly of the errors of their parents, and ministers and subjects generally throw a veil over the faults of their rulers; but it seems to be carrying the instinctive feeling of dutiful forbearance too far when a historian or chronicler tries to hide the truth about his ruler's conduct and condition from himself and his readers in the manner of the Ch'un Ts'ëw. It should be kept in mind, moreover, that the historiographers of Loo, if Ch'aou had been the ruler of another State, would, probably, not have scrupled to say that Ke-sun E-joo drove him out, and that he fled to Ts'e. Where their own State was concerned, they dared not look the truth in the face. Had Wăn Këang been the marchioness of another State, they would have thought that it did not come within their province to say anything about her.

Two more instances of concealment will finish all that it is necessary to say on this part of my indictment against our Classic; and they shall be entries concerning the king. In V. xxviii. 16, it is said that the king [by] Heaven's [grace] held a court of inspection at Ho-yang;' and we suppose that we have an instance of one of those exercises of the royal prerogative which distinguished the kingdom in normal times. But the fact was very different. In the 4th month of the year Tsin had defeated Ts'oo in a great battle, and the States of the north were safe for a time from the encroachments of their ambitious neighbour. Next month the marquis of Tsin called a great meeting of the northern princes at which he required the king to be present. The king responded to the summons of his feudatory, and a brother of his own presided over the meeting;though both of these facts are ignored in the text. In the winter, the marquis called another meeting in Ho-yang, a place in the present district of Wăn, in the department of Hwae-k'ing, Ho-nan, at which also he required the presence of the king, and which is chronicled in the 16th paragraph. Tso quotes a remark of Confucius on the case, that for a subject to call his ruler to any place is a thing not to be set forth [as an example];' but to this I would reply that, the fact being so, it should not be recorded in a way to give the reader quite a different idea of it.

The other instance is less flagrant. In V. xxiv. 4 it is said, 'The king [by] Heaven's [grace] left [Chow], and resided in Ch'ing].' The facts were that a brother of the king had raised an insurrection against him, so that he was obliged to leave his capital and the imperial domain, and take refuge in Ch'ing, where he remained

until in the next year he was restored to the royal city by an army of Tsin. But as the Ch'un Ts'ëw says nothing of the troubles which occasioned the king's flight, so it says nothing about the manner in which he was restored. The whole history of the case is summed up in the paragraph that I have quoted, which conceals the facts, and of itself would not convey to us anything like an accurate impression of the actual circumstances.

[iii.] I go on to the third and most serious charge which can be brought against the Ch'un Ts'ëw. It not only ignores facts, and conThe Ch'un Ts'ëw misrepresents. ceals them, but it also often misrepresents them, thus not merely hiding truth or distorting it, but telling us what was not the truth. The observation of Mencius, that, when the Ch'un Ts'ëw was made, rebellious ministers and villainous sons became afraid, suggests the instances by which this feature of the Classic may be best illustrated.

Let us first take the case of Chaou Tun, according to the entry in VII. ii. 4, that Chaou Tun of Tsin murdered his ruler, E-kaou.' The fact is that Tun did not murder E-kaou. The marquis of Tsin was a man of the vilest character, utterly unfit for his position, a scourge to the State, and a hater of all good men. Tun was his principal minister, a man of dignity and virtue, and had by his remonstrances, excited the special animosity of the marquis, who at one time had sent a bravo to his house to assassinate him, and at another had let loose a bloodhound upon him. Wearied out with the difficulties of his position, Tun had fled from the Court, and had nearly left the State, when a relative of his, called Chaou Ch'uen, attacked the marquis and put him to death; on which Tun returned to the capital, and resumed his place as chief minister. The only fault which I can see that he committed was that he continued to employ his relative Ch'uen in the government; but the probability is that he had not the power to deal with him in any other way. Had he been able to execute him, and proceeded to do so, it would have been, I venture to think, a proceeding of doubtful justice. But I ask my readers whether it was right, considering all the circumstances of the case, to brand Tun himself as the murderer of the marquis.

According to Tso, the entry in the text was made in the first place by Tung Hoo, the grand-historiographer of Tsin, who showed it openly in the court, and silenced Tun when he remonstrated with him on its being a misrepresentation of himself. Tso also gives a

remark of Confucius, praising Tung Hoo, who made it his rule in what he wrote 'not to conceal!' and praising also Chaou Tun who humbly submitted to a charge of such wickedness. 'Alas for him!' said our sage. 'If he had crossed the border of the State, he would have escaped the charge.' The historiographers of Loo had entered the record in their Ch'un Ts'ëw as they received it from Tsin; but I submit whether Confucius, in revising their work, ought not to have exercised his 'pruning pencil,' and modified the misrepresentation. A sage, as we call him, he might have allowed something for the provocations which Tun had received, and for the wickedness of the marquis's government; he ought not to have allowed Tun to remain charged with what was the deed of another.

Let us take a second case. In X. xix. 2 we read-'Che, heir-son of Heu, murdered his ruler Mae.' This, if it were true, would combine the guilt of both regicide and parricide. According to all the Chuen, Che was not the murderer in this case. He was watching his sick father, and gave him a wrong medicine in consequence of which he died. We have no reason to conclude that there was poison in the medicine which the son ignorantly gave. Some critics say that he ought to have tasted it himself before he gave it to his father. He might have done so, and yet not have discovered that it would be so injurious. There is no evidence, indeed, that he did not do so. The result preyed so on the young man's mind that he resigned the State to a younger brother, refused proper nourishment, and soon died. Even if it were he himself who insisted on the form of the entry about his father's death, Confucius, if he had feeling for human infirmity, would have modified it, and not allowed poor Che to go down to posterity charged with the crime of parricide, which, if we had only the Ch'un Ts'ëw, there would be no means of denying.

Let us take a third case. It may seem to come properly under the preceding count of concealment of the truth, but I introduce it here, because of its contrast with the record in the next case which I will adduce. In X. i. 11, it is said,-'In winter, in the 11th month, on Ke-yëw, Keun, viscount of Ts'oo, died.' The viscount, or king as he styled himself, was suddenly taken ill, of which Wei, the son of a former king, was informed, when he was on his way, in discharge of a mission, to the State of Ch'ing. He returned immediately, and entering the palace as if to inquire for the king's health, he strangled him, and proceeded to put

to death his two sons. Here certainly was a murder, which ought to have been recorded as such. No doubt, the murderer caused a notification to be sent to other States in the words of the Ch'un Ts'ëw, saying simply that Keun had died, as if the death had been a natural one, and the historiographers had chronicled it in the terms in which it reached them; but ought not Confucius, in such a case especially, to have corrected their entry? To allow so misleading a statement to remain in his text was not the way to make 'rebellious ministers afraid.'

The fourth case relates to the death of the above Wei, also called K'een, the murderer of his king. Twelve years afterwards he himself came to an evil end. In X. xiii. 2 it is said-'In summer, in the 4th month, the Kung-tsze Pe of Ts'oo returned from Tsin to Ts'oo, and murdered his ruler Keen in Kan-k'e.' The real facts were these. Wei or K'een displayed in his brief reign an insatiable ambition, and was guilty of many acts of oppression and cruelty. Having despatched a force to invade Seu, he halted himself at Kank'e to give whatever aid might be required. Certain discontented spirits took the opportunity of his absence from the capital to organize a rebellion, which was headed by three of his brothers, one of whom was the Kung-tsze Pe. This Pe had fled to Tsin when Keen murdered Keun, and was invited by the conspirators from that State back to Ts'ae in the first place, and forced to take command of the rebel forces. These were greatly successful. They advanced on the capital of Ts'oo, took possession of it, and put to death the sons of the absent king. The intelligence of these events threw him into the greatest distress and consternation. His army dispersed, and he took refuge with an officer who remained faithful to him, and in his house he strangled himself in the 5th month, unable to endure the disgrace and misery of his condition. What are we to make of such opposite and contradictory methods of describing events? Wei murdered Keun; and the deed is told as if Keun had died a natural death. The same Wei strangled himself, and the deed is told as if it had been a murder done by the Kung-tsze Pe. Pe was led by the device of a brother, K'e-tsih, to kill himself in the 5th month, perhaps before Wei had committed suicide. The Ch'un Ts'ëw says of this event that Ke-tsih put to death-not murdered-the Kung-tsze Pe;' and we may suppose that K'e-tsil, who became king, sent word round the States that Pe had murdered his predecessor; but surely Confucius ought to have

taken care that the whole series of transactions should not be misrepresented as it is in his paragraphs.

Let us take a fifth case. In XII. vi. 8 it is said that Ch'in K'eih of Ts'e murdered his ruler T'oo.' In the previous year, Ch'oo-k'ëw, marquis of Ts'e, had died, leaving the State to his favourite son T'oo, who was only a child. His other sons, who were grown up, fled in the winter to various States. Ch'in K'eih, one of the principal ministers of the State, finding that the government did not go on well, sent to Loo for Yang-săng, one of Ch'oo-k'ew's sons, who had taken refuge there, and so managed matters in Ts'e that he was declared marquis, and the child Too displaced. Yet K'eih had no malice against T'oo, and so spoke of him in a dispute which he had with Yang-săng, not long after the accession of the latter, as to awaken his fears lest the minister should attempt to restore the de-graded child. The consequence was that he sent a trusty officer to remove Too from the city where he had been placed for safety to another. Whether it was by the command of the new marquis, or on an impulse originating with himself, that officer took the opportunity to murder' the child on the way. This man, therefore, whose name was Choo Maou, was the actual murderer of T'oo. If he were too mean in position to obtain a place in the Ch'un Ts'ëw, the murder should have been ascribed to Yang-săng or the marquis Taou, by whose servant and in whose interest, if not by whose command, it was committed. To ascribe it to Ch'in K'eih must be regarded as a gross misrepresentation. I cannot think that the existing marquis of Ts'e could have sent such a notification of the event to Loo, for for him to make Ch'in K'eih responsible for the deed was to declare that his own incumbency of the State was unjust, as it was Ch'in K'eih who had brought it about. Are we then to ascribe the entry entirely to Confucius? And are we to see in it a remarkable proof of his hatred of rebellion and usurpation, and his determination to hold the prime mover to it, however distant, and under whatever motives he had acted, responsible for all the consequences flowing from it?

The sixth and last case which I will adduce may be said not to be so contrary to the letter of the facts as the preceding five cases, and yet I am mistaken if in every western reader, who takes the trouble to make himself acquainted with those facts, it do not awaken a greater indignation against the record and its compiler In VII. x. 8 we read that 'Hea Ching-shoo of

than any of them.