Third, in the narratives of Tso Kew-ming, under the 29th year of duke Sëang, B.C. 543, when Confucius was only 8 or 9 years old, we have an account of a visit to the court of Loo by an envoy from Woo, an eminent statesman of the time, and of great learning. We are told that, as he wished to hear the music of Chow, which he could do better in Loo than in any other State, they sang to him the odes of the Chow-nan and the Shaou-nan; those of P'ei, Yung, and Wei; of the Royal domain; of Ch'ing; of Ts'e; of Pin; of Ts'in; of Wei; of T'ang; of Ch'in; of Kwei; and of Ts'aou. They sang to him also the odes of the Minor Ya and the Greater Ya; and they sang finally the pieces of the Sung. 13 We have here existing in the boyhood of Confucius, before he had set his mind on learning, 14 what we may call the present Book of Poetry, with its Fung, its Ya, and its Sung. The odes of the Fung were in 15 Books as now, with merely some slight differences in the order of their arrangement;-the odes of Pin forming the 9th Book instead of the 15th, those of Ts'in the 10th instead of the 11th, those of Wei the 11th instead of the 9th, and those of T'ang the 12th instead of the 10th. In other respects the She, existing in Loo when Confucius was a mere boy, appears to have been the same as that of which the compilation has been ascribed to him.

Fourth, in this matter we may appeal to the words of Confucius himself. Twice in the Analects he speaks of the odes as a collection consisting of 300 pieces.15 That Work not being made on any principle of chronological order, we cannot positively assign those sayings to any particular periods of Confucius' life; but it is I may say the unanimous opinion of the critics that they were spoken before the time to which Sze-ma Ts'ëen and Choo He refer his special labour on the Book of Poetry.16 The reader may be left, with the evidence which has been set before him, to form his own opinion on the questions discussed. To my own mind that evidence is decisive on the points.-The Book of Poetry, arranged very much as we now have it, was current in China long before the sage; and its pieces. were in the mouths of statesmen and scholars, constantly quoted by them on festive and other occasions. Poems not included in it there doubtless were, but they were comparatively few. Confucius may

14 Confucian Analects, II. iv. 1. 15

13 See the 左傳襄二十九年, par. 8. Confucian Analects, II. ii.; XIII. v. 16 See the 97th chapter of the, and especially the author's summing up of the evidence on the questions which I have discussed.