and elaborately devised work is in reality not worth the labour of a
single stroke, nor is there in all Peking a sender forth of printed
leaves who would encourage any project connected with its issue.'

"'But the importance of such a fact as that which would clearly show
the hitherto venerated Lo Kuan Chang to be a person who passed off as
his own the work of an earlier one!' cried this person in despair,
well knowing that the deliberately expressed opinion of the one before
him was a matter that would rule all others. 'Consider the interest of
the discovery.'

"'The interest would not demand more than a few lines in the ordinary
printed leaves,' replied the other calmly. 'Indeed, in a manner of
speaking, it is entirely a detail of no consequence whether or not the
sublime Lo Kuan ever existed. In reality his very commonplace name may
have been simply Lung; his inspired work may have been written a score
of dynasties before him by some other person, or they may have been
composed by the enlightened Emperor of the period, who desired to
conceal the fact, yet these matters would not for a moment engage the
interest of any ordinary passer-by. Lo Kuan Chang is not a person in
the ordinary expression; he is an embodiment of a distinguished and
utterly unassailable national institution. The Heaven-sent works with
which he is, by general consent, connected form the necessary
unchangeable standard of literary excellence, and remain for ever
above rivalry and above mistrust. For this reason the matter is
plainly one which does not interest this person.'

"In the course of a not uneventful existence this self-deprecatory
person has suffered many reverses and disappointments. During his
youth the high-minded Empress on one occasion stopped and openly