and classified in the same way as those of the existing Shih. Our Shih,
no doubt, was then in the process of formation.

Second. Li the ninth piece of the sixth decade of the Shih, Part II, an
ode assigned to the time of king Yu, B.C. 78, to 771, we. have the words,

'They sing the Ya and the Nan,
Dancing to their flutes without error.'

So early, therefore, as the eighth century B.C. there was a collection
of poems, of which some bore the name of the Nan, which there is much
reason to suppose were the Kau Nan and the Shao Nan, forming the first
two Books of the first Part of the present Shih; and of which others
bore the name of the Ya, being, probably, the earlier pieces that now
compose a large portion of the second and third Parts.

Third. In the narratives of Zo Khiu-ming, under the twenty-ninth year of
duke Hsiang, B.C. 544, when Confucius was only seven or eight years old,
we have an account of a visit to the court of Lu by an envoy from Wu, an
eminent statesman of the time, and a man of great learning. We are told
that as he wished to hear the music of Kau, which he could do better in
Lu than in any other state, they sang to him the odes of the Kau Nan and
the Shao Nan; those of Phei, Yung, and Wei; of the Royal Domain; of
Kang; of Khi; of Pin; of Khin; of Wei; of Thang; of Khan; of Kwei; and
of Zhao. They sang to, him also the odes of the Minor Ya and the Greater
Ya; and they sang finally the pieces of the Sung. We have thus, existing
in the boyhood of Confucius, what we may call the present Book of
Poetry, with its Fang, its Ya, and its Sung. The only difference
discernible is slight,-in the order in which the Books of the Fang
followed one another.