it is in the Record of Rites, III, ii, parr. 13, 14:--'Every fifth year,
the Son of Heaven made a progress through the kingdom, when the Grand
Music-Master was commanded to lay before him the poems of the different
states, as an exhibition of the manners and government of the people.'
Unfortunately, this Book of the Li Ki, the Royal Ordinances, was
compiled only in the reign of the emperor Wan of the Han dynasty (B.C.
179 to 155). The scholars entrusted with the work did their best, we may
suppose, with the materials at their command they made much use, it is
evident, of Mencius, and of the I Li. The Kau Li, or the Official Book
of Kau, had not then been recovered. But neither in Mencius nor in the I
Li do we meet with any authority for the statement before us. The Shu
mentions that Shun every fifth year made a tour of inspection; but there
were then no odes for him to examine, for to him and his minister
Kao-yao is attributed the first rudimentary attempt at the poetic art.
Of the progresses of the Hsia and Yin sovereigns we have no information;
and those of the kings Of Kau were made, we know, only once in twelve
years. The statement in the Royal Ordinances, therefore, was probably
based only on tradition.

Notwithstanding the difficulties that beset this passage of the Li Ki, I
am not disposed to reject it altogether. It derives a certain amount of
confirmation from the passage quoted from the Official Book of Kau on p.
278, showing that in the Kau dynasty there was a collection of poems,
under the divisions of the Fang, the Ya, and the Sung, which it was the
business of the Grand, Music-Master to teach the musicians of the court.
It may be accepted then, that the duke of Kau, in legislating for his
dynasty, enacted that the poems produced in the different feudal states
should be collected on occasion of the royal progresses, and lodged
thereafter among the archives of the bureau of music at the royal court.
The same thing, we may presume a fortiori, would be done, at certain