unique character. Besides, in the pages of these rustic histories,
either the aspersions upon sovereigns and statesmen, or the strictures
upon individuals, their wives, and their daughters, or the deeds of
licentiousness and violence are too numerous to be computed. Indeed,
there is one more kind of loose literature, the wantonness and pollution
in which work most easy havoc upon youth.

"As regards the works, in which the characters of scholars and beauties
is delineated their allusions are again repeatedly of Wen Chuen, their
theme in every page of Tzu Chien; a thousand volumes present no
diversity; and a thousand characters are but a counterpart of each
other. What is more, these works, throughout all their pages, cannot
help bordering on extreme licence. The authors, however, had no other
object in view than to give utterance to a few sentimental odes and
elegant ballads of their own, and for this reason they have fictitiously
invented the names and surnames of both men and women, and necessarily
introduced, in addition, some low characters, who should, like a buffoon
in a play, create some excitement in the plot.

"Still more loathsome is a kind of pedantic and profligate literature,
perfectly devoid of all natural sentiment, full of self-contradictions;
and, in fact, the contrast to those maidens in my work, whom I have,
during half my lifetime, seen with my own eyes and heard with my own
ears. And though I will not presume to estimate them as superior to the
heroes and heroines in the works of former ages, yet the perusal of the
motives and issues of their experiences, may likewise afford matter
sufficient to banish dulness, and to break the spell of melancholy.

"As regards the several stanzas of doggerel verse, they may too evoke
such laughter as to compel the reader to blurt out the rice, and to