'A tegenp has of late been going the. round of home newspapers to the effect that "an Imperial Mandate directs the President of the Academy to translate Shakespeare into Chinese for the benefit of the young Princes." It might be thought that this truly marvellous statement was an imaginative effort on the part of some clerk in the Central News Agency hard up for copy, but it has been lately seen in the-form of a "telegram from Peking" in the American press. Is it possible that some lioaxster has arisen in musty Cambalu, and we knew it not? Every foreigner
copy of Mayers' Chinese Government in in Peking who repels himself keeps a some conspicuous part of his bookshelf but Mayers knew not a "President of the Academy." If the Chancellor of the Hanlin Yitan or he of the Kwoh 'T'sze Kien is meant, the simple boldness which would represent them as called upon to translate a writer of whom they have never heard and of whose language they are most disdainfully ignorant, soars beyond the reach of praise or blame. If we are driven to assume that some one in Peking did tell some one else to translate Shakespeare into Chinese for some third person's benefit, it seems possible that the translator hit upon was the Professor of Hermeneutics, better known for two decades as the "President of the Tung-wen-kuan." There is, when one comes to think of it, no particular reason why that much enduring word should not be translated Academy" as well as "School of Languages " or " University of Peking." What adds colour to this supposition is the close connection between the Tung-wen-kuan and the Inspectorate-General of Customs, all mandates issuing from which are, it is superfluous to say, "Tmperial." Let us therefore suppose that under instructions from the Inspector-General, Dr. Martin is about to translate Shakespeare. If the feat is possible no better performer could be found. The scholarship, industry, and himself poetic leanings of the worthy President are too well known for us to insist them here; we will only observe that the Doctor possesses the one other qualification most required. He is a an of the Divine William, who flourished, as some may remember, before England separated herself from America. At the same time this sug-reflections. ft is leved that all gests some puzzling, if not painful,
Americans have become converted to Donnellyism; in other words, that they regard the works vulgarly known as the Plays of Shakespeare as being really a Kind of memorandum book or portfolio in which Bacon jotted down any remarks on contemporary history which seemed too trivial or too ill-natured to be inserted among the Essays or the "Novum Organum." Will then, the President do violence to his convictions, and translate the superficial Shakespeare of his unthinking childhood, or will be lay before the admiring yamen a perfect version of the Great Cryptogram? The latter course would be, it Seems to us, by far the easier and simpler. In the first place the Chinese, some of them, at any rate, have heard of the English statesman, Pei-kan, by whom, as one of them writes, "200 years ago the principles of science were first enunciated,"—that science which, he assures us, when China once turns her cultured mind to it, the Chinese are destined to carry forward to lengths far beyond the feeble attainments western scholars; but She-ki-ssi-pleb they know not. Here is a great argument in favour of introducing Chinese at once to the Baconian kernel of the plays, without breaking their teeth over the Shakespearian husk. Why should the " young princes" of China be troubled with the exploded ideas which every Donnellyite blushes to think he once entertained? There might, of course, in good time be established at the Tang-wen-kuan a Professor of Bacon (not a Mahommedan pigsticker, but a bespectacled student of Verulam), whose duty it should be, asa pleasing historical study, to sketch lightly the growth of the Shakespeare myth, and expatiate on the mighty genius who fooled Englishmen for three centuries. The opportunities for side hits at the superiority of a more free and independent nation, or (as the nationality of the Professor should determine) at the amazing gullibility of the outer barbarian, would not fail to be seized. In fact a Baconian lecture might become as popular an afternoon entertainment among the new Manchu society springing into being under the influence of the Marquis Tseng, as are now (or in Matthew Arnold's time were) the lectures of the Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Perhaps in furtherance of the Cause of Truth the great Ignatius Donnelly himself might be persuaded (out of the of the Cryptogram) to esta-overwhelming thought to occupy it ish the much needed chair; even,—
Other reasons there are, besides a deep consciousness of the Shakespearian Fraud, which should lead the learned Doctor to translate the pure vein (streak, should we not rather say?) of Bacon and leave ies free lease is not hampered by the trammels of rhythm or rhyme, and, as far as it has been revealed to us by Ignatius, is of the simple, we are tempted to say twaddling, nature which characterises the noblest flights of Chinese classic prose. As for the rind, it bristles, not only with wondrous ima-gory, and deep insight into human hearts and hopes, but with a haunting melody of diction which not even: the kindred Teutonic tongues can altogether reproduce. Will the clumsy five or seven syllables which go to make a Chinese line convey any idea of the majestic flow of Portia's invocation of Mercy? We trow not. The elaborate antitheses and parallelisms of so called Chinese' poetry may do well enough for a ballade or a rondeau, but to apply them to Shakespeare! On the other hand the painfully artistic French classical dramas might be squeezed into this new dress without nich alteration and with little injury, and we would suggest as a very hopeful canard, a telegram to Paris that Racine is being done into Kuan-hua against the Emperor's marriage day, when Esther will be performed in the whilom Pei-tang Cathedral by the successful candidates for the position of bridesmaid. The openings for a really ingenious news agent in Peking are many, and an Imperial marriage has a fascination for the readers of the scraps and cuttings which appear at the foot of short columns in the Zimes which no amount of telegrams about Shakespeare and the President of the Academy could arouse. Not even an Imperial edict officially declaring Dounellyism to be the state persuasion of China would move such readers, mainly as news agents must know of the female sect,' to half the enthusiasm which would be awakened by a well considered cablegram that with Li Hungchang. If'a news agent the young Empress designate had eloped must deal with improbabilities, at all events let him give us something interesting and sensational.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.