may be so evident to a casual reader, but possibly "Mr: Lyall was trying to convey to the students of Chinese books in translations, the atmosphere of the original book. The meaning is important, but the atmosphere of such an ancient book as the Sayings of Confucius is equally important. To leave out the atmosphere and only attempt to give the meaning, some of us would call paraphrasing, not translation. But if your reviewer should think that the meaning is everything, he should have told us that, and then we should know what to think, too.
Really, it should not have been necessary to drag in Dr. Lexge's name at all ina criticism' of Mr.
Lyall's work. Mr. Lyall has stated very clear terms in the preface, conception of a true translation, Me says: "I have tried to make the translation in the present edition more clearly word for word than it was in the first. It has been pointed out to me that I expect a great deal of my readers. To a large extent this cannot be helped. The Chinese text is often hard to understand and fs sometimes open to more than one interpretation, An English version that always made easy reading would not be a trac translation, 'Mr. Lyall's view may be right, or it may be wrong. But it is entitled to be heard, and should not be ignored altogether, and Mr. Lyall's trans. lation should' stand or fall by the rightness or wrongness of his view and by the success or failure he has had in carrying out his design. What Mr. Lyall has offered to us is a version done on his own lines. Tt should therefore not be judged by the merits or defects of another person's work, which may have been done with an entirely different object in view.
We all know how hard it is for one to form one's judgment free from alt bias, especially if it concerns one's favourite authors. But there could be no excuse for the way in which your reviewer mention. ed Mr. Lyall's rendering of the Chinese word jen as love. Your reviewer gave the impression that ME. Lyall had given this net rendering in all confidence of its being right. We have—only to refer to Mr. Lyall's own words to show how sensible he himself was of its inadequacy. "But for {ove the case is different. I should have preferred to use the old word charity, had it not acquired a new meaning in modern English. But even the old meaning of charity is not the same as that of the Chinese word jen; and I am afraid that some sentences the word love makes very poor indeed...... Tho sense word has. ler meaning than our word love. But love comes nearer to the meaning than any other English word, and I have used the word throughout instead of employing a diferent English: word] when doing would make rather Letter sense." Whatever may be the defects of Mr. Lyall's translation these words reveal _conscientiousness, and whoever criticizes his work should at least show the same conscientiousness.
The above reply to is not intended as a criticism of the translations, but of the method of criticism used in your review. What! has been said about Mr. Lyall and Dr. Legge is only for illustrate of isolated points in argument, and must not be taken as rounded estimates of their respective work.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.