I suppose he was one of the most brilliant foreign students of Chinese that ever lived. His enormous output in the way of articles, pamphlets and books can only be compared with Chavannes, " the French savant's. His trouble was that he knew too much. He could not always ce-ordinate his learning. He darted like a humming-bird from tone source of interest to another.
There was hardly a phase of Chin-exe history, literature or social life fon which he had not written. My husband used to tell me how, when Parker was in charge of the Consulate at Canton, he was assistant, Parker used to stand at a desk to write, furiously throwing the wet sheets over his shoulder. thoughts came so fast he could not stay to blot. And the assistant consuls of those days used to consider it an honour to pick up and sort Parker's poses. (One of those assistants was J. N. Jordan, afterwards His Majesty's Minister at Peking.) His researches, will be valued by students for generations. I think the work he was proudest of was his Prefuce to Giles' Dietionary. It is, indeed, a masterpiece of erudition, a volume in itself, a8 anyone can see who consults it; and ite learning has never been superseded.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.