Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period/Ts'ao Jung
TS'AO Jung 曹溶 (T. 潔躬, 鑒躬, H. 秋嶽, 倦圃, 鉏菜翁, 金陀老人), 1613–1685, scholar and official, was a native of Hsiu-shui, Chekiang. He became a chin-shih in 1637 and served as a censor at the close of the Ming dynasty. With the change of dynasties in 1644 he was given the same office under the new regime. In 1655 he became vice-president of the Board of Revenue and in the same year lieutenant-governor of Kwangtung. After he had retired from official life he was recommended to take the special examination known as po-hsüeh hung-tz'ŭ of 1679 (see under P'êng Sun-yü), but declined the honor. As a bibliophile he was interested in assembling the collected works of literary men of the Sung and Yüan dynasties. A catalogue of these works appears in the 觀古堂書目叢刻 Kuan-ku t'ang shu-mu ts'ung k'o of 1902, under the title 靜惕堂宋元人集目 Ching-t'i t'ang Sung Yüan jên chi mu. According to this list, Ts'ao Jung owned 196 collected works of Sung authors and 139 of Yüan authors. The catalogue of his library as a whole, entitled Ching-t'i t'ang shu-mu (書目), is preserved in manuscript in the Kuohsüeh Library, Nanking. From his library he personally selected a number of titles which were brought together in the famous ts'ung-shu known as 學海類編 Hsüeh-hai lei-pien, or "Classified Anthology from the Ocean of Learning." This ts'ung-shu was enlarged by a pupil, T'ao Yüeh 陶越 (T. 艾村), and in its present form comprises 440 monographs. It was not printed until 1831—a reprint appeared from the Commercial Press in 1920. Ts'ao Jung achieved some distinction as a poet, and in this field his name is often linked with that of Kung Ting-tzŭ [q. v.]. His collected verse, Ching-t'i t'ang shih-chi (詩集), 44 chüan, was first printed in 1725. The Ssŭ-k'u Catalogue (see under Chi Yün) has critical notices of eight works attributed to him.
[2/78/51b; 30/3/7a; 32/4/8b; Chekiang t'ung-chih (1812) 179/14a; Chekiang, Kashing fu-chih (1878) 52/49a; Ts'ang-shu chi-shih shih (see under P'an Tsu-yin) 4/11b; Wang Shih-chên [q. v.], Ch'ih-pei ou-t'an (1701) 16/10b asserts that Ts'ao's library contained the collected writings of 180 Sung authors and of 115 Yüan authors.]