PREFACE
In 1874 the late Mr. Mayers published a small collection of about 800 notices of Chinese statesmen, generals, writers, and others.
For many years his work held the field, until at length a feeling arose that something more comprehensive was wanted to meet the slow but sure development of Anglo-Chinese scholarship. Accordingly, in 1891 this dictionary was planned, and has since been carried out, in the hope that it may prove of use to all who are occupied with the language and literature of China, especially to the British Consular official.
Some such book of reference is indeed an absolute necessity to the student, confronted in every branch of the written language, including State papers, dispatches, public proclamations, the Peking Gazette, etc. etc., by oft-recurring allusions to the sayings and doings of the heroes and villains of the past. In this sense, names have been inserted of men whose only title to a biographical record rests perhaps upon one pointed remark or striking deed which has appealed to the imagination of their countrymen.
Many of these sayings and incidents, historical as well as mythological, are no doubt trivialities in themselves. Their usage however by the Chinese invests them, as regards the European, with an importance not their own. Western statesmen do not scorn references to Polyphemus, to Horatius Cocles, nor even to the Hatter of Alice in Wonderland. In the same way a Chinese
