acquainted with the Spring and Autumn Annals; and although too poor to buy books, he managed to edacate himself by stolen glances at those of other people. He was of a qoiet disposition and prepossessing in appearance; bat the times were out of joint, all power being in the hands of the eunuchs. Accordingly he pleaded ill-health, and went into seclusion. Later on he attracted the notice of the Emperor Hsien Ti, himself a great lover of learning, and the two spent hours together in literary discussions. He rose to be Chief Librarian of the Imperial Library and compiled the ]^ j^ Annals of the Han Dynasty, besides writing a small work on the art of government.
812 Hu An-kuo (T- J^^. H. ^^). A.D. 1074- 1138. A native of ^ ^ Ch^ung-an in Fuhkien, who graduated fourth on the list of chin shih in 1097. It was said that his essay was the best of all sent in , but that he was not placed first because in it he had &iled to censure the policy of Ssti-ma Kuang. The Emperor subsequently raised him to third on the list, and he was soon afterwards sent as Literary Chancellor to Hunan. Here he got into trouble with an adherent of Ts^ai Ching, and the latter caused him to be dismissed from the public service. Ere long he was re-instated in office and sent to Sstich'uan, but on the death of his parents in 1113 he refused to return to public life. Ultimately however he became Expositor of the Classics under the Emperor Eao Tsung, and continued in office until his death. He was the author of the ^ ^ "^ , a work which was written specially to restore the Spring and Autumn Annals to its place in the Confucian Canon from which it had been ejected by Wang An-shih. He also wrote a supplement to Sstl-ma Euang's history, miscellaneous essays, etc. etc. On one occasion he undertook to reform a nephew, a good-for-nothing idler. He shut him up in a room by himself for a whole year, with a pile of books. At first the young man amused
himself by carving figures all over the woodwork; but gradually
