the most studied form of the Chinese character. To attain skill in writing it, is more or less the aim of every educated Chinese; and to impart that skill, is the object of the work, whose rules I have translated, and given its examples, in the following pages.
Of the two points, correctness and elegance, the first only is absolutely required of students, at their public examination;[1] though, of course, if the latter exist, it is held to be an additional recommendation. If graphic skill be ever held cheap in China,[2] it is only in the possession of him who can lay no claim to the higher attainments of solid erudition. It will always procure as much consideration as it is worth; and that it is worth a great deal, when combined with learning and critical accuracy, is proved by the care with which it is studied.
Having derived some advantage, in writing the character correctly, from an observance of the rules that follow, I concluded that they might prove equally useful to such Englishmen, or others, as studied the language, of which the written character must be allowed to form an important department. It is well known, that the Chinese themselves write with a hair pencil, but partly with a view to make it more difficult for them to forge such papers, and partly because it is a readier method. The British Factory at Canton, in their correspondence with the local government, are accustomed to have their letters, &c. in the native language, written with a pen, on English paper; though it certainly is not possible with our pens exactly to imitate the pencil strokes of the Chinese; yet by dint of practice much may be done with it, even in point of neatness and beauty: the form of the character, and its proportions, may be most accurately preserved; and there is no reason whatever why, in point of correctness, the writing of the pen should not be fully equal to that of the pencil.
The rules and examples that follow include every possible class of written character; and indeed, some few of them are little more than mere repetitions of the same general directions, though, as they were made for the instruction of the Chinese themselves, I have thought it right to omit none,
- ↑ To prove how much stress is laid on this, the Chinese have a common story of some candidate, who having written the character for a horse, with a horizontal line at the bottom, instead of with four points, was rejected altogether, being told "it was impossible for a horse to walk, without its legs."
- ↑ See Chinese Moral Maxims, page 175.
