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THUS it was that in 1843 Dr
Legge removed to Hong Kong where he was destined, in the words of one who
knew him 'to perform work which entitles him to everlasting remembrance.' A
great scheme had already entered his mind, a stupendous scholarly
undertaking which, for long years, he carried on at intervals snatched from
his already crowded life. For his life was crowded. He continued to direct
the studies of Chinese youths, he conducted the mission, went on missionary
tours, preached and visited. He became in 1849 pastor to the English
congregation of Union Chapel in Hong Kong, and he joined heart and soul in
promoting public schemes for the good of the island. He proved himself, in
fact, 'no obscure missionary', no mere oriental scholar, but a genuine
statesman, who left the impress of his mind on the infant colony and the men
who made it. He loved education, laboured for years to adapt it to the
people and their needs; was practically the founder of the educational
system of the colony; persuaded the Government to adopt his policy. As one
who, though associated with him for years, was yet in some fundamental
respects his very opposite, has said, 'He was the presiding spirit of the
Board and ruled it with the ease and grace of a born Bishop.'
And yet he felt that more was
demanded of him. For he found himself in a vast empire, a 'spacious seat of
ancient civilisation' whose history reached back three thousand years to the
time of the Emperor Yaou (2356 B.C.), and even claimed to extend into mists
of antiquity before that. He had set himself to master the strange language
of this strange people, and he saw further that they possessed a treasured
literature, and were eminently a learned, or rather, a reading nation. In
1858 he went over the Examination Hall of Canton, at which the young men of
Canton province assemble to compete for literary degrees. In that one
building he counted no fewer than 7242 distinct cells or apartments for the
accommodation of the students. To him that appealed as an indication of the
educational spirit of the Chinese nation. 'It is true,' he said, 'that their
civilisation is very different from ours, but they are far removed from
barbarism. When we bear in mind that for four thousand years the people have
been living and flourishing there, growing and increasing, that nations with
some attributes perhaps of a higher character—the Assyrian, the Persian, the
Grecian, the Roman, and more modern empires, have all risen and culminated
and decayed, and yet that the Chinese empire is still there with its four
hundred millions of inhabitants, why, it is clear that there must be among
the people certain moral and social principles of the greatest virtue and
power/ He saw that' in no country is the admiration of scholastic excellence
so developed as in China, no kingdom in the world where learning is so
highly reverenced.'
He saw too that the manners
and customs of the people were regulated to an unheard of extent by the
precepts of their ancient books. He who would understand the Chinese nation,
then, must know its classical literature. In Dr Legge's mind, consequently,
there arose the conviction that 'he should not be able to consider himself
qualified for the duties of his position until he had mastered the Classical
Books of the Chinese, and had investigated for himself the whole field of
thought through which the Sages of China had ranged.' Thus he began his
life-long task, and studied the doctrines of Confucius and Mencius and the
other classical books of China, until the results of his toil were gradually
given to the world in his edition of the Chinese Classics, consisting of
eight large volumes, each containing the Chinese text, an English
translation, critical and exegetical notes, and copious prolegomena; also in
six volumes in the series of Sacred Books of the East, edited by Professor
Max Miiller, and in other smaller books. Certainly, ranged on a shelf, the
noble row of Chinese Classics looks imposing enough; the examination of
their contents reveals them as monuments of close scholarship.
The words of his nephew give
a true picture of his work:—'In his zeal to do service to humanity he tried
to enter into the heart and mind of Asia as far as the Chinese Classics
contained it. He opened the door to the mind of China. It was the work of a
pioneer; for he was among the first to recognise the place of Chinese
Literature, and the need of bringing it to the knowledge of Christendom. And
God was in a real and vivid way the sanctity, strength and abidingness of
this bond of duty. For Dr Legge believed and was sure that the literature,
to know which he lived laborious days and nights, revealed on its pages that
the grey fathers of this race "knew God."
'The Empire of China has been
famous for its Great Wall, scaling the precipices and topping the craggy
hills of the country, and built to be a defence against the incursions of
the northern tribes. It has failed of its intended purpose. So, that
terribly solid wall of exclusiveness and environment of conservatism began
to yield to foreign pressure. For long toilsome years, of which large spaces
of time had to be given to studying the living book of the life of the
Chinese, Dr Legge laboured at breaking down the circumvallations of
language, ignorance and prejudice, which made so hard the approach to the
mind of China. He measured himself against the Chinese standard of culture
and education, as their self-contained wisdom has made it to be. He knew
that the men whom China delighted to honour were the literati—the Confucian
scholars, and so he went down into their own arena and wrestled with the
ancient traditional and national literature of the Chinese.'
The magnitude of the task the
author had set himself may be gathered from an extract from an article in
the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in January 1895 on the Li SAo Poem.
'An idea of the size of many of these collections may be gained from the
Explanations of the Classics during the CKing {or Pure) Dynasty, which was
published in 1892 under x the superintendence, and mainly at the expense, of
YUan Yuan, the Governor-General of the two Kwang provinces. It contains, if
my examination of the contents be correct, about 180 treatises from 64
different authors, comprehending in all 1412 books or chapters, and forming,
when bound in English fashion, 66 thick volumes of large octavo size.'
The author of the Li SAo Poem
was Ch'ii P'ing, or Yuan, who ended his life by his own hand. Of this Dr
Legge writes:—'Ch'ii's death, though it did not originate, has confirmed the
feeling of the Chinese people generally that when a minister or high officer
has sustained a defeat, or been disgraced by his sovereign, the proper
course for him is to end his life by an act of his own. I was in Hong Kong
when the city of Canton was taken, on December 29, 1857, by our troops and
their French allies. A Chinese gentleman, with whom I was intimate, called
on me next morning to ask whether the city had really been taken, and when
told that it had been, and was now in our hands, he said, "And Yeh, the
Governor? Has he also been taken?" I replied that there was as yet no news
to that effect, and he exclaimed, "And he will not be taken alive, you may
depend on it. He must have made away with himself. There can be no doubt
about it." When the next day I had to inform him of the capture of Yeh, and
that he had been placed on board one of our ships of war, he had not a word
to say, and went away evidently disheartened and ashamed. I could see from
that time Yeh's character sank in the estimation of the people. He ceased to
be the hero whom they had feared and looked up to. Had he not been afraid to
put an end by his own hand to his now dishonoured life? That is in their
estimation what Burns, with a different meaning, calls "the second glorious
part" which a patriot, warrior or statesman can perform.'
Dr Legge had brought out part
of his work when the following paragraph appeared in a review:—' In the
immense literature of China, nine works hold a lofty pre-eminence. One
claims Confucius as its sole author, others bear traces of his hand. Their
influence even at the present day is unbounded. A complete comprehension of
them forms the sum total of the highest education in China. By a knowledge
of them men rise to the highest rank of the State, and no official post,
however mean, is open to him who has not studied their pages. They supply
the keynote to the conduct of the government of the country, and form the
criterion by which every action, whether public or private, is finally
judged. To all thoughtful minds, works which have exercised so supreme a
control over the intellects of the millions of China for three and twenty
centuries cannot but be of very great interest. Of some of them translations
of more or less value have from time to time appeared, but at the present
day no uniform translations of the nine exist. On the completion of such a
series, Dr Legge is now engaged.'
These nine Classics were
finally all translated by Dr Legge.
(1) Thi Yi King, or Book of
Changes.
(2) The Shoo King, or Book of History.
(3) The She King, or Book of Poetry.
(4) The Li Ki, or Book of Rites.
(5) The Chun Tsiu, Spring and Autumn Record.
(6) The Lun Yu, or Analects of Confucius.
(7) The Ta Hsio, or The Great Learning.
(8) The Chung Yung, or The Doctrine of the Mean.
(9) The Works of Mencius.
The Li Ki, or Book of Rites,
is the book which may almost be said to 'possess' the Chinese nation:
certain it is that it has with extraordinary force impressed itself upon the
people. Consisting of treatises on the rules of propriety and ceremonial
usages, it has regulated the actions, customs and regulations, social,
ceremonial and domestic, of the Chinese, for over two thousand years, and
its rules are minutely carried out at the present day. Indeed, the work of
one of the governing boards at Peking, called the Board of Rites, relates
solely to the enforcement of its precepts.
The Shoo King is the most
ancient of all Chinese Classics, and is a collection of historical documents
extending disconnectedly over a space of about 1700 years (2357-627 B.C).
Confucius and his disciples quote from it. As Mr Wells Williams says, it
contains the seeds of all things that are valuable in the estimation of the
Chinese; it is at once the foundation of their political system, their
history and their religious rites, the basis of their tactics, music and
astronomy.'
The Chun Tsiu is the only
classic Confucius is said to have actually composed. Dr Legge discusses at
length the question of the Confucian authorship. As claiming to be the work
of the sage it is singularly disappointing.
The Confucian Analects, The
Great Learning, and The Doctrine of the Mean, written by disciples and
followers of Confucius, are occupied much with his sayings; while the
classic called the Works of Mencius is said to be by Mencius himself and
some of his disciples.
The She King is a collection
of ancient poems, some dating from 606 B.C., others being assigned to a
period as far back as the eighteenth century B.C. 'The merit attaching to
them is' Dr Legge writes, 'that they give us faithful pictures of what was
good and what was bad in the political state of the country, and in the
social, moral and religious habits of the people.'
The remaining classic must
also be briefly alluded to, the Yi-King or Book of Changes, the most
incomprehensible of them all. Even Confucius is reported to have said after
reading his copy of it so diligently that the leathern thongs which bound
its tablets together were thrice worn out, 'Give me several years (more),
and I should be master of the Yi! From the time of Confucius onwards Chinese
scholars have 'tried to interpret the remarkable book, and solve the many
problems to which it gives rise.' Even a glance at the mysterious hexagrams,
and their still more bewildering arrangement, shows how useless it is for
anyone but a scholar to attempt to give an account of the book.
One reviewer wrote:—
'Scarcely anything more could
be desired to place within the reach of an English reader, who does not know
a word of Chinese, as full and correct a knowledge of the Book of Changes as
he could get by many years' study of the original, and intercourse with
native scholars. The mystic figures which adorn the volume stand at the head
of each chapter of the text, and the sixty-four hexagrams appear in various
tables and plates. These hexagrams are undoubtedly very old. The evidences
of their antiquity are patent and convincing to anyone who chooses to look
at them, but how old they are is beyond the power of men to determine.'
Another reviewer speaks of the 'conjectural value of the calculations of
astrology and magic in the Yi-King, and adds, 'so great is the veneration of
the utility of the Yi-King\ that the trigrams and hexagrams in arithmetical
or geometrical progression of this work were considered to be connected with
interpretations that my Chinese informant considered to be absolutely beyond
the comprehension of any European sinologist.'
In the paper already alluded
to, Confucianism in Relation to Christianity, Dr Legge thus summed up the
subject in regard to the relative value of the truths contained in the
Classics, and those set forth in the Sacred Scriptures.
'In writing about Mencius in
1861, I said:—"Man, heathen man, a Gentile without the law, is still a law
to himself. So the apostle Paul affirms; and to no moral teacher of Greece
or Rome can we appeal for so grand an illustration of the averment as we
find in Mencius." For Mencius let me here substitute Confucianism. All the
members of the Conference know how Confucius failed to appreciate the
sentiment, that we ought to return good for evil. What he did say about it
indeed indicated no mean sentiment. That the highest point of Christian
morality was, as it were, pushing its feelers backwards into Chinese society
in the fifth and sixth century before our era was indeed wonderful, and we
are sorry that the sage did not give it a welcome into his breast, and a
place in his teachings. Most of the members also will probably sympathise
with the judgment which I have expressed in the fifth volume of my Chinese
Classics, about the passionless character of Confucius' notices of the
events that he is chronicling, and the way in which he fails to discharge
the duty of a truthful historian.
'How best to awaken in the
Chinese a sense of sin, which is all-important to their acceptance of the
doctrine of the Cross, it is not easy to determine. There is the saying in
the Analects:—"He who offends against Heaven has none to whom he can pray,"
but is it not our common experience, that to the people in the mass, and
perhaps still more to the scholars of the nation, there belongs a cold and
unspiritual type of character? The prevailing secularism of Confucianism has
made them very much of the earth, earthy. What can we do but unfold to them,
with prayers and pains, what truth there is in Confucianism about God and
His moral government, and about themselves, leading them on to the deeper,
richer truth, about the same subjects in Christianity? Above all, we must
set before them the testimony of Scripture about Christ and His redeeming
work, knowing that it is by taking of the things of Christ and showing them
to men, that the Holy Spirit convinces them of sin and righteousness and
judgment'.
And then Professor Legge
referred to a conversation he had recently with one of the ablest and most
learned broad Churchmen in England, who complained that, though he approved
of what the missionaries were doing, said that they might find a more
excellent way than to 'dash too much into collision with the existing
heathen religions, and speak too bitterly of their great teachers.'
He replied that his
experience of missionaries compelled him to the conclusion that this was not
the method generally pursued. But thinking much and long over the words of
protest, he subsequently wrote:—
'Christianity cannot be
tacked on to any heathen religion as its complement, nor can it absorb any
into itself without great changes in it and additions to it Missionaries
have not merely to reform, though it will be well for them to reform where
and what they can ; they have to revolutionise; and as no revolution of a
political kind can be effected without disturbance of existing conditions,
so neither can a revolution of a people's religion be brought about without
heat and excitement Confucianism is not antagonistic to Christianity, as
Buddhism and Brahmanism are. It is not atheistic like the former, nor
pantheistic like the latter. It is, however, a system whose issues are
bounded by the East and by time; and though missionaries try to acknowledge
what is good in it, and to use it as not abusing it, they cannot avoid
sometimes seeming to pull down Confucius from his elevation. They cannot set
forth the Gospel as the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation,
and proclaim the supreme love of God and of Christ, without deploring the
want of any deep sense of sin, and of any glow of piety in the followers of
the Chinese sage. Let them seek to go about their work everywhere— and I
believe they can do so more easily in China than in other mission fields—in
the Spirit of Christ, without striving or crying, with meekness and
lowliness of heart Let no one think any labour too great to make himself
familiar with the Confucian books. So shall missionaries in China come fully
to understand the work they have to do; and the more they avoid driving
their carriages rudely over the Master's grave, the more likely are they
soon to see Jesus enthroned in His room in the hearts of the people.'
It is interesting to turn to
the opinion of the learned Dr Edkins of Shanghai, who, in his sermon at the
Union Church after Dr Legge's death, thus described the value of his
monumental work.
'His object was to unfold the
Chinese field of thought and reveal the foundation of the moral, social, and
political life of the people. Such a great work is undertaken but rarely,
perhaps not more than once in a century. In doing this he felt he was
performing a real service to missionaries and other students of the Chinese
language and literature. He thought, too, of the Western reader and thinker.
China is a most important nation on account of the compactness of the
national territory, the uniform rate of advance in population, and the
industry which is a race-characteristic. To know what the book contains is
to be in an advantageous position to judge of the people. Here the European
statesman can see the nature of the people's standard of morals. The
histories they read, their models of style, the ground of their conservatism
can here be estimated.
'Even now, when James Legge
is no longer among us, these volumes, the outcome of his long-continued
toil, contain a rich store of facts by which the foreign observer in Europe
and America can judge of China so correctly, because here are the maxims
which are popular, here are the ideas that rule in the minds of the scholars
and all the people. Here are the principles that sway every native coterie,
through all the provinces. What the Bible is to the Christian; what
Shakespeare is to the student of English poetry; what the Koran is to the
Mohammedan, these books are to the universal Chinese mind. To place these
books in the hands of all who look with despair on a page of Mencius or the
Book of History is a service of the most solid kind, and an achievement of a
most useful character. While he was engaged in this work he made it a point,
from which he would not deviate, to regard direct missionary labours as
demanding and receiving his chief attention.'
Though it is forestalling the
chronology of the subject, it will be better here to give some consecutive
account of the preparation of this great work.
As time allowed, Dr Legge had
pushed on with his literary labours, until, as part of it neared completion,
he asked himself, 'How can the expense of publication be met?' A British
merchant in Hong Kong, Mr Joseph Jardine, came forward with an open-hearted
offer of help. 'If you are prepared for the toil of the publication,' he
said, 'I will bear the expense of it. We make our money in China, and we
should be glad to assist in whatever promises to be of benefit to it' With
gratitude Dr Legge accepted his help, and thus the first edition of Vol. I.
of the Classics was brought out in Hong Kong in 1861. Mr Jardine had never
forgotten the Chinese boatman's testimony to Dr Legge's knowledge of the
language—'He speakee Chinese more better I.' Unfortunately Mr Joseph Jardine
died before the publication of the first volume, but his brother, Sir Robert
Jardine, liberally continued the assistance given by him until the second
and third volumes had been published, and also during the preparation of the
fourth and fifth volumes.
The first volume was
published in 1861, and VoL II. came out in less than a year after. These
were followed by Vol. III. (Parts I. and II.) in 1865. After an interval
were published, in 1871, Vol. IV. (Parts I. and II.), and in 1872 Vol. V.
(Parts I. and II.). Each 'Part' is a bound book, the whole set consisting of
eight volumes.
There are several allusions
to the work in Dr Legge's letters of later years in China:—
'I have brought to the work
on the Classics a competent Chinese scholarship, the result of more than
five-and-twenty years' toilsome study. Such a work was necessary in order
that the rest of the world should really know this great Empire, and also
that especially our missionary labours among the people should be conducted
with sufficient intelligence, and so as to secure permanent results. I
consider that it will greatly facilitate the labours of future missionaries
that the entire books of Confucius should be published with a translation
and notes.
'I have arranged, through the
generosity of Mr Dent, that missionaries, whether Protestant or Roman
Catholic, can obtain my volumes at half price. (This was done till the
amount of Mr Denf's gift was more than exhausted.)
'Julien has written me a fine
letter about my volumes on the Shoo—very complimentary.' John Legge writes
thus:—"I am not surprised that Julien pronounces your work on the Shoo 'magnifique.'
It is so in deed and in truth, and I am truly proud of it. I am quite
charmed with your conclusions on Yao, Shun, and Yii. They harmonise exactly
with certain indistinct notions which have been floating in my mind for the
past nine years."
'I will not have one idle
day: not one day of health here in Hong Kong save Saturdays, perhaps, and
Sundays, in which I shall not have made some appreciable progress in the
preparation or publication of the She!
(To his wife) 'I have just
finished re-writing my translation of the first part of the She King. There
are four parts in all, but the first is much the longest —fully two-fifths
of the whole. By the end of June I hope to have all the translation
completed, and will write to England for the paper and ink wherewith to go
to press. By the end of the year the Annotations will be ready, and I shall
only have the Prolegomena to write. Having got on with the She King since
nine o'clock this evening, I am in better spirits than I was all day. Notes,
business, Chinese callers, took up all the time and I was thoroughly jaded
and out of sorts. I went to the Tai-ping shan Chapel—Ho-Yuk-ts'un preached.
I came home—down, down, down. Now it is different A good tale of work on the
She always exhilarates me, and why? Simply because it seems to bring the
period of our re-union nearer. ... I have a letter from Julien with a grand
glorification.
'i have just finished a long
ode in the She. My heart often shrinks within me when I think of all the
labour to be done on this one work in hand. But page gets trotted off after
page—it is just like ascending the Peak. If you stand at the bottom and
dwell on the distance and the steepness of the ascent, the feet almost
refuse to move. But gird up your loins and go at it: you pant and groan, but
ere long the summit is attained. So if life and health be spared, I shall
stand on top of the She, and by and by bring forth the headstone of the Yi
with shoutings.
'I have just translated a
Chinese ode in the She King—"Don't think of all your sorrows: Your mind will
thereby be kept in an imperfect light"
'I have just succeeded in
drawing blood from the body of the She King, and have written since
breakfast the first two notes—on the Title of the Whole Work, and the Title
of the Part. There is in existence a preface to the She, written about 2000
years ago. The writer gives his own view of the subject matter of every ode
in the collection —307 in all. This I thought I had better translate and I
find my equipment for my own labour on the book much increased by having
done so. Certainly I am not doing my work in a superficial or perfunctory
way.
'I want to do full justice to
my work on the Chinese Classics. Probably out of 100 readers 99 will not
care a bit for the long critical notes; but then the hundredth man will
come, who will not find them to be a bit too long. For that hundredth man I
ought to write.
'The Japanese Government have
ordered ten copies of my Classics. Sir Harry Parkes writes this, and goes on
to sound me about going to Japan and becoming Principal of a college which
the Government would start if I would undertake it. The time is past,
however, for that!
'Mr Chalmers writes to me:—"I
am getting more and more convinced of the immense importance to us
missionaries of the work you are engaged in. We must use the Chinese
Classics as a fulcrum to the Christian level, and to most of us they are not
sufficiently available in their native state. I would have a clause
introduced into the Regulations of all Missionary Societies that a
missionary is not to stand up to preach on any subject without first
endeavouring to find out what certain Chinese poets or philosophers may have
said about it or bearing on it"
*By the end of next year the
She King ought to be out. We have printed 380 pages, but the expense is
heavy, about 105 dollars a month—including 20 dollars to Dr Wong, my native
assistant. Sometimes I grudge keeping him on, as a whole week may pass
without my needing to refer to him. But then again, an occasion occurs when
he is worth a great deal to me, and when I have got the Prolegomena fairly
in hand, he will be of much use. None but a first-rate native scholar would
be of any value to me, and here I could not get anyone comparable to him.
But for this expenditure I should have had money in hand at the year's end,
instead of having to sell shares.'
'Six hundred and forty-eight
pages of the She are now printed, and this work must lie by till I get the
index and prolegomena ready. In the meantime the printers have got the
Spring and Autumn, or Confucius' Annals of Loo, in hand, which cost me
fifteen months' hard work. Very few people, however, have an idea of the
immense amount of labour which it takes to bring out one of these Classics.
A Chinese lad once sent me a letter beginning—"I know the assiduity of your
nature." And assiduity certainly has an important place in my mental
constitution.'
Scholars at home, working in
Oxford, Cambridge or London, might have congratulated themselves sometimes
on their own freedom from certain exasperating checks and annoyances
attendant on Dr Legge's literary labours. The printing office being under
his control, he had to superintend the publication and binding of his works,
and to send to England for paper, printing ink, etc. Among his minor worries
was the fact that the volumes of the Classics had to come out in different
bindings. Uniformity of binding could not be secured because materials were
scanty in Hong Kong. Also, owing to the lack of English booksellers, he had
to get the storekeepers to sell the Classics on commission among their other
wares.
On one occasion the ship
containing all his printing paper and ink struck upon a rock and went down
within sight of her anchorage in Hong Kong harbour. Her masts, sticking up
above the sea, were visible from his verandah.
'It gave me quite a turn. My
first thought was that the fates were fighting against my getting on with
the publication of my volumes. I have since been able to look the event in
the face. There must be some delay in the commencement of printing, but I
shall be so much more advanced with my manuscripts that we can start with
five men instead of three. I had engaged Sow-lung and two other men to begin
printing on the first of June. If he begins now in November or December with
four other men we shall be in six months nearly as far as we should have
been. In the meantime I telegraph by the mail "Replace invoice immediately,
sending one half by Suez Canal and one half round Cape." This will divide
the risk.'
After printing the books in
Hong Kong he had to write to England for cases to be sent out in which to
pack them and send them to England to his bookseller. 'Four hundred cases
for one volume ought to be here any day, and four hundred for the other
volume next month. Those cases will cost me about fifty pounds.'
Another time certain cases of
books, necessary to him in his work, arrived after having been for a long
time under water in the hold. 'I insured them for £250—I shall claim for at
least £80. Meantime the ruin of many books and the spoiling of others is a
great vexation.' He sent several of his books to a friend to sell in Amoy,
and received the following letter.—'Alas for your Classics. Macgregor
delivered them in the condition he got them out of the wreck. I had them put
in the sun and thoroughly dried, but I could not offer them to subscribers.
The mould has got into the inside, and even if rebound they will never be
sightly. It is a sad loss.'
Among Dr Legge's papers were
found several bundles of letters from Professor Stanislas Julien, all
beautifully written, full of Chinese quotations and often with delicate
slips of Chinese printing gummed in. They bore out Dr Legge's remark to his
wife. Julien is a most voluminous correspondent. His letters to me bristle
with compliments.' On his last journey home and out again, Dr Legge stopped
in Paris and saw him. He writes of the first visit:— 'I have seen Julien and
MohL The former is a stoutish, nervous old man—a Frenchman of the French,
with a large head, long hair, and a short neck, lion-like. He received me
with much empressementy and we exchanged ideas on various Chinese subjects.
Yet I fancied we acted like a couple of prize-fighters, who come together in
the ring for the first time and take the measure of each other's strength
and prowess. Mohl is another of the literary celebrities of Paris. He came
to London to see me nine years ago. I found him much older-looking.'
Of the second visit he says
:—'I called on Julien. The old man was very gracious.' Is not he a fine
specimen of a French gentleman and a scholar?' remarked Mr Hart. 'He is
indeed, physically and mentally, a noble specimen of the genus homo. I was
ready to smile when in French fashion he kissed me first on one cheek and
then on the other.' |
