Puang ka nguoh, half a month. Siong" nguoh, last month. Süd ka nguoh, one month. Seng kui ka nguoh, several months Ti kui ka nguoh, several months hence. ago. Ming" tang3, or, ming" nih*, to-morrow. No' au nih3, three days hence. So3 mang", yesterday. Au nih, day after to-morrow. Può, night, or evening, affixed to either of the expressions denoting days, signifies the evening of that day; as, king può, (nih being omitted,) this evening; so3 mang3 può, last evening. CONNECTIVES. But few connecting particles are used in the dialect spoken at Fuh Chau, and the same is true of the Chinese language generally. CONJUNCTIONS. Këüng', and; ling, also; hëüh1, or hëüh1-ti, or, either; ka sü2, or ioh3 sü2, if; kò2 pe3, supposing that; ing oi', because; ku chü, therefore. PREPOSITIONS. Meng3-seng, before; a-lau2, behind; kè-teng2, above; a1-tè3, below; tie2-tie3, within; ngie lau2, without, outside. INTERJECTIONS. Ho2! Well! It is well! Ai-ia! an expression of wonder, or surprise; this expression is also used in a drawling tone, denoting excessive grief. Eu! So-ho! Ho there! used to call the attention of persons standing near. 05 05! expressive of sudden pain. VERSIFICATION.* The written language governs the style of poetry. The most ancient Chinese poetry was irregular, composed of an even number of lines, consisting of a nearly uniform number of monosyllabic words in a line, subject to rules of rhyme and alliteration; that is to say, to periodic return and cadence of certain articulations and terminations. Short pieces of this measured prose make up the Chu King, or Book of Records, and some other ancient books of the same class. The style of long poems, such as the Panegyric of Moukden, is very similar. Chinese poetry has advanced by degrees to the condition in which The rules of Chinese versification have been translated from the Chinese Grammar of Abel Remusat. Paris: A. D. 1822. it is seen in at present. Modern poetry commonly consists of either five or seven words in a line. Of these two kinds, that of seven syllables (words) in a line is the more common. There are also verses of three, four, six, and nine words, or syllables, in a line; but the ordinary poetry is written in measures of either five or seven syllables. In poetry there are recognised only two distinctions of tone, namely, the ping, or smooth, and the cha', or harsh tones. The latter comprehends the siong, or rising, the keu3, or vanishing, and theihs, or abrupt tones, these being all considered harsh tones. In verses of five words (syllables) no attention is paid to the tones of the first and third. The second and fourth ought to alternate; that is, if the second is a ping tone, the fourth ought to be chat, and vice versa. The second and third lines ought to be the reverse of the first, and, by consequence, the fourth verse resembles the first. In verses of seven syllables, the tones of the first, third, and fifth may be selected at pleasure. The tones of the second and fourth words should alternate, and the sixth should correspond with the second. In verses of five, and also of seven syllables, the stanzas, consisting of four lines each, require three of the lines to terminate alike both in rhyme and tone, or accent. Usually the ending of the third line does not rhyme with the others, and frequently they dispense with the rhyme altogether. The structure of Chinese poetry may be illustrated by diagrams, using the open circle to represent smooth tones, the shaded circle for harsh tones, and the circle with one half only shaded, to represent syllables which may be smooth or harsh at pleasure. In this example the left hand column represents the first line, having the second syllable a smooth tone, and the fourth harsh. The second syllable of the second line is harsh, and the fourth smooth, and so on. In the following example, the second syllable of the first line is harsh, and the fourth smooth, and so on. This ex0000 ample is the inversion of the first. It is thus admissible to choose at pleasure the tone of the governing syllable, (the second of the first line,) but when that is chosen, the whole stanza must be made to correspond to the peculiar form which agrees with it; in the same manner as in music, the whole tune must preserve a certain relation to the key note. In some poems of five sylla bles in a measure, the third of the first line is the governing word: and the fifth sometimes holds the same relation in verses of seven syllables. This key word in Chinese poetry is the object of particular attention. It must not be a mere particle, but a word expressing some prominent idea in the sentence. It may rhyme with the key word in the following line, or it may alternate with it, according to the rule which is chosen in the poem. These different kinds of verses are variously combined, making as many as forty different poetical metres. There are six different metres in ancient poetry. The style of these poems is, in general, elevated, concise, full of allegorical, and metaphorical expressions, of words that are antique and little used, and references to events of history, deeds, usages, and opinions little known. This is what renders Chinese poetry so very difficult to be appreciated or described by Western scholars. The great difference between the smooth and harsh tones, which are variable in different stanzas of Chinese poetry, some of which can be scarcely, if at all, enunciated in singing, renders it almost impossible to sing Chinese poetry with Western music, and a tune which was adapted to one stanza would not be appropriate for the next, though agreeing with it in the number and metrical arrangement of its syllables. In the written language there are so many synonymous characters differing in pronunciation and tone, that there is little difficulty in adapting them to the strict rules of Chinese poetry. In the spoken language, however, the number, tones, and arrangement of words in a sentence, is so inflexible, that it is almost impossible to compose poetic measures in the spoken language. The popular songs of the empire, and hymns composed for Christian worship, are only approximations to the style of the spoken language, and, consequently, are but partially intelligible to the common people. ART. III.-DANTE. "Dante et les Origines de la Litérature Italienne." Par M. FOURIEL. 2 volumes. Paris: Durand, Libraire. New-York: Hector Bossange et Fils. THE French seem fast repairing their long neglect of Dante. For four centuries his great poem remained scarce known beyond the title, not only to the multitude, but even to the learned. There were, however, in the seventeenth century, some one or two trans lations, or rather parodies, which perhaps protracted the neglect; but they could not travesty the grim features and garish horrors of the Inferno; and so this portion was thenceforward somewhat valued, because understood. The author was admitted to have succeeded at the outset; but was pronounced to have, like Milton, become heavy as he advanced. The estimate was scarcely different at bottom in other countries. The poet's name might be more popular in England and even Germany; but what was here admired in Dante was not the poetry, but the politics, his supposed hatred of the papacy,* or his adhesion to the Germanic empire. Anything else was but a mere echo of the enthusiasm of Italy. This enthusiasm too, we suspect, was not first excited by the poetry. No doubt the visions represented should, from their analogy to current belief, be deemed to have made deep impression on the popular imagination. But it is also to be remembered, that horrific visions of the future world were, about this time, become quite frequent in most of the monasteries of the continent, and that the popular imagination becomes soon familiar with even the terrible, to the extent of not distinguishing the tints of Dante from a monkish daub. It is accordingly a fact of history, that for a century after publication, and during over a dozen editions, the poem was read among the higher classes. Its main interest to these readers was political, only historical. Most of the personages located in the three regions of the dead were either parties still alive or who had recently died, and all were connected with the highest families of Italy and Europe. At a period, too, when faction raged with demonlike animosity, when every man and woman must be a partisan to the knife, this poetic distribution of compensation and of punishment must have been grateful, as a consolation to the defeated or the unavenged. To the triumphant its vain portraitures would also have the piquancy, the satire, and the scandal of a scurrilous party newspaper. In short, it would be viewed much as the fierce political comedies of Aristophanes, in similar times, at Athens, were viewed. And, by the way, this plain analogy appears to us to be the origin of the apparently eccentric title assigned by Dante to his poem, and on which the commentators have, for centuries, been losing themselves in conjectures, without once falling upon the conjecture which is thus submitted as the true one. For the epithet divine cannot be urged as qualifying the term comedy; it was not till a century later that it has been added by the public, as a tribute of admiration, much as was likewise paid to Plato. It was on this notion that Father Hardouin, of paradoxical celebrity, maintained the poem to be the forgery of some insidious Wiclifite. About this distance of a century, it was, in fact, that the Divine Comedy attained to general and to intelligent appreciation in Italy. This was manifested in an emphatic and even singular fashion. Chairs of criticism were established in the universities and chief cities, expressly for the exposition of the lore and beauties of the great poet. Boccaccio, himself a man of eminent genius, was among the earliest to lend his talents to this patriotic and poetic task, and contributed particularly to the growing repute of Dante. This reputation was, in fine, exalted to the singular degree, that the very churches were, on festival days, surrendered by the clergy to public lecturers on a poem that placed some popes in the infernal regions. It is this species of veneration, we may remark, that explains also another fact that still continues to astonish the critics. How, they ask themselves, with all this rapturous admiration of Dante, has he been never taken as a model of style or subject by the Italians, whereas Petrarch, and other poets of inferior merit, have been common patterns? The answer is in part, no doubt, that imitation is here more easy. But the main cause has been the sort of reverence which removed Dante from all range of rivalry. This admiration, though in a naturally mitigated form, has also passed, in course of time, to most of the other European nations; but last of all, perhaps, to the shy, shallow, systematic French genius. The oddity and exaggeration, however sublime, of the Tuscan visionary, shocked the French as long as the production was regarded only in the light of art. But in proportion as its philosophical and social import arose to view, with the advance of the intelligence and civilisation of the eighteenth century, the same people must, from another characteristic of its genius, be among the most assiduous in the study of the Divine Comedy. Accordingly, within this century, and more especially of late years, there appear in France, as commentaries, translations, or dissertations, in some shape connected with Dante and his poem, no fewer than two or three publications, upon an average, annually. The work before us is (except the version by De la Mennais *) the latest, and appears to be the ablest in its line, upon the whole. M. Fouriel was a man (for the publication is posthumous) in every way adapted for the task. He was distinguished for the combination-remarked to be in all times rare-of fine critical tact and taste, with philological erudition. Acquainted critically with the mediæval idioms of Europe, he mounted also to the Basque puzzle, and the Celtic or Erse, and went back to even the Arabic and San Another version has appeared in Paris at the moment we write, by M. Mesnard, Member of the Institute. |