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the essence of a great style. Indeed, to them, substance is important only in so far as it permits form to be given it. Their art is an art of illuiminating. Nothing is permitted to disturb the harmony of the picture. Technically, I have no doubt that the Chinese are in every respect our superiors, but their technique excludes the possibility of climax. Rather do they seek completion, the prolongation of those mental echoes which their pictures gradually eyoke. In the hands of Mr. Waley (and I might almost say in his hands alone) in this respect they are completely successful.

I have left out of account two of the most interesting things in this volume: a short story by Yüan Chēn, and a poem by Ch'ü Yüan. The former is a poet celebrated as a friend of Mr. Waley's favourite poet Po Chü-i, who, as a poet, was so famous for the brilliance of his pathetic pieces that he was held to have invented a new style. Mr. Waley gives us one capable specimen of his poetry, and also this short story, the end of which springs an ironic surprise upon us so definitely that we wonder anew at the Chinese making artistic use of a device which we thought originated with O. Henry. The other, the poem by Ch'ü Yüan, is, so far, Mr. Waley's masterpiece as a translator. Its author, born in the troublous times of the Feudal States, before the establishment of the Han dynasty, is celebrated in China not only as the type of a loyal minister, but as the country's first great poet. In accordance with the undeveloped state of the poetical art in his time, he was a vers-librist. Mr. Waley translates one of his poems, The Great Summons, in shifting irregular metres, with tremendous use of refrain, and imagery which suggests that in this poet China has her counterpart of Poe and Coleridge. As I have said, this is Mr. Waley's masterpiece as a translator so far; but let us hope that he will not be deterred by Legge's predecessorship from giving us, in yet another volume, Ch'ü Yüan's greatest poem, the Li Sao, or Falling in Trouble.