repeatedly from wooden blocks which were as often destroyed by fire or in the course of wars. A few copies of editions coming down from the Ming period have survived in some temples of northern China and one preserved in a monastery in Shan si is said to be complete. The K'ien-lung Palace edition now in the Newberry was drafted in 1735 by the Emperor Yung-cheng and on his death was completed by his son and successor, the indefatigable editor and publisher, K'ien-lung. The printing of the work extended over three years and was completed at the end of 1738. The printing blocks are still preserved in the temple of Po-lin-sze, near the great Lama temple in Peking. The temple record says that it required 28,411 blocks to engrave the entire work, which is composed of 55,632 leaves. It consists of 7,920 oblong flat volumes bound in 792 wrappers. Each volume is illustrated with a fine. wood-engraving of delicate tracing and elegantly bound in silk brocade of various designs of peculiar rarity and artistic value.

A work of great importance, and at the same time the earliest printed book in the Newberry Library, is the T'ang Liu sien shêng wên tsi, dated 1167, in twelve volumes, containing the poems and essays of Liu Tsung-yüan (A. D. 773-819), one of the most celebrated poets of the T'ang dynasty. This edition, in forty-three chapters, is fully described in the Catalogue of Lü t'ing and has a commentary by Shi Yin-pien. The margins of the pages show the peculiar black ornament, or "stamp" of the Sung period (called "black mouth"). The pages have twenty-six lines of twentythree characters and are printed, of course, from a single block, three centuries before Gutenberg.

Another work of the Sung period of which the Newberry boasts (figuratively, of course), is the Tse chi t'ung kien (Laufer) by Se-ma Kuang (A. D. 1009-1089), which corresponds with the T'ung Chien of Dr. Giles of Cambridge University in the Encyclopædia Britannica. To quote Professor Giles: "There is one (work of history) which stands out among the rest and is especially enshrined in the hearts of the Chinese people. This is the T'ung Chien, or Mirror of History, so called because 'to view antiquity as in a mirror is an aid in the administration of government.' It was the work of a statesman of the Eleventh century, whose name by a coincidence was Ssu-ma Kuang.* He had been forced to retire. from office, and spent nearly all the last sixteen years of his life.

*Ssu-ma Ch'ien (145-87 B. C.), grand astrologer and historian edited the Shih Chi, or Historical Record and other works recovered by the first Han emperor, after the burning of the books.

in historical research. The Mirror of History embraces a period from the Fifth century B. C. down to A. D. 960. It was revised by Chu Hsi, the famous commentator, who flourished A. D. 11301200, and whose work is now regarded as the standard history of

Title page from the Tibetan Kanjur. Block printed at the Buddhist monastery at Narthang, Tibet, 1742.

China." It was first published in 1172 under the title Tung kien kang mu, and it is a complete copy of this edition, says Dr. Laufer, that the Newberry now possesses. It is a rare and fine specimen of Sung printing and perhaps the most extensive work of that period now known. The Newberry also has a beautiful Manchu translation in a Palace edition of 1681 in ninety-six large volumes.

Characteristic Frontispiece to Buddhist Works.

Dr. Laufer, wisely no doubt, makes no allusion in his monograph on the collection, to the suspicion which has been cast by Allen and Giles upon the genuineness of the Book of History, the Confucian Canon and the Tao Te Ching and other works edited by Ssu-ma Chien in the First century B. C. Perhaps some of the monumental works in this great library of original sources may shed some light on the story of the Burning of the Books, the secret repository of forbidden books in the wall of Confucius'

house, and the studious inaction of the Board of Erudite Scholars in those shadowy days now nineteen centuries past.

Limitations of space forbid even brief mention of the literary and artistic treasures of Japan and Korea contained in this collection, the extent of which has merely been hinted at in the foregoing sketch. It is a door opened into another world, whose historical, anthropological, literary and religious wealth is not easy for us to comprehend. With such facilities for research, together with those now possessed by the John Crerar Library and the Field Museum, it is quite reasonable to say that Chicago may offer better opportunities for scholars in Oriental research than can now be offered in either Lhasa, Peking or Tokio.

PER

HOMER AND THE PROPHETS.

OR

HOMER AND NOW.

BY CORNELIA STEKETEE HULST, M.A., M.PD

ERHAPS the best approach to Homer today is by means of the "Movie," at least, a young university scholar who has seen the film of Odyssey tells me what would argue this happy conclusion. He says that it is a "thriller" of the first order, and that when it was given in his university town, it attracted large and increasing crowds of townsfolk and students before its run of a week was over, not at all because it was "scholarly stuff," and "highbrow," but because it has a strong human appeal. Its action rushes along carrying spectators with it though new to the story and foreign to Greek traditions. Even the gods and fabulous monsters seem real, because they are seen with the physical eye-in this respect the new art of the moving picture is at an advantage as compared with the ancient art of the Bard, though Bards acted the parts as they sang them. Miraculously, in a mist, a god can appear, and then vanish miraculously.

A great improvement, this of attending a "Movie," instead of thumbing a dictionary and grammar laboriously, pondering roots and points of construction as the means of approach to the story. Every move of the thumb, every act of acquiring knowledge, every judgment passed distracts the reader's attention from characters and situations so that he cannot realize them intensely. If he is to get the full effect of the story when a "Movie" is not available, a dramatic reading will be the next best approach, with an epic pitch and tension. Those who have had the good fortune to hear Professor Clarke's dramatic reading of The Descent into Hades will realize much of the human appeal of the Odyssey. Two small boys whom I took to hear it sat congealed during the reading and agreed later that this was the greatest "show" that they had ever seen.

It would not be possible for spectators and hearers to remain unmoved by the epic hero of Homer if they realized his character

and situation. He is bayed about by a large band of desperate conspirators who threaten his life, and his wife; he is endangered at every turn by alluring sorceresses and monsters; and false and hostile gods block his way when he tries to return home after the war. But friends and righteous gods rise up to help him, and Wisdom, personified as the goddess Athene, gives him guidance and pleads his cause, in Olympus, on Earth, even down in Hades, whither he has to go to learn all that a mortal may know. It is a thrilling sight to see him go down and learn it.

As a background and foil to Homer's great hero, strange and horrible monsters appear, as man-eating Polyphemus, a terrible oneeyed giant. The enchantress Circe changes her victims to swine by means of a magic drink; two evil water spirits, Scylla and Charybdis, half women and half snakes, wreck sailors on the rocks and in the whirlpool; alluring Sirens charm men to destruction with their beauty and their songs. These, out of many, are strange and horrible enough, and Odysseus escapes from them all by moral strength, courage, resolution, and craft; but stranger and more horrible are those whom he meets in the Lower World. There the Dead are not men, but pale shadows without substance, as he learns when he tries to embrace his own mother, whom he finds among them, she having died since he left home. Pale shadows are his companions who died in the war, or since, and they weakly and pathetically complain of the wrongs they have had to endure. Others are suffering penance for the sins they committed when they were alive, as Sisyphus, who rolls a great rock forever up a hill, for when he gets it nearly to the top it rolls down and he has to do his work all over again,—a good allegory of the life that men lead, forever rolling stones up an incline, but never reaching the top. Near him, Tantalus is forever thirsty because the water that rises almost to his lips is siphoned out of his cup just before he is able to drink it— again an allegory, of us poor thirsty mortals who see the waters of our hopes recede just when we expect to drink our Desire. Tityus is tortured by an Eagle, which comes every day to tear his liver out as fast as it grows again—we say that our heart is torn, meaning the same.

On earth, the human characters range from very villainous villains, the Suitors, who are plotting dishonor and death for the hero, to the hero and heroine, Odysseus and his Penelope, who are almost too good to be true. In the background lie dark tragedies of the House of Atreus, a House "baneful and driven to ruin" as its name signifies derivatively, will the House of Odysseus go down in