latest editors is correct, it was not even written for publication, but was collected after his death into its present form by some unknown person.
Kenkō was a lover of antiquity, whether in the shape of old works of art, the old customs and forms of speech which lingered (and still linger) about the Mikado's palace, or old books. He speaks in terms of special admiration of the Genji Monogatari and the Makura Zōshi, on which his own style was evidently modelled. It contrasts strongly with the idiom charged with Chinese vocables, metaphors, and allusions, which in his day had well-nigh supplanted the old Japanese of the Heian period. Kenkō, in a word, is a belated classic. He has no objection to a useful Chinese word or an apt illustration from Chinese history, but his purer taste rejects the pompous platitudes and pedantic show of learning which too often disfigure the works of imitators of Chinese models. His essays read like the conversation of a polished man of the world, and have that appearance of simplicity and ease of expression which is in reality the result of consummate art.
Those who wish to enter on the study of the older Japanese literature cannot make a better choice than the Tsure-dzure-gusa. It is not so difficult as the Genji Monogatari or the Makura Zōshi, and the new edition called the Tsure-dzure-gusa Kōgi affords every help in the way of explanation to those who have made sufficient progress in Japanese to avail themselves of it. The lover of curious books will prefer the quaint old block-printed editions of 1672 and 1688, both of which have numerous notes.
Kenkō had a high reputation as a writer of Tanka. He was one of the "Four Heavenly Kings" (a phrase bor-
