literature—so ancient, so voluminous, locked up in so recondite a written character? We repeat what we have already said of the "Collection of a Myriad Leaves,"—that it is invaluable to the philologist, the archaeologist, the historian, the student of curious manners which have disappeared or are fast disappearing. We may add that there are some clever and many pretty things in it. The Tosa Niki, for instance, is charming—charming in its simplicity, its good taste, its love of scenery and of children. The 'Makura no Soshi teems with touches of wit and delicate satire. Several of the lyric dramas are remarkable poems in their way. Some of the Lilliputian odes in the "Songs Ancient and Modern" sparkle like dew-drops in the sun; and of Bashō's still tinier poems—the wee seventeen syllable mites—many are flashes of delicate fancy, atoms of perfect naturalistic description, specks of humour truth, or wisdom. For Jippensha Ikku, the Rabelais of Japan, we have already expressed our warm admiration. Not a few of the writers of the present reign would, if born under other skies, have taken a respectable rank among European litterateurs. On the other hand, much of that which the Japanese themselves prize most highly in their literature seems intolerably flat and insipid to the European taste. The romances most of them are every bit as dull as the histories, though in another way: the histories are too curt, the romances too long-winded. If the authoress of the Genji Mono-gatari, though landed to the skies by her compatriots, has been branded by Georges Bousquet as cette ennuyeuse Scudèry japonaise, she surely richly deserves it.[1] And what shall we say of Bakin, on whom her mantle fell in modern times,—Bakin and his Hakken Den, which every Japanese has read and re-read till
- ↑ Sir Ernest Satow's judgment of the Genji filono-gatari agrees with ours. "The plot," writes he, "is devoid of interest, and it is only of value as marking a stage in the development of the language." Fairness, however, requires that the very different estimate of this work formed by Mr. Aston, the accomplished historian of Japanese literature, should he here cited. He writes as follows:—
"I do not profess to have read more than a small part of this portentously long romance, hut judging from a study of a few books of it, the above condemnations appear to me undeserved. The ornate style to which these adverse critics object consists
