Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, Vol. 1

back to the disappointment of a private life, even while he was conscious of the inward fire that had been granted to him by heaven. This serves as the key note to his subsequent career, which was spent in the retirement of home, in the company of books and friends; and it also explains the numerous critical allusions to official life that occur in all his stories. Whether or not the world at large has benefited from this example of the failures of competitive examinations has already been decided in the affirmative by the millions of P'u Sung-ling's own countrymen. For the past two hundred years, they have more than compensated him for the loss of the earthly and temporary honors he seems to have coveted so much by granting him a posthumous and enduring reverence.

III. — BIBLIOGRAPHICAL. —

Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, known to the Chinese as the Liao-Chai-Chih-I, or more familiarly, the Liao-Chai, has hardly been mentioned by a single foreigner without some inaccuracy on the part of the writer concerned. For instance, the late Mr. Mayers states in his Chinese Reader's Manual, p. 176, that this work was composed “circa A.D. 1710,” the fact being that the collection was actually completed in 1679, as we know by the date attached to the “Author's Own Record” given above.