in Chinese, and had become a truly great Chinese scholar—the late Stanislas Julien. He published in 1842 “a complete translation for the first time of this memorable work, which is regarded with reason as the most profound, the most abstract, and the most difficult of all Chinese literature.” Dr. Chalmers’s translation was also complete, but his comments, whether original or from Chinese sources, were much fewer than those supplied by Julien. Two years later, two German versions of the treatise were published at Leipzig;—by Reinhold von Plänckner and Victor von Strauss, differing much from each other, but both marked by originality and ability.
I undertook myself, as stated above, in 1879 to translate for The Sacred Books of the East the texts of Taoism which appear in these volumes; and, as I could find time from my labours on The Texts of Confucianism , I had written out more than one version of Lao’s work by the end of 1880. Though not satisfied with the result, I felt justified in exhibiting my general views of it in an article in the British Quarterly Review of July, 1883.