Ching ; he gives the sense of a passage according to the syntactical construction rather than according to the genius of the philosophy itself; and in attempting to explain the text by his own canons, instead of by the canons of Taoism, he mistakes the superficial and apparently obvious meaning for the hidden and esoteric interpretation.”
Mr. Balfour will hardly repeat his charge of imperfect or erroneous interpretation against Julien; and I believe that is equally undeserved by most, if not all, of the other translators against whom it is directed. He himself adopted as his guide the Explanations of the Tao Te Ching , current as the work of Lü Yen (called also Lü Tsu, Lü Tung-pin, and Lü Chʽung-yang), a Taoist of the eighth century. Through Mr. Balfour’s kindness I have had an opportunity of examining this edition of Lao’s Treatise ; and I am compelled to agree with the very unfavourable judgement on it pronounced by Mr. Giles as both “spurious” and “ridiculous.” All that we are told of Lü Yen is very suspicious; much of it evidently false. The editions of our little book ascribed to him are many. I have for more than twenty years possessed one with the title of The Meaning of the Tao Te Ching Explained by the True Man of Chʽung-yang , being a reprint of 1690, and as different as possible from the work patronised by Mr. Balfour.
Fourth, the Tʽai Shang Hsüan Yüan Tao Te Ching —a work of the present dynasty, published at Shanghai, but when produced I do not know. It is certainly of the Lü Tsu type, and is worth purchasing as one of the finest specimens of block-printing. It professes to be the production of “The Immortals of the Eight Grottoes,” each of whom is styled “a Divine Ruler ( Ti Chün ).” The eighty-one chapters are equally divided for commentary among them, excepting that “the Divine Ruler, the Universal Refiner,” has the last eleven assigned to him. The text is everywhere broken up into short clauses, which are explained in a very few characters by “God, the True Helper,” the same, I suppose, who is also styled, “The Divine Ruler, the True Helper,” and comments at