Explore "A History of Chinese Literature" by Herbert A. Giles on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The classical scholarship of the T`ang dynasty was neither very original nor very profound. It is true that the second Emperor founded a College of Learning, but its members were content to continue the traditions of the Hans, and comparatively little was achieved in the line of independent research. Foremost among the names in the above College stands that of LU YÜAN-LANG (550-625). He had been Imperial Librarian under the preceding dynasty, and later on distinguished himself by his defence of Confucianism against both Buddhist and Taoist writers.
Scarcely less eminent as a scholar was WEI CHÊNG (581-643), who also gained great reputation as a military commander. He was appointed President of the Commission for drawing up the history of the previous dynasty, and he was, in addition, a poet of no mean order. At his death the Emperor said, "You may use copper as a mirror for the person; you may use the past as a mirror for politics; and you may use man as a mirror to guide one's judgment in ordinary affairs. These three mirrors I have always carefully cherished; but now that Wei Chêng is gone, I have lost one of them."