Excerpt from The Chinese Repository, Vol. 7: July, 1838

For the sake of the numerous students in England and America, Whose attention will, as we trust, speedily be turned to the language of China, we are anxious to see the pressing want of an uniform ele mentary course of Chinese study supplied. Meanwhile we are called upon, on behalf of those who, in despite of the attendent difficulties, are now wading through their elementary course, to review, likewise, the existing facilities for pursuinga higher course of study. In the days of our boyhood, we were first drilled in the Latin grammar, and the Delectus Sententiarum, less aided than we could wish we had been by those verbatim translations, of the want of which in Gongal ves' Arte China we have just complained. This was our elementary course. Our higher course was the reading of the familiar Fables of Phazdrus, the lucid Commentaries of Caesar, the elegant but to what avail do we waste words in refreshing the memory ofthe reader, painfully reminiscent as he must be of the oft repeated mus cular efforts made to instil into him an intellectual acquaintance with the language of Latium. We must express, however, our conviction, that we should have profited more, and that our masters would have undergone less muscular toil, had they placed in our hands the admi rable translations and constructural ordo of Clarke, that our lessons would have produced a harvest beyond measure more plentiful, had our teachers been at the trouble to interpret to us the meaning, and to explain to us the difficulties, of the writings placed before us. From the professional chair in the University College of London, as from that of the Royal College of Paris, such interpretations and explanations will doubtless be given to the students of Chinese; but we are now chiefly addressing our remarks to those solitary students, who cannot enjoy the advantage of oral instruction, To them we cannot promise the aid of many translations so closely faithful as Clarke's, nor of any that will exhibit the order of the Chinese words, according to the English construction of sentences. But several good, and some very close, translations of Chinese works into English, French, and Latin, are to be found; availing ourselves of which, we will confine to them our list of books to be employed in the higher course of Chinese study.

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