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THE REVEREND JAMES LEGGE “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX REVEREND JAMES LEGGE JAMES LEGGE 1788 The Reverend Professor James Legge, in 1890 in translating the TAO TÊ CHING of Lao-tze into the English language, would discover in the files of the India Office a Latin manuscript translation of this material, that had been sent to the office by a missionary organization in 1788. The document as discovered would be still “in excellent preservation.” Legge would indicate that the object of the translator had evidently been to demonstrate Chinese knowledge of the Holy Trinity and the Christian God, and would dismiss this manuscript he had found as of little value. In quoting a section of it in a note he would indicate, also, that this represented “the first morsel of it that has appeared in print.” TAOISM LIGHT FROM CHINA (Inference: There is zero likelihood that either Henry Thoreau or Waldo Emerson ever had access to this early translation.) THOREAU AND CHINA HDT WHAT? INDEX JAMES LEGGE REVEREND JAMES LEGGE 1815 December 20, Wednesday: James Legge was born at Huntly, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. He would be educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and then Kings College, Aberdeen. After studying at the Highbury Theological College, London, he would go as a missionary to China. ACTUALLY, NOBODY CAN GUESS WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT Reverend James Legge “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX REVEREND JAMES LEGGE JAMES LEGGE 1828 November 10, Monday: Wang T‘ao was born in China under the name Wang Libin. HDT WHAT? INDEX JAMES LEGGE REVEREND JAMES LEGGE 1837 September: The Reverend James Legge entered Highbury College in Middlesex, where he began studies toward a master of divinity degree. Drawn to the foreign missions since his childhood, before long he would make a commitment to the London Missionary Society, and embark upon the study of Chinese in London under a returned missionary, Samuel Kidd. CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT Reverend James Legge “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX REVEREND JAMES LEGGE JAMES LEGGE 1839 James Legge was ordained at Trevor Chapel, London and got married with Mary Isabella Morison (1817- 1852). The newlyweds set out on a sailing vessel for the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca, an institution for the education of Chinese and Malayan youth that had been established in 1818 by the pioneering protestant missionary Robert Morrison (1782-1834). He would remain at Malacca, coming to be in charge of the college, for 3 years. When, subsequently, the college would remove to Hong Kong, the Reverend Legge would live there for nearly 3 decades. Keuh Agong, a Christian, would accompany Legge on his move to Hong Kong in 1844. When Chinese “water-braves” laid claim to an ability to walk along the sea-bottom and remain hidden there all night were audited by government officials, it turned out not to be possible for them to validate their claims (although they were pretty good underwater, it remains a fact that although we know of people who can remain underwater for fully five minutes, we have never observed anyone reach the sixth minute, and it remains a fact that no-one can expect to swim underwater for more than about 70 yards laterally, max, before being forced to the surface to take a breath). WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF Reverend James Legge “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX JAMES LEGGE REVEREND JAMES LEGGE 1840 June: In the deep strait off Hong Kong, an expeditionary force of 16 British warships assembled. They sailed on up the Pei Ho river with 4,000 troops to express British contempt for Chinese local rule. The Qing court sent the mandarin Qishan, governor of Qili, to negotiate to prevent this foreign army from approaching the capital of the nation in Beijing. OPIUM It was during this year of deep international tension that the newly minted Reverend James Legge was becoming the representative of the London Missionary Society in Malacca and Hong Kong (until 1873). HDT WHAT? INDEX REVEREND JAMES LEGGE JAMES LEGGE THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Reverend James Legge HDT WHAT? INDEX JAMES LEGGE REVEREND JAMES LEGGE 1841 The Reverend James Legge took over as principal of the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca, published his A LEXILOGUS OF THE ENGLISH, MALAY, AND CHINESE LANGUAGES; COMPREHENDING THE VERNACULAR IDIOMS OF THE LAST IN THE HOK-KEEN AND CANTON DIALECTS, and began a project to translate, in many volumes, the Chinese classics. During his decades of residence in the Orient, he would be translating classic literature into English with the help of Wang T‘ao. (This was the year in which Captain Charles Eliot was landing on an island then known as Heung Gong.) DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. Reverend James Legge “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX REVEREND JAMES LEGGE JAMES LEGGE 1842 With the opening of China to the West as a result of the First Opium War, the London Missionary Society moved its base of operations to several treaty ports along the coast. Eventually the Reverend James Legge would be put in charge of the society’s mission house in the new colony of Hong Kong. The Reverend Issachar J. Roberts, who at this point was forced to acknowledge that his abilities in the Chinese language were “feeble,” helped open a Baptist mission in Hong Kong, then moved to Canton. HDT WHAT? INDEX JAMES LEGGE REVEREND JAMES LEGGE 1843 January 16, Monday: At the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca, China, Tkin Shen and Mêng-mei Ho prepared an English translation THE RAMBLES OF THE EMPEROR CHING TIH IN KËANG NAN: A CHINESE TALE with an introduction by the Reverend James Legge, president of that college. VIEW THE PAGE IMAGES HDT WHAT? INDEX REVEREND JAMES LEGGE JAMES LEGGE 1844 In Hong Kong, the Governor was Sir John Davis. The college supervised by the Reverend James Legge at Malacca, the Anglo-Chinese College, was moved to Hong Kong. A Chinese Christian, Keuh Agong, accompanied the Reverend on this move. Legge would be residing in that coastal British protectorate for nearly 3 decades. In this year appeared two German versions of the TAO TÊ CHING of Lao-tze that, according to the Reverend James Legge, were very different from each other. CHINA THOREAU AND CHINA (We don’t know that Henry Thoreau came across either of these.) HDT WHAT? INDEX JAMES LEGGE REVEREND JAMES LEGGE 1848 In Hong Kong, the Governor was Sir George Bonham. When a theological seminary was established in Hong Kong, the Reverend James Legge added this to his responsibilities.1 1. Except for various furloughs home and brief travels within mainland China, the Reverend would be spending almost a third of his long life at this notoriously brash and dynamically polyglot British outpost of empire. (Helping the sun never to set from 1843 to 1873..., so to speak.) HDT WHAT? INDEX REVEREND JAMES LEGGE JAMES LEGGE 1849 The British finally yielded, in their insistence begun in 1843 that they be allowed to pass inside the city wall of Canton. This was something which the local authorities just were not going to allow to happen, not anytime soon, nor ever. Upon relocating from mainland China to the coastal island of Hong Kong, Wang Libin changed his name to Wang T‘ao. Under that monicker he would for the following 13 years be doing translations for the London Missionary Society Press. The Reverend Issachar J. Roberts , who had returned to the United States due to the “opium-war” disturbances, remarried with Virginia Young at East Hickman, Kentucky in a ceremony presided over by the Reverend William Buck. This marriage, and Mrs. Roberts’s sojourn in China, would prove unfortunate: Among the other missionaries whom [the Baptist missionary couple Tarleton Perry Crawford and Martha Foster Crawford] met in Shanghai and with whom they were to work were I.J. and Virginia Roberts. Martha concluded that Mrs. Roberts was a mental case, for she refused to be left alone with Chinese people. Virginia constantly clung to Martha, becoming agitated when the latter left her by herself in a room. Loathing the sight of the Chinese, as Virginia did, she was a most unhappy person. She even threatened to commit suicide. On one occasion the Crawfords found her beating her head against a wall. The Robertses quarreled often, and Virginia made it clear that if she ever returned home, she would not come back to China, whether or not her husband did. Martha came to regard Roberts as a cruel man and blamed him for Virginia’s “advanced case of insanity.” The question remains: which of the Robertses was more insane? “NARRATIVE HISTORY” IS FABULATION, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Reverend James Legge HDT WHAT? INDEX JAMES LEGGE REVEREND JAMES LEGGE 1850 In Hong Kong, the population reached 33,000. CHINA The Reverend James Legge’s AN ARGUMENT FOR SHANG-TE AS THE PROPER RENDERING OF THE WORDS ELOHIM AND THEOS, IN THE CHINESE LANGUAGE; WITH STRICTURES ON THE ESSAY OF BISHOP BOONE IN FAVOUR OF THE TERM SHIN, ETC. ETC. HDT WHAT? INDEX REVEREND JAMES LEGGE JAMES LEGGE 1852 Subsequent to the death of his first wife Mary Isabella Morison during this year, the Reverend James Legge would remarry with the widowed Hannah Mary Johnstone Willetts. Publication in Hong Kong of William Boone’s THE NOTIONS OF THE CHINESE CONCERNING GODS AND SPIRITS: WITH AN EXAMINATION OF THE DEFENSE OF AN ESSAY, ON THE PROPER RENDERING OF THE WORDS ELOHIM AND THEOS, INTO THE CHINESE LANGUAGE, which included an essay by the Reverend Legge.

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