Many arts雜藝

The writing of the regular hand and the running hand deserves a little care. A saying of Jiangnan has it, "Letters and notes are your face a thousand li away." Coming after the remaining ways of Jin and Song, men worked at it together, so none of them was suddenly put to shame. I took up the business of my house when I was young, and my nature made me hold it dear and weighty besides. I have seen many model writings and my practice at it went fairly far, yet in the end I cannot write well, and the true reason is that I have no gift for it. All the same, there is no need to be too fine at this art. The clever man toils and the wise man frets, and being forever set to work by others he comes to feel it a burden. The warning Wei Zhongjiang left behind had good reason in it.

Wang Yishao was a man of talent and elegance, a famous man at ease with the world, yet the whole age knows only his writing, so that his skill covered him over instead. Xiao Ziyun used to sigh and say, "I wrote the Qi shu and made of it one whole record. Its writing and its great sense I take to be worth looking at, and yet my name came to me only by the marks of my brush. That too is a strange thing." Wang Bao was of clear and splendid family, with talent and learning that were fine and quick, and later, when he went in through the pass, he was treated with honor. Even so, because of his hand at writing he wandered among steles and stone tablets, worn out in the service of brush and inkstone, and he once said in regret, "If I had not known how to write, would I not have been spared this day?" Looking at it so, take care not to make your name with writing. And yet there are many mean and lowly men who were raised up because they could write. So it is that men whose ways are not the same do not plan together.

Since the secret library of the house of Liang was scattered I have seen much of the regular and running hands of the two Wangs, and my house once got ten scrolls of them. Only then did I know that the writings of Tao Yinju, of Ruan of Jiaozhou and of Libationer Xiao all take their form from Xizhi, and that he is indeed the wellspring of writing. What Xiao Ziyun changed to in his later years was the method of the Right General in his young days.

Since Jin and Song there have been many who could write. So the custom of that time was to take it up from one another and hold it high, and every volume was in a regular hand, straight and worth looking at. There were common vulgar forms, but no great harm in them. Down to the Tianjian years of Liang this manner had not changed, but at the end of the Datong years errors began to breed. Xiao Ziyun altered the shapes of characters and the Prince of Shaoling used false graphs freely, and court and country as one took them for a model. Like a man painting a tiger and failing, they spoiled a great deal. It came to this, that a whole character showed only a few dots, or was guessed at wildly and shifted about for convenience. After that the old books could hardly be read. In the north, on top of the ruin of war, the writing was mean and poor, and men made up characters as they pleased, more clumsily by far than in Jiangnan. They made bainian (百念) into you (憂), yanfan (言反) into bian (變), buyong (不用) into ba (罷), zhuilai (追來) into gui (歸), gengsheng (更生) into su (蘇), xianren (先人) into lao (老), and such things were not one or two but filled the classics and the commentaries. Only Yao Yuanbiao was skilled in the regular and clerical hands and gave his mind to the study of characters, and many of the younger men took him for their teacher. By the end of Qi the copying done in the library was much better than in days gone by.

Among the lanes of Jiangnan there is a Huashu fu (畫書賦), and it was made by Du, a Daoist who was a disciple of Tao Yinju. The man did not know characters at all well, yet he laid down rules lightly and leaned on the name of an honored master, so that the common world passed it on and believed it, and the younger men have been much misled by it.

The craft of painting is a fine thing too, and from old times many famous men could do it. My house once had a white round fan with cicadas and sparrows painted on it by the hand of Emperor Yuan of Liang, and a picture of horses, and they were hard to match. The Martial and Ardent Crown Prince was especially good at likenesses. He would dot and color the guests at his table as they came, and at once there were several men, and when children were asked they all knew the names. Xiao Ben, Liu Xiaoxian and Liu Ling were all fine at this art besides their letters. To look over the old and the new of it is a thing to treasure and love. But if a man's office is not yet high he is forever sent on errands public and private, and this too is mean service. Gu Shiduan of Wu county came out as a gentleman attendant in the kingdom of the Prince of Xiangdong and later became an aide for punishments in the Zhennan office, and he had a son named Ting, a secretarial court gentleman of the western court. Father and son both had the arts of the zither and of writing, and were especially fine in painting, so that they were forever being set to work by Emperor Yuan, and they carried shame and regret in their hearts every time. Liu Yue of Pengcheng, the son of Liu Tuo, held office as record keeper in the Piaoqi office and as magistrate of Pingshi county. He was a man of quick talent and learning, and his painting was beyond compare. Later he followed the Prince of Wuling into Shu, and after the defeat at Xialao he ended by painting the walls of Zhijiang temple for Commandant Lu, living mixed in among the craftsmen. Had these three worthies known nothing at all of painting and simply carried on their proper business, how would they have met with such shame?

By the use of bow and arrow the world is held in awe. It was the means by which the former kings looked at a man's virtue and chose the worthy, and it is also an urgent business for saving one's own body. In Jiangnan they call the common archery of the world bingshe (兵射), the soldier's shooting, and the scholars of cap and gown mostly do not practice it. There is another kind, boshe (博射), with a weak bow and long arrows shot at a target, with bowing and yielding and going up and down, so that ceremony is carried out by it. Against robbers and troubles it is no help at all. After the disorders this art was lost. The men of letters of Hebei generally know the soldier's shooting. Not only did Ge Hong turn back his pursuers with a single arrow; at the official banquets of the three dukes and nine ministers they regularly draw honored gifts. All the same, to bring down swift birds and cut off cunning beasts is not what I wish for you.

Divining by shell and by stalk is the business of sages, but in these latter days there are no good masters left, and many of them cannot hit the mark. In old times men divined to settle a doubt; men today take their doubts from the divining. Why is this? A man holds to the way and trusts his own plan and means to do a thing, and then he draws an evil hexagram and it makes him □〔心式〕□〔心式〕 instead. Is this not what is meant? Besides, to hit six or seven out of ten is called a master hand, and he knows the broad sense roughly and cannot go into the fine points. Shoot at odd or even and you take half of them by nature, so what is there to rely on? The world passes down the saying, "Those who understand the dark and the light are envied by the ghosts, and are cramped and poor, and few of them come to ease." Looking at recent ages, the ones who were most fine and subtle were only Jing Fang, Guan Lu and Guo Pu, and none of them held office and many met disaster, which makes me believe this saying the more. And if the net of the age is drawn tight and a man carries such a name against his own good, he is caught out by it, and that too is a spring of calamity. As for the patterns of the stars and the airs of the wind, there is no call to labor at them. I once studied the liuren board, and I met a good craftsman of the time as well, and I gathered up some ten or more books, the Longshou, the Jingui, the Yulingbian, the Yuli. I sought and pressed them and found no proof in them, and soon I regretted it and gave it up. The arts of the dark and the light were born together with heaven and earth, and they are good fortune and ill, virtue and punishment, so they cannot but be believed. But it is long since the sages, and the books of the art that pass in the world all come out of the common run. Their words are mean and shallow, and the proof in them is little and the wild talk much. There are men who did not travel on a fanzhi (反支) day and were harmed in the end, and men who lodged out on a guiji (歸忌) day and did not escape an evil death. To be bound and full of avoidings is of no help either.

Reckoning is one of the needful things among the six arts. From old times the scholars who discussed the way of heaven and fixed the pitches and the calendar all learned it through. Yet it may be understood alongside other things; it cannot be made one's whole trade. In Jiangnan this study is very rare, and only Zu Xuan of Fanyang was thorough in it, and he rose to be governor of Nankang. In Hebei there are many who know this art.

In the business of medicine the fine point is extremely hard to reach, and I do not urge you to make your name by it. To know the nature of drugs a little, to mix small remedies, and so to be able to help in a sudden need at home, is a good thing too. Huangfu Mi and Yin Zhongkan were such men.

The Liji says, "A gentleman does not put away his zithers without cause." From old times the famous men have loved it much. Down to the beginning of Liang, a son of a family of cap and gown who did not know the zither was said to have something wanting in him, and at the end of the Datong years this manner suddenly came to an end. Yet this music is quiet and refined, and there is a deep taste in it. The tunes of the present world are changed from the old, but they are still enough to open out the spirit. Only do not let it win you praise and bring you into the service of the great and titled, seated in the lower place, taking the shame of leftover cups and cold meat. Even Dai Andao met with that, and how much more you.

The Jiayu says, "A gentleman does not play at bo, because it carries along with it the way of evil." The Lunyu says, "Are there not the games of bo and yi? To do them is better than to leave off." So then the sages did not use bo and yi as a teaching. They only meant that a student cannot always be at his sharpest, and when he is weary at times, to do even that is better than to eat his fill and doze in a fog and sit stiff and upright doing nothing. As for the crown prince of Wu, who thought them useless and had Wei Zhao argue it out, and Wang Su, Ge Hong, Tao Kan and their like, who would not allow the eye to look at them or the hand to hold them, this was all the will of the diligent and earnest. To be able to do so is good. In old times the great bo used six sticks and the small bo two qiong (煢), and today there is no one who knows them. What is played in these latter days is twelve pieces to one qiong, and the reckoning of it is shallow and short and not worth enjoying. The game of encirclement has the names of talking with the hand and sitting in retirement, and it is a fairly refined pastime. But it makes men sink into a daze and lose a great deal indeed, so it must not be done always.

The rite of the pitch-pot has grown finer in these latter days. In old times the pot was filled with small beans so that the arrows would not leap back out. Now men want only the bounce (驍), and the more of them the better they are pleased, so there are names like the leaning pole, the sword at the belt, the wolf pot, the leopard tail and the dragon head. The finest of all is the lotus bounce. Zhou □〔王貴〕 of Runan, the son of Zhou Hongzheng, and He Hui of Kuaiji, the son of He Ge, could both get more than forty bounces from one arrow. He Hui once made a small screen too and set the pot outside it and threw across the screen without missing once. Since coming to Ye I have seen this gear in the hands of the princes of Guangning and Lanling, but in the whole country there was no one who could get even a single bounce. The flicking game is a refined pastime of these latter days as well. It drives off care and loosens a stifled heart, and may be done from time to time.