A Letter Submitted to Defender-in-Chief Jo上趙太尉書
月日。某官某熏沐齋戒。上書于太尉相國下執事閣下。夫古之爲人君者。非理天下之爲難也。知人賢不肖進退之爲難。何則。穆穆至尊。深居九重。焉得人人而閱之。一一而試之。知賢與否。進之退之升之降之耶。在特置宰相之明。而爲之耳目焉耳。宰相者。非錢穀鹽鐵獄訟征賦叢脞之事是親。而以爲己任也。專務推賢進士。上佐天子之明而已矣。今主上率由是道。處閣下以論思之地。閣下以宏贍卓犖命世之才。代天子之耳目。作九流之司命。進退天下之士。則凡藏器把寶瑰琦英偉之士。無不以連城之璧。希世之珍。求售於閣下者。如僕者。特一妄男子耳。無一才一藝有足備賢君明相之升進採用者也。夫然則理宜揣分量才。縮斂頭角。不敢望預瑰琦英偉者之伍。而有所僥倖矣。然閣下不知僕之不肖。過聽虛名。大加眷遇。嘗與兩府三相國。聯名拜箚子。薦達於明天子之耳目。乞補郡職。以作將來擢用之漸。兪詔已降。未及付銓曹。而忽若銀杯羽化者。朝廷士林。莫不知之。有彈指歎訝者。相國閣下。亦曾聞之矣。僕猶倚閣下之剛明果斷。竊自以爲業已許之。豈以其詔書有無藉口。而負一言之重哉。遂確然自必矣。及頒政之後。寂然無聲。先笑後咷。反爲儕輩所笑。顔得無泚且赤乎。其後側聞閣下之言。果以詔旨不付天曹爲解。此亦不痛爲僕營救之辭耳。何必爾耶。若欲不待試外。直補京官。則以前無此例。故須必要詔旨矣。其若郡縣之寄。則按國家成例。凡登科者。不限年紀。直補外寄。故中古已往。自黃紙以上。有其年出補者。其次亦不出三四年而得之矣。但比來。文吏之橫出銳進者甚衆。而州縣之寄。不增於古。故其局於守株者。率淹延不進。積塞前路。有至三十年或二十八九年而不見調者。僕若循蹈此輩之迹。計次而俟。則雖白首未可決期也。閣下旣不以常流遇僕。而將以奬答力學之功。則但越前榜者而用之耳。其限以年紀。本非國家之制。雖不須詔旨。亦不反於國制。況詔旨已下。而特幪形乍隱而已哉。噫。宰相所奏。固不可輕。宰相亦非一二公。而其所奏。亦本於薦一士。以勸百人之義。而意非淺淺者。若主上不允則已。上旣允可。而中間云云。則是掌奏者之無狀也。罪必有歸矣。以閣下之威。居百官之長。非其勢不足以彈糾朝廷之違慝。宜以其時。詰其所以攘取箚子之由。議駮其罪。而閣下又不敢爾。則朝綱國憲。何由而正焉。天子之耳目。何由而廣焉。藏器把寶之士。何由而進焉。僕竊爲閣下惜之。昔人有問馬日食幾何者。馬主曰。給粟若干斗。曰。然則何瘦。曰。吾特許之而不與也。僕無奈類是。而誠飢且瘦矣。閣下其忍不顧而不畢其賜耶。僕不佞。平生唯以諒直自許。凡所貯蓄。今盡輸寫於閣下。雖涉自譽者。亦無所讓而無所隱也。伏惟閣下悉之。僕自九齡。始知讀書。至今手不釋卷。自詩書六經諸子百家史筆之文。至於幽經僻典梵書道家之說。雖不得窮源探奧。鉤索深隱。亦莫不涉獵游泳。採菁摭華。以爲騁詞擒藻之具。又自伏羲已來。三代兩漢秦晉隋唐五代之間。君臣之得失。邦國之理亂。忠臣義士奸雄大盜成敗善惡之迹。雖不得幷包竝括。擧無遺漏。亦莫不截煩撮要。鑑觀記誦。以爲適時應用之備。其或操觚引紙。題詠風月。則雖長篇巨題。多至百韻。莫不馳騁奔放。筆不停輟。雖不得排比錦繡。編列珠玉。亦不失詩人之體裁。顧自負如此。惜終與草本同腐。庶一提五寸之管。歷金門上玉堂。代言視草。作批勅訓令皇謨帝誥之詞。宣暢四方。足償平生之志。然後乃已。豈琭琭銷鎖。求斗升祿。謀活其妻子者之類耶。嗚呼。志大才疏。賦命窮薄。行年三十。猶不得一郡縣之任。孤苦萬狀。有不可言者。頭顱已可知己。然僕之行藏去就。以閣下爲司命而卜之者也。其進退升降。亦關閣下之鑑採耳。僕尙何言哉。若萬一借一眄之恩。啓其路授其綏。使登始從仕之級。則靑雲萬里。行可高驤。何道遠日晚之是憂哉。且士之所以邀王公大人之眷顧者。非苟自謀其身。亦欲就王公大人之名也。方一扣再扣。而不聽而已。則猶爲國爲閣下之名爲己之性命。殆不得輕去。伺候請間。或庶幾乎卒相容許。不失下士之名矣。若三扣而不聽。僕本介褊。非朝夕進退突梯求媚者也。寧深遁遠逃。甘與麋鹿跧伏茂林豐草之鄕耳。安能復造相國之門。立狗竇馬廏之側。爲塵糞所染耶。孟子曰。人未嘗不欲仕。仕不由其道而往者。鑽穴隙之類也。僕之自媒已甚矣。其又可效鑽穴踰垣之女子乎。失意之詞。類多激訐。伏惟閣下先寬其罪。然後覽焉。輕觸尊嚴。不勝悚懼。不宣。某再拜。
On a certain day of a certain month, so-and-so of such and such an office, having perfumed himself with incense and bathed and cleansed his body, submits this letter to His Excellency the Defender-in-Chief and Chancellor, to the hand of his attendants.
In old days, for one who was a sovereign, governing the world was not the hard thing; the hard thing was to know whether a man was worthy or unworthy and so to bring him forward or send him back. Why is this? The sovereign in his depth and height dwells within nine folds; how should he look over every man and test them one by one and know whether they are worthy, and so bring them forward and send them back, raise them and lower them? It lies only in having clear-sighted chancellors to be his ears and eyes. A chancellor is not one who takes such petty matters as coin and grain, salt and iron, lawsuits and taxes close to himself and makes them his charge. He labors only to push forward the worthy and bring scholars forward, and so to help the sovereign's clarity above.
Now the king, following this way, has set Your Excellency in the place of deliberation and counsel. Your Excellency, with a talent broad and ample and outstanding, famed in your age, stands in the stead of the sovereign's ears and eyes and has become the man who holds the road ahead of scholars of every kind, bringing forward and sending back the scholars of the world. And so there is none among those excellent and splendid scholars who hide their vessels and hold their treasures who does not seek to be sold to Your Excellency with pearls worth several cities and treasures rare in the world.
One like me is no more than an idle fellow, and has not one talent or ability enough for a worthy sovereign and a clear-sighted chancellor to raise up and pick out for use. If so, it would be right for me to reckon my own portion and measure my talent and draw in my horns, and not to slip into the ranks of the excellent and the splendid in the hope of luck. And yet Your Excellency, not knowing my unworthiness and having heard too much of an empty name, has looked upon me and treated me greatly. You once joined your name with the three chancellors of the Two Departments and submitted a memorandum (箚子) recommending me to the ears and eyes of our clear-sighted sovereign, and asked that I be attached to a district post, to be a first step toward being picked for use hereafter.
The edict of consent had already come down, but before it reached the point of being passed to the Board of Selection (銓曹) it suddenly became as though the silver cup had grown wings and flown away. There was none at court or among the scholars who did not know of it, and there were those who snapped their fingers and sighed and were startled; so Your Excellency the Chancellor must have heard of it too. Still I leaned upon Your Excellency's firmness and clarity and decision, and held that, a thing having once been granted, you would never turn your back upon the weight of your own word on the pretext of whether there was an edict or not; and so in the end I believed it firmly. Yet after the appointments came out, all was still and there was no sound. Laughing first and weeping after, I became instead a laughingstock to my age-mates; how should my face not sweat and redden?
Afterward I caught a word of Your Excellency's, and you did indeed make a pretext of the edict's not having been passed to the Board of Heaven (天曹). This too is only a word of one who would not strive to haul me up; and why must it be so? If it were a matter of attaching me straight to a post in the capital without passing through a trial in the provinces, then since there has been no such precedent before, an edict would certainly be needed. But as for a district post, by the settled precedent of the state, one who has passed the examination is attached straight to an outer post without limit of years. And so before the middle ages there were men who, having their names on the yellow paper (黃紙), went out and were attached in that same year; and those next after them obtained it without passing beyond three or four years.
Only, in these days civil officers pour out in a mass and those who advance quickly are very many, while the posts in the prefectures and counties have not increased from of old. And so those shut up in guarding the stump are generally pushed back long and cannot advance, and the road before them is heaped up and blocked, so that there are those who reach thirty years, or twenty-eight or nine, and still are not transferred into use. If I were to follow in the footsteps of these men and reckon the order and wait, then even when my head turned white the time could not be fixed.
If Your Excellency does not treat me as one of the common crowd, and would praise and repay the merit of my laboring at study, then you have only to use me ahead of the men of the earlier lists. Limiting by years was never a regulation of the state, and so even without an edict it does not go against the state's regulations — how much less when the edict has already come down and only its shape has been veiled and hidden for a moment.
Ah — what a chancellor has declared cannot from the first be lightly regarded. There was not one chancellor only, nor two; and what they declared was grounded in the meaning that by recommending one scholar you encourage a hundred, so that its purpose was not shallow. Had the sovereign not granted it, there would be an end of the matter. But if the sovereign had already granted it and someone in between said this and that, then this is the fault of the man charged with the declaring, and the guilt must surely have somewhere to return to.
With Your Excellency's dignity you stand at the head of all the officials, and your strength is not wanting for looking into and setting right what has gone awry at court. You should at that time have looked into the reason the memorandum was intercepted and taken away, and have impeached that guilt; and if Your Excellency too did not dare to do so, by what shall the mainstay of the court and the law of the state be set upright? By what shall the sovereign's ears and eyes be widened? By what shall the scholar who hides his vessel and holds his treasure come forward? In my heart I count this a pity for Your Excellency's sake.
Among the men of old there was one who asked how much a horse ate in a day. The horse's owner said, "I give it so many pecks of millet." "Then why is it thin?" "Because I only promised to give it and did not give it." There being nothing I can do about my being like this, I am truly hungry and thin. Will Your Excellency bear not to look upon me and not finish your giving?
I am without talent, yet all my life I have been confident only of my good faith and my straightness. What I have stored up I now pour out entirely before Your Excellency. I shall not decline nor hide even words that touch upon praising myself, and I pray Your Excellency to look upon them.
From my ninth year I knew the reading of books, and to this day I have not let a book out of my hand. From the Odes and the Documents and the Six Classics, the hundred schools of philosophers and the writings that set down history, to the abstruse scriptures and out-of-the-way records and the words of the Buddhists and the Daoists — though I have not exhausted their sources and dug into their depths and drawn out what is hidden, there is none of them I have not read through and swum in and submerged myself in, picking out the pith and gathering the flowers and making them the stuff for running my writing and taking hold of its figure.
Again, from Fuxi (伏羲) onward — the Three Dynasties and the two Han, the Qin, the Jin, the Sui and the Tang and the time of the Five Dynasties: the rights and wrongs of sovereigns and ministers, the order and disorder of states, the making and the unmaking and the good and cruel traces of loyal subjects and righteous men, of crafty heroes and great brigands — though I have not embraced them all and cited them without omission, there is none of them I have not cut away the troublesome from and culled the essential of, taking them for a mirror and reciting them and making them the groundwork for use as the time requires.
And at times, when I take the brush and draw the paper to me and chant of the wind and the moon, then even in long pieces on great themes, running to a hundred rhymes and more, I gallop and race on and do not stay my brush. Though I have not spread out silk and embroidery and strung out pearls and jade in rows, neither have I lost the frame and body of a poet. My looking back and being confident of myself is such as this; and yet I count it a pity that I should rot at last along with the grass and the trees. What I hope for is to lift a brush of five inches once and pass the Golden Gate (金門) and ascend the Jade Hall (玉堂), to speak in the sovereign's stead and oversee drafts and compose rescripts and ordinances, injunctions and the sovereign's counsels and the texts of edicts and proclamations (詔誥), and spread them out and make them plain to the four quarters, and only then to stop, having repaid the purpose of a lifetime. How should I be one of the crowd who melt away in petty things, seeking a stipend of a peck and a pint and plotting to keep wife and children alive?
Ah — my purpose is great and my talent raw, and the destiny I was born to is straitened and thin. I am thirty years old and have not yet got one district post, and my lonely and suffering condition is of ten thousand kinds, some of which cannot be told. What my days to come will be is already plain enough. Yet my advancing and retreating, my going and staying, I divine by taking Your Excellency as the man who holds the road before me. My being brought forward and sent back, raised and lowered, hangs only upon Your Excellency's looking and choosing, and what further word should I have? If you lend me the kindness of one look and open that road and let me take the cord and mount to the place of a first office, then I shall be able to gallop high through ten thousand li of blue cloud. Why should I grieve that the road is far and the day drawing down?
Moreover, that a scholar would meet with the regard of princes and great men is not merely a plotting for his own body; it is also that he would make the name of those princes and great men. If I knock once and twice and am not heard, still, for the sake of the state and for the sake of Your Excellency's name and for the sake of my own life, I cannot lightly depart. If I watch for an opening and ask to be received, it may yet be hoped that you will at last receive and grant it, so that you do not lose the name of one who lowers himself to scholars. And if I knock three times and am not heard — I am from the first stiff and narrow, and not one of those who come and go morning and evening, flattering tastes and seeking favor. I should rather count it sweet to hide deep and flee far and lie low with the elk and the deer in a country of thick forest and heavy grass. How should I come again to the Chancellor's gate and stand by the dog-hole and the stable and be stained with dust and dung?
Mencius said, "There was never a man who did not wish to hold office; but to advance without following the way of it is to be like the company who bore through walls." My matchmaking for myself is already excessive; must I take for my model besides the woman who bores through a wall and climbs over it?
The words of one who has lost his purpose are generally much given to vehemence and complaint; I pray that Your Excellency will first be lenient toward their fault and then look upon them. Having lightly touched upon your loftiness and sternness, I cannot overcome my fear. Here I stop. So-and-so bows twice.
Interlinear notes 1
兩崔任相國。
These are the two Chancellors Choe and Chancellor Im.