Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 13 — Notices

Dispatch making Wang Ao, former magistrate of Dangtu county in Xuanzhou, acting magistrate of Yangzi前宣州當塗縣令王翶攝楊子縣令

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) 桂苑筆耕集 · Choe Chiwon · 886 (Tang, 6th year of the Zhonghe era · Silla, 12th year of King Heongang) · 1 passages · 249 Chinese characters · reading time 1.0 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 13 — Notices A collection Choe Chiwon made by choosing out of the writings of his four years in the headquarters of Gao Pian, military commissioner of Huainan under the Tang, binding them into twenty volumes and presenting them to King Heongang of Silla in 886. It holds 366 pieces — memorials and reports sent up to the emperor, the proclamation denouncing Huang Chao, letters to the several military commissioners, orders and dispatches issued to those under him, Daoist and Buddhist texts for services, funeral offerings, records written for the outer wall of Chengdu and for a painting of Annam, and the reports and poems he sent up to Gao Pian. Here is the first report, which begins "I am a man of Silla," and the proclamation against Huang Chao with its line, "Not only do all the men of the world think to kill you openly; the ghosts under the earth have already discussed cutting you down in secret." The last volume holds the poems he made on the voyage home to the country he had left at twelve. It is the oldest collection by a Korean that survives, and when Hong Seokju and Seo Yugu printed it with movable type in 1834 they called it "the root and the beginning of the writing of our Eastern Country." Their two prefaces are translated with it.

1Governing a county is like driving a flock of chickens

牒奉處分。宰字之術。若驅群鷄。緩之則散。急之則亂。此言雖小。其理甚中。知者非難。行之不易。況乃隋城近邑。楚岸通津。螟蝗則久待消除。鱦魠則每思養育。前件官。相門積慶。儒室推賢。早登廉孝之科。嘗歷句稽之任。雖棲下位。不墜令名。果逢連帥之知。再假字人之秩。雉誰忍捕。鵲自停喧。陶潛之腰腹暫仾。孔奮之膏腴下潤。今以楊子一同繁劇。四達要衝。每當使命交馳。實託宰僚勤幹。遂重責成之寄。況逢多事之秋。而乃有令患風。請告踰月。若言考秩。亦合替移。固選長才。俾修闕政。其在上瞻夏日。下視春氷。宜無憚於徒勞。佇有成於歷試。苟有經年沈醉。必虧莅事之能。如將終夕淸談。亦失相時之理。勉於二說。愼自三思。事須差攝楊子縣令。

This dispatch carries out the decision handed down. The art of governing a district is like driving a flock of chickens. Slacken, and they scatter. Hurry them, and they fall into disorder. The saying is small, but its reasoning hits the mark squarely. To know it is not hard. To carry it out is not easy. Still more here, a town near the walls of Sui, a ford opening onto the banks of Chu. The borer and the locust have long awaited their end, and the small fry always look to be raised. The officer named above is the heaped blessing of a chancellor's house, the worthy man whom the chamber of the scholars puts forward. Early he passed the examination for the incorrupt and filial, and in time he served in the duty of checking accounts. Though he perched in a low place, he never let a good name fall. So indeed he met the regard of the regional commander, and once more he borrows a rank for nurturing the people. Who could now bear to snare the pheasant? The magpies stop their own clamor. The waist of Tao Qian is bowed for a while, and the richness of Kong Fen moistens those below. Now Yangzi is one district of heavy and pressing work, a crossroads open on four sides. Every time envoys ride back and forth, the work rests truly on the diligent skill of the magistrate and his staff, so the charge laid upon him weighs all the heavier. Still more, this is a season of much business, and the magistrate has fallen ill with palsy and has asked leave for more than a month. Even speaking of his rating and rank, a transfer is fitting. So a man of rare gifts is chosen, to mend a government left empty. Let him look up to the summer sun and look down on the spring ice. Let him not shrink from labor that seems spent for nothing, and let him wait for the fruit of being tried in every task. If he sinks in drink the year through, he will surely blunt his power to meet affairs. If he holds pure talk the whole night, he will also lose the reasoning that measures the times. Strive at these two sayings, and take care to think three times over. This matter must be a dispatch making him acting magistrate of Yangzi county.

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