Book One卷一

I once looked into this. From the first year of Yao of Tang, a gapjin year, to the first year of Hongwu, a musin year, is three thousand seven hundred and eighty-five years in all, and from the first year of Dangun, a mujin year, to the first year of our Taejo, an imsin year, is also three thousand seven hundred and eighty-five years. The number of years the East has passed through is broadly the same as China's. Yao arose and Dangun rose; King Wu of Zhou was established and Gija received his fief; Han settled all under heaven and Wiman came to Pyeongyang; Taizu of Song was about to rise and Taejo of Goryeo had already risen; and our Taejo opened the state at the same time as Emperor Gao, Taizu of Ming.

The Gogi (古記) says that Dangun was established on the same day as Yao, passed through Yu and Xia, and in the eighth year of Wuding of Shang, an eulmi year, entered Mount Asadal and became a spirit, the years he enjoyed being one thousand and forty-eight. The records of that time are not handed down, so their truth or falsehood cannot be examined, yet to this day men repeat them and take the Gogi as the ground of their talk. Geojeong thinks thus. In the time of Yao the letters and arts of man shone forth, but by Xia and Shang the age grew ever thinner. A ruler enjoys his state at longest no more than forty or fifty years, and as for the life of man, the highest span is a hundred years, the middle span sixty or seventy, the lowest span forty or fifty. How could Dangun alone live a thousand and a hundred years and enjoy a whole country? One may know that this saying is false. It is also said that Dangun begot a son, Buru, and that this was the king of Eastern Buyeo, and that when Yu gathered the lords at Mount Dosan, Dangun sent Buru to attend the court. That saying has no ground. If Dangun had enjoyed his state so long and Buru had gone to the gathering at Mount Dosan, then even though the records of this country are not complete, how could the books of China have not one word that touches on it? That the Dan line, handing the state one to another, enjoyed it for one thousand and forty-eight years is beyond doubt. In the poem of Duke Munchung, Gwon Geun, it is said, "They tell of the days of the vast beginning, when Dangun came down beside a tree. How many generations he handed on, none knows, but the years he passed had already gone beyond a thousand." This speaks, in the main, of how long the line ran and how many the years.

Gija was enfeoffed in Joseon in the gimyo year of King Wu of Zhou. Later, in the time of King Jun, in the byeongo year of Gaozu of Han, Wiman invaded him, and he floated over the sea and went south. His capital was at Pyeongyang for eight hundred and seventy-eight years. Jun moved his capital to Geummagun, and this is called Mahan. It passed through the time of the four commanderies and the two prefectures, and perished in the twenty-sixth year of King Onjo of Baekje, a mujin year, so that too was more than a hundred and forty years. The Samguk sagi of Kim Busik only writes that the king of Baekje attacked Mahan and took it, and does not clearly speak of the generations of the Gi house, so in that day too there must have been nothing that could be examined.

I looked into the Cheonun sotong, where Hamheoja says, "Joseon lies east of the state of Andong, the land of the ancient Suksin. King Wu enfeoffed Gija as a lord, made him keep up the sacrifices of Yin, and made him a frontier state of China. In the thousand years and more from the fall of Zhou to the Later Han, the state was usurped by Gongsun Kang, and the line of Gija lost its handing down." He also says, "Gija led five thousand men of China into Joseon, and the poetry and the documents, the rites and the music, the physicians and the shamans, the schools of yin and yang and of divination, and the crafts of all the artisans, all went along with him. Therefore it is said that half a myriad men of Yin crossed the Liao river." Now I examine it, and the usurping by Gongsun Kang has no ground, and as for the words that half a myriad men of Yin crossed the Liao river, one cannot tell from what book they came.

Hamheoja further says, "When Gija came to Joseon the tongues could not be understood, and he learned them through interpreters. He taught the poetry and the documents and made them know the rites and music of China, so that the way of father and son, of ruler and subject, first went forward, and the rites of the five constants were first complete. He taught the crafts of all the artisans, so that the arts of the physician and the shaman, of yin and yang and divination, first came to be. With rites and right conduct and the tilling of fields and the raising of silkworms he made the teaching in eight articles and transformed them, and within a year the people were transformed of themselves. He who killed another paid for it with goods; he who wounded another paid for it with grain; a thief, if a man, was taken and made a slave, and if a woman, made a bondmaid. In less than three years all men turned to his transforming, honored good faith and right conduct, and held firmly to the arts of the scholar, so that the manners of China were formed there. It may be called the transforming of a sage. He taught them not to honor arms and fighting, saying, 'The disorder of a single day is not settled in ten years; the people fall into mire and embers and cannot rest in their callings.' Therefore he subdued the fierce and strong by virtue, and the neighboring states all admired his righteousness and drew close to him. Because it became a frontier state of China, in every age it was close to China and trusted by it, received titles and fiefs, and its tribute did not cease; the way of rites and right conduct was never lacking, and its caps and robes and its institutions were all the same as the institutions of each age of China. Therefore it is called a land of poetry and documents, of rites and music, a country of benevolence and righteousness, and Gija began it." Geojeong thinks thus. The discussion of Hamheoja is roughly the same as the Han shu, and he knew deeply the customs of this Eastern country. What is discussed in the several histories of the ages and in the Honilji of our dynasty is mistaken and without ground, and all of it came only from what was wrongly heard.

The sky-field of this country was likened by men of old to the capital of Yan. In the gisa year a comet appeared in the field of Yan, and the officer of the heavens reported, "It does not touch this country." King Sejong was deeply troubled and said, "Our country shares a field with Yan. How can it not touch us?" In the autumn of the gisa year the Zhengtong emperor was taken in the northern court and King Sejong departed this life, so the saying that we share a field with Yan seems to come near the mark.

Biryu and Onjo climbed Mount Buaak and looked over the land fit to live in, and Biryu made his capital at Michuhol and Onjo made his capital at Wiryeseong. Later Onjo moved his capital to the fortress of Namhansan, which is Gwangju today, and moved again to the fortress of Bukhansan, which is Hanyang today. What ground it was that they divined as the bright hall is not known. That Hanyang would be the capital of the Yi house is seen in the prophetic charts of Doseon. For this reason Goryeo set up its southern capital at Hanyang, planted plum trees, and chose men of the Yi surname for its governors, and the king too made a progress there once a year and buried a curtain of dragons and phoenixes to press the place down. Geojeong once looked into the Goryeosa, and of the bright hall of Hanyang it only writes "a slope seated at im and facing byeong," and does not say clearly what ground it was. Now I have looked into the main halls of the two palaces, Gyeongbokgung and Changdeokgung, and both are seated at im and face byeong. My guess is that the place Goryeo divined lies, in short, nowhere outside the sites of these two palaces. Of late the diviner Choe Yangseon has said that the old site of the Seungmunwon is the true bright hall, and there are some who say that Nakcheonjeong by the royal shrine is the great ground, but these are all shallow views and talk without warrant.

Doseon was a man of Baekje. In the beginning Doseon's mother, still a maiden, went out to walk by a stream and a marsh, found one large fine melon and ate it, and suddenly knew that she was with child. When she bore the boy his parents thought it unlucky and cast him out by the stream. The cold was then bitter, but some thousands of gulls gathered and covered him above and below, so that for more than ten days he did not die. His parents thought this strange and took him up and reared him. When he was grown he left his house, entered the mountains, and trained himself, and an immortal of heaven came down and gave him the secrets of the patterns of heaven, of the veins of earth, and of yin and yang. He also went to Tang and learned the methods of Yixing. The prophetic charts handed down in the world were all written by Doseon. Of late a set of the Xingyao in a Tang edition has come to me, and in it is a piece called "Rhapsody of the State Preceptor of Goryeo," and its reasoning is fine and subtle, such as none but Doseon could make. Yet the man with whom he reasons in it is Yelü Chucai, and the distance between their ages is very great, and this is to be doubted. How do we know that the one called State Preceptor of Goryeo did not receive the art of Doseon in secret, so that it was handed not to the East but to China? Today at Dogapsa in Yeongam county there is a stele of Doseon, and there is a wood of the gulls as well.

In the brush-work of our Eastern country Kim Saeng is first, and the academician Yo Geugil and the monks Tanyeon and Yeongeop come after him, and all of them took Wang Xizhi for their model. Yi Gyubo once judged them and made Choe Chungheon first of the divine grade, Tanyeon second, and Yu Sin third, but that was flattery of the powerful and not a fair judgment. Ever since Yuan, all who learn to write letters take Zhao Mengfu for their model. The traces of that master's hand in his lifetime fill the four seas. Of those that have flowed down into the Eastern country, the ones I myself have been able to see are not fewer than several hundred sheets, and the ink is fresh as new. How many I have not been able to look at I do not know, and how many are scattered over all under heaven I do not know either. From Zhao to our day is still far, and our East lies in one corner, yet we have seen many traces of Zhao's hand. From Tang back to Jin is not far either, yet Emperor Wen of Tang, with all the greatness of the empire, sought the true traces of Wang Xizhi, sent Xiao Yi over hard and broken roads, and got them only after all that toil. Why was that? In the gisa year the academician Ni Qian came as an envoy and said, "The brush-work of Lord Zhao is rarely seen even in China." He was marveling, no doubt, at how much of it there is in this country. I privately think it is thus. King Chungseon of Goryeo went to the court of Yuan and built the Hall of Ten Thousand Volumes, and day by day he talked at ease there with six or seven famous scholars of that age, and Lord Zhao was one of them. Of the scholars of letters of this country, many such as Master Yi Jehyeon attended him. When the king returned east, he loaded ten thousand scrolls of writings and books and paintings, and it is chiefly from this that the traces of Zhao's hand fill the East. Of the men of our East, the only one who got the brush-work of Lord Zhao and its spirit is Yi Am of Haengchon, he alone.

Kim Saeng was a man of the time of King Wonseong of Silla, and was famed for writing well. In the Chongning years of Song, the academician Hong Gwan of Goryeo went to Song, and the Hanlin attendants Yang Qiu and Li Ge were writing on picture scrolls by command of the emperor. Hong Gwan showed them a scroll of Kim Saeng's running and cursive hand, and the two men were greatly startled and said, "We did not think that today we should see the true traces of Wang Xizhi." Hong Gwan said, "This is the writing of Kim Saeng, a man of Silla." The two men laughed and said, "In all under heaven, apart from Wang Xizhi, how could there be a brush as marvelous as this?" Hong Gwan made it plain to them, but to the end they did not believe it. Of late I have seen the colophon of the academician Zhao Ziang to the stele of Changnimsa, which says, "The above is the stele of Changnimsa in that country, written by the Silla monk Kim Saeng of Tang. The strokes of the letters have deep rule and model in them, and even the famous carvings of men of Tang cannot go far beyond them." An old saying runs, "In what land do trees not grow?" and it is true indeed. Looking at this colophon of the academician Zhao, one knows that the brush-work of Kim Saeng stands first in all ages, old and new.

Choe Chiwon, Marquis Munchang, went to Tang, passed the examination, and followed Gao Pian in striking Huang Chao. In his proclamation rebuking Huang Chao he wrote, "Not only do all the men under heaven think to put you openly to death; the ghosts under the earth have already agreed to cut you down in secret." Huang Chao read as far as this and came down from his couch without knowing it. By this his name became known throughout all under heaven. In the Gyewon pilgyeong today there are many places hard to understand, and it may be that the habit of that age was so, or that the style of the East could not match the old. Of the writings of Silla none at all is handed down to today, and there are only one or two pieces made by Wonhyo and Seol Chong. I once saw the old-style poem in five words on the woven brocade that Silla offered to Tang, and the four lines in five words that Eulji Mundeok of Goguryeo gave to Yu Zhongwen, and both were fine and reached the mark. In that age the scholars able in letters cannot have been few, yet now not one part in ten thousand is handed down. It is a pity.

In the poem the Tang academician Gu Yun made to send Choe Chiwon home to his country there are the words, "At twelve he boarded a boat and crossed the sea, and his writing moved the land of China." Another who gave him parting words said, "In the year of the layered peaks of the Wu gorges he came into China as a thread; in the year of the ranked stars of the River of Heaven he returns to the Eastern country in brocade." So he went to Tang at twelve and came back east at twenty-eight. After he came back east, what he met with and what he set in hand cannot be examined. Some say that the age happened then to be in disorder, and that he hid at Haeinsa on Mount Gaya and roamed and feasted with the monks. The three hills, Yeongju and the rest, that he raised, and the Bonghaseok in Hongnyudong, and the remaining traces at Seoam are clear to this day, but no one knows where he ended, and the world says that he went off as an immortal. I have looked into it. The twelfth year of Xizong of Tang, an eulsa year, was the eleventh year of King Heongang of Silla, and Choe Chiwon came back from Tang bearing an edict of the emperor. Ten years later, in the gabin year, the eighth year of Queen Jinseong, Choe Chiwon submitted more than ten articles on the business of the day, and the queen praised them and took them up. At that time Gyeon Hwon of Later Baekje had already held Wansan in revolt for three years. Twenty-five years later, in the muin year, Wang Geon, Taejo of Goryeo, was established, and ten years later, in the jeonghae year, Gyeon Hwon entered Silla and killed the king. Choe Chiwon's years were then just seventy, an age not yet worn out and gone, and yet there is nowhere to examine how he came forward or withdrew. It is to be doubted.

Memorials and letters sent in serving the great country must be fine and to the point. In the time of Goryeo, when the men of Liao wished to cross the Amnok river and make it the border, the state councillor Bak Illyang wrote a memorial setting out the case, and its words were so framed and its precedents so used that all was clear and earnest, and the emperor of Liao let the matter drop. At the new year greeting in the twenty-ninth year of our Emperor Gao, Taizu, Jeong Tak, Lord of Cheongseong, composed the memorial and Kim Yakhang, Lord of Gwangsan, composed the letter, and Jeong Chong, Lord of Seoseong, and Gwon Geun, Lord of Gilchang, polished them. The emperor was angry, holding that the words of the memorial and the letter touched on mockery and slight, and he summoned Jeong Chong, Kim Yakhang, and Gwon Geun and rebuked them. Gwon Geun received pardon and returned, but Jeong Chong and the others were held and did not come back. Choe Bosun, drafter of edicts in Goryeo, once composed a memorial congratulating the emperor of the Jurchen Jin (金) on his accession, saying, "Five horses crossed the river, marking how the emperor of Jin (晉) opened the way for a new lord; six dragons drive at the pole, matching the appearance of the great man in the Book of Changes of Fuxi." At that time the brothers of the ruler of the Jurchen Jin were contending for the state, and he hated the words for touching on the fact, and the edict said, "The citing of the affair of Emperor Yuan of Jin (晉) is not fitting." By this Choe Bosun was reprimanded. It is not that the words of Choe Bosun's memorial were unskillful, but that he drew the emperor's anger came from using a precedent that was not to the point.

The world hands down that Kim Busik, envying talent and hating the able, harmed Jeong Jisang. Now I have looked into the Goryeosa, and Jeong Jisang had fallen in among the arts of Myocheong and his wings were all gone, so that to keep himself whole was truly hard, and it was not a thing Kim Busik could pardon out of his own favor. Moreover, in his own biography and in the several books there is not one word about a wrongful harming, so why is what the world hands down like this? Of late I have looked into the notes of Kim Taehyeon to the Dongguk mungam, which say, "Between the Kim and the Jeong there had been a heaping up of ill feeling in matters of writing." If so, then this talk was already there in that day.

Kim Busik went to Song, came to the Youshen shrine, and saw in one hall the image of a woman immortal set up. Wang Fu, the officer who attended him, said, "This is a spirit of your honorable country. Do you gentlemen know of her?" Then he said, "In old days there was a daughter of the imperial house who conceived without a husband, and being doubted by others she floated over the sea, came to Jinhan, and bore a son who became the first lord of the country east of the sea. The emperor's daughter became an earth immortal and abides forever on Mount Seondo. This is her image." Now I have looked into it, and at the beginning of Silla, Goguryeo, and Baekje there is no such affair of an emperor's daughter, and there is only the affair of Yuhwa in the coming forth of Dongmyeong. It may be that China knew it wrongly and that this talk arose from it.

At the end of Goryeo the hearts of men had all turned to our Taejo, and Master Yi Saek of Mogeun kept up appearances a little. Yet he composed the stele of King Hwan while Taejo was still in his private residence, and why did he there use the words, "Though Zhou is an old land, its mandate is new"? Choe Yeong the commander said as he faced death, "Yi Gwangpyeong always said that the superintendent of the Three Offices ought to become the lord of the country." Gwangpyeong and the commander were both great ministers charged with the state, and even so such words were spoken. That the mandate of heaven and the hearts of men had turned to our Taejo may be known without waiting for the mujin year.

When our Taejong went to the capital of the empire to attend court, Emperor Wen of Ming, the Taizong, was then the Prince of Yan and was in his princely residence. Taejong called on him in passing, and the emperor talked with him and was greatly pleased, and his favor and treatment of him were most warm. When Taejong came back to this country, the scholar officials of our court asked him, "Will all under heaven be greatly settled?" At that time Emperor Gao was weary of his labors and Jianwen was heir apparent. Taejong said, "I have looked at the Prince of Yan, and his face is of heaven and sun and his bearing of dragon and phoenix, and his measure is broad and great. He is not one to stay long a prince of a frontier land. Whether all under heaven will be settled cannot be known." Not long after, Emperor Wen of Ming took all under heaven as the Prince of Yan, and all men bowed to the clearness of Taejong's foresight. When Emperor Wen of Ming came to the throne he looked upon our Taejong with uncommon favor, and he always said to the people of this country, "I once saw the lord of your country, and he is truly a man of heaven."

When this country sent horses as tribute, Taejong himself looked them over and chose. There was one horse that stood in the lower rank, and he ordered it put in the first stable, and all men thought it strange. After the horses were offered, Emperor Wen saw it and sent down an edict saying, "The king of Joseon loves me, and the horse he offered first is very fine." Only then did men know that what the sagely and the divine see is broadly the same. Taejong said to the ministers of the court, "In choosing fine horses and telling apart the talents of men, I should yield to no man of old."〔In the base text one Korean letter, pyeon, is mixed into this place, but what character it stands for cannot be made out, so it is left as it stands in the source.〕

King Sejong by his nature loved learning. Before he had left the inner apartments, whenever he read a book he read it a hundred times, and for the Zuo zhuan and the Chu ci he added a hundred more. Once when he was unwell he still did not stop his reading. As the illness grew heavier, Taejong ordered a palace officer to go there suddenly and search out all the volumes and bring them away, and only one scroll of the letters of Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi was left behind among the folding screens, and King Sejong read it a thousand times and a hundred. When the day of his accession came he went to the royal lecture, and there was no book he did not read, so that his work of carrying on the light and toiling with the hours rose high above a hundred kings. He once said to his close ministers, "Reading books is of profit, but such things as writing letters and composing pieces are not what a ruler need set his mind on." In his later years he was weary of his labors and did not hold court, yet on matters of letters and learning he took even greater care. He ordered the scholar officials to divide into offices and compile several books, namely the Goryeosa, the Chipyeong yoram, the Byeongyo, the Eonmun, the Unseo, the Oryeui, and the Saseo ogyeong eumhae. All that was compiled and put in order at that time came to be a book only after passing the royal judgment, and in one day he might look over some tens of volumes. It may be called the movement of heaven in its strength, whose purity likewise does not cease.

When King Sejong first made the court music, Bak Yeon of the Privy Council helped to bring it about. Sitting or lying, he made with his hands before his breast the shapes of striking, and whistled between his lips the sounds of the pitches, and after more than ten years of this it was at last complete. King Sejong leaned on him and held him in deep regard. King Sejong also made the self-striking water clock, the Ganuidae, the Heumgyeonggak, and the scaphe sundial, and the making of them was most fine and exact, and all of it came out of the royal mind. Even among all the artisans there was none who could match the ruler's intent. Only Jang Yeongsil, commander of the guard, looked up and received the royal wisdom, and plied what was wondrous and ran after what was skillful, and there was nothing that did not fit close, and the king held him in great regard. All men said, "Bak Yeon and Jang Yeongsil were both born to answer their hour, for the sake of the abundance of our King Sejong's making."

King Sejong once set his mind on the Zizhi tongjian of Duke Sima, and troubled that its notes and glosses were not complete and its phrasing not clear, he ordered the scholar officials to gather widely from many books and set in side notes according to the matter, so that it might be easy to look at. Thereupon they took the sound notes of Hu Sanxing and such books as the Wonwi, the Seongmun, and the Jimnam as their ground, and pared and polished them, and where these were not complete they gathered from other books at the side to fill them out. Further, where the sense of the writing turned back on itself and was hard and deep, they at once noted the whole phrase of the original history, or wrote the words of the phrase below it, to make the reading easy, and down to the glossing of characters and the turning of sounds there was nothing not set out in full. All of it received the royal judgment, and it was named the Sajeongjeon hunui. The Gangmok and the Tongjian were done in the same way, and the exactness of those glosses is a thing neither now nor of old has had. Of late I have seen the Gangmok tongjian jimnam compiled by the present imperial court, and it has many places that are loose and left out, and it does not set the side notes below the phrase but attaches them at the end of each volume, so that it is not easy to look at either. Your servant thinks, in his rashness, that the glosses of our court should be held first. Moreover the glosses were completed in the byeongjin year of Zhengtong, while the Jimnam was completed only of late, and if at the time China was making the Jimnam it had seen the glosses of this country, it would surely have had no leisure for anything but wonder and praise.

Taejong first made cast type, but its shape was not wholly good. In the gyeongja year King Sejong ordered Yi Cheon to recast it after the shape of well-written letters of China, and it was finer than the old. This is called the gyeongja type. In the gabin year King Sejong ordered it recast after the letter shapes of the Wiseon eumjeul, and it was most fine and exact. This is called the gabin type. The gyeongja type is small and the gabin type large, and the books printed with them were most good. In the last years of King Sejong it was recast after the shapes written by Yong, Grand Prince Anpyeong, and the letter shapes written by Gang Huian, and the books printed with these grew steadily less good than the old. Now the bronze type has all been stolen away by the artisans, and wooden type is used along with it, so that the letters are not alike in size or in wear, and the lines are not even, and set beside the old printed copies they do not match them at all.

King Sejong gave his whole spirit to rule by letters, and rose high above all ages. In the gyeongja year he first set up the Hall of Worthies and chose ten men of letters to fill it, and afterward raised the number to thirty, and changed it again to twenty. Ten of them attended the royal lecture and ten the lecture of the heir apparent, and they held charge of writing alone, discussing what is now and what was of old, and reasoning and thinking morning and evening, so that scholars of letters came forth one after another in fine array and the gaining of men was very abundant. South of the Hall of Worthies was a great willow, and between the gisa and the gyeongo years white magpies came and nested there, and their young were all white. Within a few years those ranged in high and weighty posts had all come out of the Hall of Worthies, such as Chief State Councillor Jeong Inji, Left State Councillor Yi Sacheol, Chief State Councillor Jeong Changson, Head of the Privy Council Yi Gyejeon, Head of the Privy Council An Ji, Minister Kim Jo, Vice Minister Kim Don, Chief of the Privy Council Kim Gu, Chief of the Privy Council Kim Mal, Chief State Councillor Sin Sukju, Left State Councillor Gwon Ram, Councillor Bak Jungson, Chief State Councillor Choe Hang, Minister Kim Dam, Chief of the Privy Council Yi Seokhyeong, State Councillor Yun Jaun, Chief of the Privy Council Eo Hyocheom, Vice Minister No Sukdong, Minister Yang Seongji, Minister Seong Im, Minister Yi Geukgam, Governor Yi Myeonggyeom, Minister Kim Yemong, Head of the Privy Council No Sasin, Han Gyehui, Lord of Seopyeong, Assistant Councillor Hong Eung, Councillor Yi Seungso, Vice Minister Yi Pa, Minister Yi Ye, Governor Jo Geun, Governor Gang Huian, Minister Gang Huimaeng, Governor Choe Seonbok, and Vice Minister Bak Cheop. Even Geojeong, worthless as he is, got a place among them. There were also such men as Bak Jungnim, Bak Paengnyeon, Ha Wiji, Seong Sammun, Yi Gae, and Yu Seongwon, who were eminent and high in their day. In the gyeyu and gapsul years the willow withered away entirely, and someone said to Yu Seongwon in jest, "The calamity will surely begin from Yu (柳)." Yu Seongwon came to ruin, and the words proved true indeed. The Hall of Worthies was soon abolished.

King Sejong set up the Hall of Worthies, gathered scholars of letters and learning, and reared them for some tens of years, so that men of talent came forth one after another. Still he feared that going to office in the morning and keeping watch at night they could not give their whole mind to lecture and reading, so he chose a few who were young in years and had talent and conduct, granted them leave to roam the hills and read, and had the state supply their keep. They gave themselves as they pleased to the classics and the histories, the hundred schools, the patterns of heaven, the veins of earth, medicine, and divination, until their learning was deep and wide and there was nothing they did not master, and he made this the ground for their great use to come. Before them were Duke Munhui, Sin Seokjo, the royal secretary Gwon Chae, and the academician Nam Sumun, and after them Duke Munchung, Sin Sukju, and the rest were all famed scholars too. In the reign of Munjong, Hong Eung of Namyang and Yi Pa of Hansan, and even Geojeong, unworthy as he is, received this choosing. It was truly an abundant thing of its day.

When Munjong was heir apparent he went to the Huiujeong pavilion and bestowed a tray of Dongjeong tangerines on his close ministers, and with his own hand he wrote on the face of the tray, "Sandalwood suits the nose; rich fat suits the mouth. What I love most is the Dongjeong tangerine, fragrant to the nose and sweet to the mouth as well." The strokes of the letters set dragons and serpents moving, and their light lit up sun and moon. I once copied that writing and kept it. It is truly the utmost treasure under heaven.

Munjong's writing was fine and reached the mark. The Hall of Worthies once composed a prayer for the sacrifice at Geukseong and submitted it, and Munjong looked at it, struck it out with the red brush, and wrote a few words with his own hand. In outline they were, "What has no feeling is called yin and yang; what has feeling is called ghosts and spirits. What has no feeling cannot be spoken with; what has feeling can be made to understand by reason." And again, "Water and fire nourish men, yet there are times when they kill men; ghosts and spirits give men life, yet there are times when they harm men." The words of heaven were whole and complete, and not what ministers of letters or scholars could reach.

When Renzong of Song died, Emperor Yingzong mourned and longed for him, and a man of rash counsel said, "By a divine art I can make the dead live again." Yingzong had the art tried, and it had no effect, whereupon the man said, "Taizong and Renzong are feasting at the white jade railing and admiring the peonies, and they have no mind to come again into the world of men." Yingzong knew it was empty and rash, but did not punish him heavily. At the first mourning for our King Sejong too a monstrous monk came and offered this same scheme. It was tried on another corpse and had no effect, and his writing was false and without reason, yet Munjong likewise did not punish him.

King Sejo was bold and lofty as heaven made him, and in his ordinary talk he warmly admired Taizong of Tang and thought little of Gaozu of Han. One day the king was talking at ease with Je, Grand Prince Yangnyeong, about the emperors and kings of old and of now, and said that Taizong of Tang could not be matched. Yangnyeong answered, "Your Majesty goes far beyond Taizong of Tang." The king changed countenance and said, "Ah, what words are these? My uncle goes too far." Yangnyeong said, "Taizong killed Zhang Wengu over one slight matter, and Your Majesty would surely not do so. Still more, the rightness of the house rule of our Majesty is not a thing Taizong could reach." The king smiled faintly. When the talk came round to the campaign against the Jurchen of the Poju river, Yangnyeong said, "A man of old said, 'A crossbow of a thousand gyun does not spring its catch for a field mouse.' I would have Your Majesty keep this in mind." What Yangnyeong saw was remarkable too.

King Sejo once said to your servant at his ease, "You are a scholar of the Confucian school. From of old, may a ruler bow to the Buddha or not? Do not hide it from me." Your servant answered, "Long ago Taizu of Song went to the Xiangguo monastery, and as he burned incense before the image of the Buddha he asked whether he should bow. The monk Zanning said, 'A present buddha does not bow to a buddha of the past.' Taizu laughed and did not bow. If that is so, then for a ruler not to bow to the Buddha is the right course, and to bow is a course of expedience." The king laughed greatly. Your servant said further, "In the reign of Taejong, Huang Yan, a palace eunuch of the court of China, came bearing a bronze buddha from Jeju and would have Taejong bow first to the buddha and only then perform the rites. When Taejong was unwilling to bow, Ha Ryun and the others begged him, saying, 'Huang Yan is fierce and treacherous and loves to make trouble. It would be well to follow expedience and bow first to the buddha.' Taejong said, 'If that buddha had come from China, I should reverence the command of the emperor and bow to it. But this buddha has come from Jeju in our own country, so what is there to bow to?' Among all the ministers there was none who had said this. Your servant thinks that not bowing was right." In the end he did not bow, and Huang Yan gave way and performed the rites after all. What great sages see is one and the same. King Sejo laughed again.

King Sejo was by nature respectful and thrifty. I once went into the inner hall and saw him wearing a dark blue cotton coat lined with fur and blue straw sandals, with a hat cord of plain wood, and leaning on a bamboo staff. Though it is said that Emperor Wen of Han washed and wore his robes again, even he cannot have been as plain and thrifty as this.

Sin Sukju of Goryeong was Chief State Councillor, and Gu Chigwan of Neungseong had newly been appointed Right State Councillor. King Sejo called the two ministers in haste to the inner hall and said, "Today I have something to ask of you. If you can answer, well and good; if you cannot answer, you may not refuse the forfeit. How do you reckon yourselves?" The two ministers bowed and thanked him and said, "We hope to be careful enough to have no forfeit." Presently the king called, "Councillor Sin." Sin Sukju answered at once. The king said, "I called the new councillor 〔新政丞〕, and you answered wrongly," and made him drink a great cup as a forfeit. Then he called, "Councillor Gu." Gu Chigwan answered at once. The king said, "I called the old councillor 〔舊政丞〕, and you answered wrongly," and made him drink a great cup as a forfeit. Then the king called again, "Councillor Gu," and Sin Sukju answered at once. The king said, "I called the surname 〔具〕, and you answered wrongly," and set the forfeit on him. Then he called, "Councillor Sin," and Gu Chigwan answered at once. The king said, "I called the surname 〔申〕, and you answered wrongly," and set the forfeit on him. Then the king called, "Councillor Sin," and neither Sin Sukju nor Gu Chigwan answered, and he called, "Councillor Gu," and neither Gu Chigwan nor Sin Sukju answered. The king said, "When a ruler calls a man and the subject does not answer, that is against the rites," and set the forfeit on them again. It went on so all day, until the two ministers, drinking their forfeits, were deep in drink, and the king laughed greatly.

Eo Hyocheom, Chief of the Privy Council, had thick lips. King Sejo once said in jest, "Eo Hyocheom is sunhu (淳厚)." Yun Sabun the state councillor had ruddy cheeks, and Duke Munheon, Bak Wonhyeong, answered, "Yun Sabun is siheom (猜險)." The king laughed greatly.

King Sejo had gone deeply into the books of yin and yang and of the veins of earth, and there was none he did not master, so that he saw right and wrong clearly and judged them with insight. He once said to your servant Geojeong, "The books of fate-reckoning are one of the matters in which a scholar searches out principle. Do you know them?" Your servant answered, "I have roughly looked them over." The king said, "Make me a book of worked examples." Your servant withdrew, gathered several books together, picked out their chief points, divided them by kind and set them in order, putting the general rules first, next the spirits and slayers of good and ill fortune, and last the judgments on good and ill fortune, and submitted it. The king said, "It is not that I hold the books of fate-reckoning in high faith. I only wished for a book of worked examples, so that the people of the palace need not be troubled with instruction but may open the book and see for themselves." He also asked your servant, "What do you think of fate-reckoning?" Your servant answered, "In gap and gi years the first month is byeongin, and on gap and gi days the hour of birth is gapja, so reckoning by the sixty places the number runs out at seven hundred and twenty. Add the seven hundred and twenty of days and hours to the seven hundred and twenty of years, and the four pillars of a fate run out at five hundred and eighteen thousand four hundred, and there is no more to add. When all under heaven is at its height the households reach fifteen or sixteen million, so how should the teeming multitudes past counting stop at five hundred and eighteen thousand four hundred? Even now among the lanes and villages there truly are men whose four pillars are wholly the same and whose fortunes and misfortunes are not alike at all. From what my own eyes and ears have seen there are always one or two〔In the base text one Korean letter, pyeon, is mixed into this place, but what character it stands for cannot be made out, so it is left as it stands in the source〕, so how can I know that where eye and ear do not reach there are not a thousand or a hundred? Again, at a thousand li the winds are not the same, and at a hundred li the customs are not the same, yet the four pillars are the same for the men of China and for the men of the far frontiers of the four seas alike. Yet in China there are the ranks of duke, marquis, earl, viscount, and baron, and of minister, scholar official, clerk, and commoner, and the heights and depths of title and examination rank are each and all distinguished, while the customs of the far frontiers of the four seas are in places like those of beasts, with no division of high and low. How should men be shut up within five hundred and eighteen thousand four hundred fates and yet be unlike one another in such confusion as this? The books of fate-reckoning are not enough to be believed." Some say, "Men like Li Chunfeng, Li Xuzhong, Shao Yaofu, and Xu Ziping spoke and nothing missed the mark, so how can one say they were all wrong?" Your servant thinks thus. Suppose there is a bright mirror here, and a thing comes and is reflected in it, and its beauty or ugliness appears of itself. So with men like Li Chunfeng and Shao Yaofu, whose minds were of themselves empty and divine, like the brightness of a mirror, so that when a matter came and a thing appeared, good and ill fortune were lit of themselves and could hardly escape. It is not the same as with the diviners of later ages, who merely keep to the dregs of the men of old and judge the fates of the teeming multitudes of all under heaven by five hundred and eighteen thousand four hundred fates alone. Your servant thinks that the books of fate-reckoning cannot be believed. The king laughed and said, "Your words are right."

When Yejong first took the government in hand he sharpened his will and planned good rule, but before long his royal body grew ever more out of order. He once wrote on the back of a book with his own hand, "Yejong (睿宗)," and said, "If I get this posthumous name in death, it is enough." Within a few months he departed this life, and the ministers offered the posthumous name and called him Yejong, so that it met the royal mind indeed. Ah, how sad.

Duke Munjeong, Gwon Bu of Gukjae, was born in the imsul year, the imja month, the gimi day, and the gisa hour. A diviner said, "The bound of his fate is not long." His father, Duke Muncheong, Gwon Tan, said, "If you heap up virtue it can be lengthened a little. I once heard from a monk of Mount Cheonbo that there are three articles for heaping up virtue: not to walk in the middle of the road, not to bathe in running water, and not to pick out the fine when you eat. You should strive at these." Gukjae bore them in mind to the end of his life and never left them for a moment. In the end he enjoyed eighty-five years, his post reached the highest grade, and nine lords were enfeoffed from one house, so that the abundance of his fortune and emolument has rarely been matched in any age. All men said, "This is the effect of heaping up virtue." I once looked at the stele of Gukjae composed by Master Ikjae, which says, "Muja and gimi hold empty the emoluments of im and sa, facing and clasping them, so that they strike one another and come forth." This praises, no doubt, the marvel of his making. That the diviner called his fate not long is a thing beyond knowing too.

Duke Munchung, Jeong Mongju of Poeun, had firmness and integrity all his life, and no one had a word against him. Someone said to him in jest, "Men say you have three faults. Do you know it?" Munchung said, "Try telling me." The man said, "Men say, 'When you feast and drink with friends you come in first and break up last, so you are far too slow at your wine.'" Munchung said, "That is true indeed. When I was young and in the countryside, if I got one jar of cloudy wine I longed to be merry once with my kin and my friends. Now I am already rich and honored, my seats are always full of guests and the jar is never empty of wine, so how should I be hard about it?" The man said, "Men say, 'You cannot be cool toward women.'" Munchung laughed and said, "To love beauty is the constant feeling of man. Confucius too said, 'As one loves a lovely sight.' So Confucius did not fail to know the love of beauty." The man said, "Men say, 'You cannot keep your mind off trading in goods from China.'" Munchung changed countenance and said, "This old man's house is poor and his sons and daughters are truly many. In the rites of marriage goods from China are used as a matter of course, and I simply cannot escape the custom. Still more, to move what there is where there is none is an institution left by the sages, so what have I to shrink from?" The man said, "My earlier words were only jest."

Duke Munchung, Gwon Geun, was once going to the capital of the empire when he met rain on the road, borrowed a post clerk's rain hat, and gave it back. Yet that clerk brought suit saying the duke had not given it back and demanding its price, and the duke paid it without arguing. Later another post clerk falsely claimed the loss of a felt coat (氈衫) and demanded its price, and the duke was about to pay again. The envoy Balla knew it was a false charge and questioned the clerk, who said, "This man paid the price before without arguing, so I dared to do it. Nothing was lost." Balla punished the man.

Duke Munchung, Gwon Geun, was once living in banishment at Chungju. In the spring of the gyeyu year Taejo went to Mount Gyeryong and called him to attend at the temporary court. One day Taejo bestowed a silver tray on the high ministers of his escort and had them shoot in contest for it. The military officers each shot in turn and none hit the mark. Munchung had never in his life held a bow, yet that day he hit it with one arrow and won the silver tray. All men said, "They say that by archery one looks at virtue, and this is what is meant."

Jeong Dojeon of Sambong once went to his office early in the morning wearing one white shoe and one black. When he had taken his seat in the hall the clerk told him of it, and Sambong looked down, laughed once, and in the end did not change them. When the office broke up he rode off on horseback and said to his attendant with a laugh, "Do not think it strange that my shoes are black and white. Those on my left see the white and do not see the black, and those on my right see the black and do not see the white, so what harm is there?" So little did he adorn the outside of things.

When Duke Munjeong, Yi Saek, went to the capital of the empire to attend court, Emperor Gao, Taizu, called him in, talked with him, and said, "Your Chinese is like Nahachu's." Yi Saek's looks were not imposing, and the emperor said, "This old man is worth painting." When Yi Saek came back east he said to men, "The present emperor is a lord with no master within." All men held Yi Saek's words to be a mistake. Now I see that great Ming has held all under heaven for more than a hundred years, and its sagely rulers have followed one another, keeping what is full and holding what was achieved, following throughout the institutions left by Emperor Gao and unable to change them, so that its scale and its institutions go far beyond Han and Tang. How can he be called a lord with no master within? Yet Yi Saek was a great scholar. He did not know that Emperor Gao was a great sage, so how can he be called wise? My guess is this. Emperor Gao had just settled all under heaven, and was reining in heroes, widening the frontiers, and giving his mind and his care to the founding of a great work, so that he looked on a slight scholar like Yi Saek as one looks at a child crying and laughing beside one's seat, and gave him no thought. And Yi Saek's own thought was this: "Emperor Gao has not long been on the throne and the affairs of all under heaven cannot yet be known, and yet he treats a man from outside so carelessly, so haughtily, so slightingly." That is why he spoke so. Had Emperor Gao treated Yi Saek as Emperor Guangwu treated Ma Yuan, these words would surely never have been.

Duke Munjeong, Jo Yong, was fine and deep in learning, and deepest of all in the learning of nature and principle. He headed the national academy for more than twenty years and taught men without weariness, and what he brought about had real effect. As for writing, he had only to take up the paper and it was at once done, and his words and his reasoning were fine and reached the mark. He was clever by nature and remembered at once whatever he had once looked at. When he was young he heard that a certain student had got hold of the examination questions of the Wen xuan of the Yuan court and was keeping them hidden. Munjeong asked to see them, and the student would not allow it. Another day he went again and asked, and the student lent them to him for three days. Munjeong looked at them once, remembered them all, and gave them back as agreed. One day Munjeong was with the student in the school hall and recited three or four of the questions without missing a single character. The student thought he had merely happened to learn these by heart, and pulled out several of the questions at random and had him recite them, and it was the same again. The student said, "One like you not even Zhang Xun could match."

Duke Munjeong, Maeng Saseong, was clear and spare, upright and weighty, and while he was in the chancellery he held to the great outlines of things. He was born in a gyeongja year, but once in jest he joined a society of men born in a gyemyo year. One day he was before the king, and the king asked how old he was, and Munjeong answered that he was born in a gyeongja year. When he withdrew from the court, the men of the society put him out, saying he was not of the same year, and for a while men passed the story round and laughed. Munjeong understood the pitches by nature and always kept a flute by him, playing three or four notes a day. He kept his gate shut and received no guests, and when someone came with a matter to report he had a servant open the gate and bring him in. In summer he sat in the shade of the pines, and in winter on a rush mat in his room, with nothing else about him. When the man with the matter to report had gone, the gate was shut again at once. When such a man reached the mouth of the lane and heard the sound of the flute, he knew the duke was surely at home.

Duke Munsun, Gwon Hong, was famed early for writing, and was skilled above all in the seal script and the clerical script. His post reached the highest grade and he enjoyed eighty-seven years. He once chose a house site on the skirt of Mount Nam, dug two ponds and planted lotus, and with a cloth headband and a staff of goosefoot he wandered at his ease and was content, cool and fresh as an immortal. The seal script he wrote for the stele of Heolleung and the stele of the Seonggyungwan are very fine. In the reign of King Sejong he once sent up a letter asking that a stele be set up at the shrine of Gija, and its words had much of the proper form.

Duke Jeongsuk, Bak Ansin, was broad and great in his capacity. He was once in the censorate together with Duke Munjeong, Maeng Saseong, and in arguing a matter they crossed the royal will and were to be put to death. Munjeong's face went black and he was so flustered that he knew not what to do, but Jeongsuk's countenance was as calm as ever, and he made a quatrain in which there was the line, "I fear you will leave behind the name of having killed a remonstrating minister." He had no paper or brush, so with the point of a broken shard he scratched the letters on the ground, and glaring at the prison clerk he said, "You must report this above. If you do not, I shall become a vengeful ghost and leave your kind without seed." Taejong heard of it, drew back his wrath, and let them go. Later, when Jeongsuk was returning from a mission to Japan, they met sea robbers. The robbers drew their blades, leapt onto the ship, and plundered the baggage, and all the men waved their hands helplessly and could do nothing. Jeongsuk alone sat astride his folding chair without moving and gave his orders calmly, and the robbers were afraid and did not dare come near, so that the whole party came through safe by his doing.

Duke Munjeong, Yu Gwan, was fair and clean-handed and upright, and though his post was the highest a subject can hold, he lived in a single room of thatch, in hempen clothes and straw sandals, plain and unadorned. In the leisure of his withdrawal from office he taught without weariness, and those who gathered up their skirts to learn came thronging. When someone came in to call on him, he only looked round at him and did not ask his name. The duke's house was outside Heunginmun gate, and at that time the history office was opened at Geumnyunsa, and the monastery was inside the walls. The duke had charge of compiling the history, and he always went in a soft cap, with staff and sandals, and did not trouble a carriage or a horse, and sometimes he took boys and grown men along, whistling and chanting as he came and went, so that men bowed to his elegance and weight. The monastery is now already abandoned. Once the long rains passed a month and the roof leaked like hemp stalks. The duke held an umbrella with his own hand to keep off the rain, and looked round at his wife and said, "How can a house with no umbrella bear this?" His wife said, "Those who have no umbrella surely have some provision made." The duke laughed.

Duke Mungyeong, Seong Seongnin, had in his youth a free and remarkable firmness. He was once in the tent of Yang Baegan holding off the Japanese, and having failed in the rule of the camp he was to be punished. The duke fell into a light sleep, and someone told him, "You shall wear a mugwort cap 〔蒿冠〕. Do not be troubled." The duke read it for himself and said, "A mugwort cap means the head wrapped in mugwort. Nothing could be more unlucky than that." In the end he escaped death and only had his name struck off. Later, when he became chief minister, he said, "The mugwort cap of my dream was high office 〔高官〕." In his young days he was in the Personnel Office with four or five colleagues when Sin Don stood by with his hands behind his back, watching, and pointing at Mungyeong said, "In the end he will surely rise high. His fortune and virtue are not what you gentlemen can reach." It turned out as he said, so the old rogue had eyes in his head after all. When the duke was sixty his mother too was past seventy, and her illness grew grave, and for several days she had closed her eyes and did not speak, and medicine had no effect. The duke burned incense and prayed, and cried out in grief until he was all but spent. Presently his mother said, "What sound is that?" Her attendant was startled and glad and said, "It is the sound of praying." His mother said, "Heaven sent a man who gave me an armrest and a staff and said, 'She has a son of such utmost sincerity as this; she may be helped up.'" The illness soon mended, and all men marveled at the depth of Mungyeong's filial devotion.

Duke Yangjeong, Ha Gyeongbok, was a man of Jinju. His mother dreamed that a soft-shelled turtle came into her bosom, and thereupon conceived and bore him, so his childhood name was Wangpal (王八). From childhood his strength was beyond other men, and he was taken into the armored guards, kept the night watch, and stood at the palace gate. It happened to be the winter solstice, and the royal garden had tended some pots of plum blossom and set them beside the palace gate to be offered up. The duke broke off one long branch and stuck it on his helmet, and the officer in charge was greatly startled and scolded him. The duke said, "By the fence of my house it is this tree that we tie oxen and horses to, and break for firewood. What is there of value in it?" and he did not yield in the least. All men laughed at his roughness and fierceness, yet thought his spirit great, and he was picked out for his skill in arms and rose high. He once went out to guard the northeast frontier, and a Jurchen came with a strong bow of three hundred geun and asked the duke to draw it. The duke set out wine and drank merrily with him, and said, "This bow is very cunningly made," and hastily called a bowyer and had one made after its pattern, and secretly had a man hold the bow over a fire, so that the strength of the sinew loosened a little. Then he calmly drew it to the full, and the Jurchen knocked his head on the ground and bowed.

Duke Munsuk, Byeon Gyeryang, was stubborn by nature. In the Xuande years, in a memorial of congratulation on a white pheasant, there were the words, "This white pheasant" 〔惟玆白雉〕. Munsuk said, "The character ja (玆) ought to stand in the middle line." The other gentlemen said, "It does not belong with what is above, so how can it be called the middle line?" Munsuk held stubbornly to it, and the gentlemen said, "Let us take the royal decision." King Sejong held the view of the other gentlemen to be right, and Munsuk reported again, saying, "For plowing one should ask the manservant, and for weaving one should ask the maidservant. In Your Majesty's governing of the country, for such things as hawks and hounds you should ask the likes of Mun Hyojong, but when it comes to the wording of royal messages you should entrust it to your old servant and must not lightly allow other views." King Sejong followed him because he could do no other.

Duke Jeongnyeol, Choe Yundeok, lost his mother at birth. His father Choe Unhae was guarding the frontier and could not raise him, so he entrusted him to the house of a Yangsucheok nearby to be reared. When he had grown a little his strength was beyond other men, and he drew strong bows and shot through hard things. At times he went hunting with the Sucheok and what he took was truly much. One day he was tending the beasts in the hills when a great animal came suddenly out of the thicket and all the livestock scattered and fled. The duke galloped up, killed it with a single arrow, and came back and told the Sucheok, "There was a thing with dappled markings, towering in its size. Wondering what it was, I have already shot it dead." The Sucheok went and looked, and it was one great tiger. The Sucheok thought him remarkable. When his father went out to guard Happo, the Sucheok took the duke to call on him and did not cease praising him. His father said, "I shall put him to the test," and hunted with him, and the duke galloped right and left shooting, and there was nothing he loosed that did not hit, so that the onlookers clicked their tongues in praise. His father laughed and said, "The boy's hand is quick, but he does not yet know rule and measure. What the boy does now is the skill of a keeper of the hills, and cannot be called a high skill," and thereupon he taught him the way of shooting and of driving, and in the end he became a famous general.

Duke Ikseong, Hwang Hui, was broad and wide in his measure and had the bearing of a great minister. He was in the chancellor's seat for thirty years and enjoyed ninety years of life. In debating and deciding the affairs of the state he strove to follow what was broad and generous. In his ordinary life he was plain and unruffled, and though children and grandchildren and servants were ranged about him crying out and joking and laughing, he did not check them in the least, and when some pulled his beard or slapped his cheeks he let them do as they would. He once called his colleagues in to discuss a matter, and as he was wetting his brush and writing on a document a boy servant wet the paper. The duke showed no angry look and only wiped it with his hand. So great were his virtue and his measure. He once lived in banishment at Namwon for seven years, and he kept his gate shut and sat upright, receiving no guests, with a set of rhyme books in his hands, gathering his spirit and fixing his eyes on them and nothing more. Afterward, even when his years were high, in the sounds and meanings of characters and their side elements and dots and strokes he did not miss one in a hundred.

Duke Munhyo, Ha Yeon, in his hours of ease always wore a black gauze hat with the soft wings taken off, burned incense, sat quietly, and chanted all day long. The poems he made were remarkable and unusual and came near the old style, and his brush-work was strong and had the proper form. He once said, "When I was young and in the office of the heir apparent, I made a poem and wrote it out with my own hand, and Ha Hojeong marveled and said, 'Ha the tutor made it and Ha the tutor wrote it. This too is a treasure of the world to delight in.'" Munhyo once made the circuit of Gyeongsang province, and Nam Ji the state councillor was his deputy commissioner, and the duke held him in such regard that he did not treat him as a subordinate. Once they came to Jinju, and Munhyo praised the excellence of the hills and streams and the look of the place. The duke was a man of Jinju, and Nam Ji changed countenance and said, "The hills and streams are indeed fine, but the local gentry are very bad." Munhyo laughed greatly, and men bowed to the breadth of his temper. Afterward he rose to the chancellery together with Nam Ji.

Duke Mungyeong, Heo Jo, was spare and stern and upright, fair and clean-handed, clear and careful, and in all he did he looked up to the sages and worthies. At every cockcrow he washed and combed, put on cap and belt, sat upright, and through the whole day showed no idle air. He worked without pause and always kept the affairs of the state in mind, and his words never came round to his own concerns. In debating the government he trusted himself and held his ground alone, and did not push himself above or below others, so that in his day men called him a worthy minister. His house rule was stern as well. When a son or younger kinsman had a fault, he always reported it at the ancestral shrine and punished him, and when a slave had committed an offense he dealt with it by the law. From childhood the duke was thin as if pared down, and his shoulders and back were bent. He once had charge of the Ministry of Rites and fixed the colors of dress and the forms of ceremony for high and low so that the distinctions were sharp and clear, and the shallow fellows of the marketplace hated him bitterly for it and called him the lean hawk minister. For a hawk, when it grows fat, flies away, and when it is lean it thinks of striking birds.

Duke Hyoyang, Kim Hyoseong, was the son of Duke Jangyang, Kim Namsu. Jangyang lived apart from his wife, Lady Gil. When Hyoyang was four or five years old a servant was holding him in his arms and standing under a mulberry tree when a pair of doves suddenly came and settled there. Hyoyang said, "I look at those two doves, and male and female go side by side. Why are my father and mother each in the east and in the west?" and thereupon he shed tears. The servant thought it remarkable and told Lady Gil, and she wept too, and all the village thought it remarkable. The duke served his mother with the utmost filial devotion. When the duke was fifty-seven Lady Gil died, and in keeping the hut by her grave and in the mourning and the sacrifices he acted throughout out of utmost sincerity, and the talk of men praised him for it.

Duke Daemin, Gang Seokdeok, loved the old by nature, and in his elegance and his cultivation none of recent times could match him. The poems he made were of the highest antique cast, and his writing and his painting were marvelous and rare. That his posthumous name was Min (敏) was fitting. The rule of posthumous names says, "To love the old and not grow slack is called min," and this is the min of the Yuan academician Zhao Wenmin. Men of the world thought lightly of the duke because his name was not written on the red certificate, and that is a great mistake. His son, Huian the governor, styled Gyeongu, was a threefold master of painting, poetry, and writing, and walked alone in his age. His poems are like those of Wei Yingwu and Liu Zongyuan, his paintings like those of Liu Songnian and Guo Xi, and his writing joins Wang Xizhi to Zhao Mengfu. In his person he had talent and he had virtue, and was truly a great man and a gentleman. He could not make his work great. It is a pity.

Jo O of the Privy Council became magistrate of Hapcheon, and in the hot months the sea bass were piled like a hill, yet though they rotted and fell apart he did not allow his household to taste them, and all men bowed to his clean hands. Some say, "Rather than let them rot and be thrown on the ground, it were better to let the household taste them. Still more when this would not harm his clean hands." The house of Jo was utterly poor. When he was section chief in the Ministry of Rites he rented a house to live in, and firewood and rice did not hold out. One of his colleagues sent him three mal of white rice, and he would not take it, and afterward boasted of the matter in a public seat, so that some blamed him for the boast. Yet in his ordinary life no private pleading ever reached him, and when later he withdrew and grew old at his country house, his rooms were as bare as a hanging chime, and he never asked the least thing of anyone. He was truly a gentleman, clean-handed and careful and firm in good faith.

Duke Ansuk, Gwon Jun, was clever beyond other men and had a clear command of the ways of the clerks. He once had charge of judicial review, and he decided cases like a spirit. Two robbers had killed three people of one household, and though some of the circumstances and traces remained, the stolen goods and the proofs had not come to light, so that the officials before him and after him had hung back and left it undecided for nearly four or five years. One day Ansuk set the two robbers before him and said, "Your circumstances and traces are very clear. How dare you not submit? I have a word for you, and you are not to hide what is in you. When you first planned the robbery it was thus and thus; in the middle, when you did the deed, it was thus and thus; and if the whole of it, first and last, root and branch, be set out, it is thus and thus. Do you dare hide it?" The robbers looked at each other and stuck out their tongues and said, "Can this gentleman once have been a robber? How does he know all our circumstances and traces like this?" and in the end they confessed.

In the spring of the gabo year Duke Mungyeong, Gwon Je, with Jo Geukgwan the minister, Gwon Geukhwa the vice minister, and Kim Don the vice minister, all failed of their hopes at the examinations and came to the Lotus Pavilion at Suwon. Mungyeong said, "We have lost heart and come as far as this, but on some later day, when we have gained our hopes, if a fine rain drizzles down and snowflakes fly, and the bright moon enters the blinds and the scent of lotus fills the seats, and we drink and chant together, two or three of us, that would be reward enough for today's journey." The gentlemen clapped their hands and said, "If the rain is already drizzling, the snow ought not to be flying; and if the snow is already flying, the moon ought not to be bright; and how should the scent of lotus be had in the snow? How can your words hang together so ill?" Mungyeong had nothing to answer. In the list of that autumn Mungyeong took first place, and the gentlemen passed one after another. In the imja year Mungyeong became governor of Gyeonggi, and the gentlemen gathered to see him off. Jo Geukgwan took up his cup and said, "Now we may look at the lotus in the snow at Suwon." Mungyeong laughed and said, "I would only have it together with you." Within a few months Jo Geukgwan went out as magistrate of that town, and when Mungyeong came round on his circuit, Jo Geukgwan performed the rites and took his seat, and it happened that the lotus was in full bloom. They caught each other's eye and laughed. Mungyeong made a poem: "Rain and snow fly together and the moon is bright indeed; the scent of lotus steals abroad and fills the pavilion with its clearness. Those words of that day the spirits answered and kept hidden; what was spoken twenty years ago has come about already."

Duke Munjang, Kim Gu, Duke Munjang, Kim Mal, and Kim Ban the chancellor of the academy were all widely versed in the classics and the histories, and deepest of all in the learning of nature and principle. At the same time they were chosen and appointed to the Seonggyungwan, and they taught men without weariness, and what they brought about had real effect, so that men called them the three Kims. Kim Ban departed first, and the two other Kims both passed eighty years and rose in office to the first grade, and both were given the posthumous name Munjang (文長). The rule of posthumous names says, "To hear widely and see much is called mun, and to teach men without weariness is called jang," so their getting this name was fitting. Yun Sang, the proctor of the academy, jehak (提學), was then the head of the Seonggyungwan, and his learning was finer still, so that the students vied to be first in gathering up their skirts to learn from him. He split threads and parted strands, holding them by the ear and teaching them face to face, and toiled all day without knowing weariness. The high officials and famed men of today are all his disciples. Since the founding of this dynasty he is the first of teachers.

Duke Munjang, Kim Mal, had one daughter and no son. He once said, "I have heard that one who opens the eyes of a thousand men gets a reward in the world below. In the fifty years and more since I first took office there was never a time when I did not hold a post in the school, and I taught without weariness, and yet in the end I have no child to follow me. May it not be that with rough and false learning I have failed to do any good to men?" When he was about to end his life he bathed, put on cap and belt, took his tablet in his hand and sat upright, and the people of his house wailed aloud. The duke stopped them and said, "My post has reached the first grade, so my office has not failed to prosper; my years are past eighty, so my span has not failed to be long. To die and to live is the constant way of things. To die having got what is right, how is that not good fortune?" Soon after he departed.

Master Choe Malli was once deputy director of the Hall of Worthies, and he sent up a letter arguing strongly that for eunuchs to wear black gauze hats with soft wings did not fit the old institutions, and that they should wear caps after the practice of the court of China. His words were, "From of old there have been very many rulers of the ages who favored and trusted eunuchs until their power tilted all under heaven. Yet the reason none could change their caps is that the gatekeeping sort must not be mixed with the gentry, for that startles the eye and the ear of men." His words were most earnest and went to the mark, and the eunuchs looked at one another out of the corners of their eyes, and the proposal was dropped at last.

Master Yu Uison, Master Gwon Chae, Duke Munhui, Sin Seokjo, and Master Nam Sumun were together in the Hall of Worthies, and their names stood equal in that age for writing, though the talk of men set Master Nam highest of all. The first draft of the Goryeosa jeoryo came, in the main, all from Master Nam's hand. None of these gentlemen rose high. It is a pity.

Gi Geon was once magistrate of Yeonan. Crucian carp were plentiful there, and demands for them from the offices and from private men came thronging in, so that the burden reached the people at times. Before him there had been a magistrate of the Kim surname who loved to eat crucian carp, and the townsmen mocked him and wrote in large letters on the wall of the guest house, "Six years, and what has he done? He has eaten up the fish of a whole pond." Gi Geon, to escape such slander, ate no crucian carp for six years. He went out again as magistrate of Jeju, and abalone are to Jeju what crucian carp are to Yeonan. For three years he ate none of those either, and all men bowed to his holding to it, yet doubted whether he was not forcing himself to it for show.

Kim Yo the minister was famed early for letters and learning. King Sejong once gave a feast to his ministers, and when all were warm with wine the king said, "Today let each of you tell what he wishes for in his life." Kim Yo said, "Your servant wishes only this: that for a hundred years he may attend the royal seat day by day, and come forward and withdraw and bow beneath the golden mallow." All the ministers said, "What we wish is no better than what Kim Yo wishes." The king laughed.

Duke Munjeol, Kim Dam, was warm and elegant by nature, plain and spare, and did not show joy or anger in his face. Yet he was good at dealing with robbers. He once held the three towns of Chungju, Andong, and Gyeongju, and when a man had about him the circumstances and traces of robbery, if there was the least ground for doubt he would surely put him to death and not spare him. Robbers did not enter his borders, and the people were at peace through him. Yet those he killed wrongly were many too. The duke did not enjoy long years. The using of punishment on men is much to be feared.

Duke Munan, Yi Sacheol, was large and ample in body, and ate and drank beyond other men. At each meal he took one great bowl of rice, two steamed fowls, and a bottle of wine. He suffered a boil on his back and was near death, and the physician said, "You should avoid roast meat and strong wine." The duke said, "Rather than live without eating, is it not better to eat and die?" and he drank wine and ate roast meat as usual, and in the end he came through well. All men said, "Those who enjoy wealth and honor are unlike common men in eating and drinking too." When Munan was young he went with several companions to roam at a monastery on Mount Samgak. Each of them carried a wine bottle, but they had no vessel to drink from. At that time Gwon Ji the scholar was wearing newly made shoes of horse leather, and Munan first poured into one and drank from it, and the gentlemen drank in turn. They looked at each other, laughed greatly, and said, "The leather shoe cup begins as an old custom from me. Is that not fine too?" Later, when Munan was high and honored, he said to Gwon, "The taste of wine in a golden cup today falls far short of the leather shoe cup when we roamed the hills."

Duke Jeongjeol, Jeong Gapson, was clear and straight and stern and severe by nature, and his sons and younger kinsmen did not dare press him with any private request. He was once governor of Hamgil province, and being summoned he went to the capital. On the way back he saw the list of the provincial examination, and his son Jeong O was among those on it. The duke shook his beard, rebuked the examiner in anger, and said, "Does the old slave dare fawn on me like a fox? My boy Jeong O is not accomplished in his studies, so how should he cheat the king by a stroke of luck?" and thereupon he struck the name out. In the end he had the examiner dismissed.

Jeongjeol became Chief Censor, and he washed away the muddy and raised up the clear, so that the guiding cords of the court were greatly shaken into order. Yet he was broad and generous and held to the great outlines of things. By old practice, at public gatherings the censors and the remonstrants always took their places with their curtains joined. Sometimes when they drank they rolled up the curtain and passed the cup to one another, and this was called the rolled-curtain drinking. If it fell in a time when wine was forbidden, the censorate held to the law and did not drink, while the Office of Remonstrance drank and grew merry as usual. One day a remonstrant took a cup, filled it full, and in jest showed it to the head of the censorate through a gap in the curtain, and the head of the censorate in jest brushed at it with his sleeve. The cup fell through the gap in the curtain, rolled round and round, and came to rest before the Chief Censor. The heads of the censorate were afraid and at a loss, and the clerks of the censorate also glanced at one another and did not dare snatch it away at once, so that it lay there before him all day. Within the censorate they feared trouble would come of it and were about to break up the gathering. Jeongjeol said to a clerk, "What sort of thing is that, like a goose egg? How many crystal beads would it hold?" The clerk said, "It would hold a hundred." Jeongjeol said, "Throw it back through the gap it came from," and the whole company bowed to the breadth of his temper. In the Office of Remonstrance they hand down that there was a cup shaped like a goose egg, able to hold about a doe of crystal beads, kept there to be enjoyed in the times when wine was forbidden.

Duke Mundo, Yun Hoe, and Nam Sumun both stood out in the Hall of Worthies and wrote well, but they loved wine by nature and always drank to excess. King Sejong, sparing of their talent, ordered that they drink no more than three cups. From then on, whenever there was a feast, the two of them would surely drink three great bowls, so that though it was called three cups they in fact drank twice as much as other men. King Sejong heard of it and laughed and said, "My warning against drink has turned out to be just the thing that urges them to drink."

Duke Munseong, Jeong Inji, was bold and lofty in his native gifts and open and wide in his breast. Once, warm with wine, he judged the men of old and said, "If a man like me had walked in the gate of the sage, to be pure as Yanzi or firm and solid as Zengzi I certainly could not have reached; but as for the likes of Ziyou and Zixia, I do not know how it might have gone." In the gyeongo year Ni Qian, Hanlin lecturer, came bearing his mission, and Munseong became his host officer, and in going about with him and meeting him he had the true bearing of a receiver of envoys. He also weighed and argued over what is now and what was of old with him, and they exchanged poems back and forth, so that the lecturer held him in respect and regard. They were sitting one night as usual when the lecturer asked, "Where does the moon stand?" The duke said, "It is in the Eastern Well (東井)." The lecturer marveled and bowed to him. When they parted, the lecturer said, "The night is deep. What shall we do?" The duke said, "I fear Li Jinwu (李金吾)." The lecturer said, "Do not meet Wang Yuru (王玉汝)," and they laughed together and said, "There is no line under heaven that cannot be matched." In the byeongin year, when Queen Soheon was being taken to the royal tomb, great rain came and the river rose so that the coffin could not cross, and it was laid for a time at Nakcheonjeong. Some said the head should lie to the south and some to the north, and the debate could not be settled. Munseong came later and said, "In the rites, in the coffin hall the head lies to the south, and this is the sense of not treating one's parent as dead; in the burial chamber the head lies to the north, and this is because it is a dark place. This too is a coffin hall, so the head should lie to the south." The gentlemen said, "For a minister one cannot do without a man who has read books."

The sending up of sealed memorials by attendant officials first became common with Duke Munyeol, Yi Gyejeon. While Munyeol was in the Hall of Worthies he wished many times to argue affairs by sealed memorial, and one or two colleagues whose posts stood above his always blocked him, saying, "From of old, those who love to argue affairs receive calamity in the end. Still more, we who attend the ruler are only to expound virtue and right, to water his mind and help and guide him. To go as far as remonstrance is not our office. Do not love making trouble." Munyeol said, "Each man has his own mind. Is the failure that comes of arguing affairs worse than the deep shame of holding one's tongue?" and thereupon, leading the officers under him, he sent up memorials and set matters out to the full, and not once or twice only. Yet the officials above him never signed their names, and the talk of men blamed them for it. Each time a sealed memorial came up King Sejong said, "Here comes another memorial from Yi Gyejeon," and in the end he formed the will to give him great use, and soon raised him to be sixth royal secretary.

Duke Ikpyeong, Gwon Ram, had great aims from a tender age, read widely and remembered firmly, and his talent and his name stood out among his fellows. Yet though he was bowed down again and again in the examination hall, he took it cheerfully and did not lay it to heart. I recited a poem of Meng Jiao: "Go out the gate and at once there is a wall. Who said heaven and earth are wide?" and said, "Meng Jiao, when he failed, was grieved and worn and so hard pressed that he had nowhere to put his body. Are you not so now?" Ikpyeong laughed and said, "Is it not fate whether one gains or does not gain?" I knew then that he would be a great vessel. Later Ikpyeong at thirty-five was chosen first in the examination for letters, at forty-six entered the chancellery, and became foremost among the great meritorious ministers of his age. To lose heart and grieve is the constant feeling of a scholar, and yet the duke's measure was such as this. May not Meng Jiao's failure to meet his hour have come of his narrow capacity?

Duke Munchung, Sin Sukju, once went to Japan bearing his mission, and on the way back, when he had come to our border and was not yet a few li from it, he suddenly met a great wind and could not bring the ship to the shore. All on board were flustered, but the duke's face was as calm as ever and he said, "A great man should roam far over the four quarters to wash out his breast. Now I have crossed the great waves and seen the land where the sun rises, and that is grand sight enough. If we should ride this wind and come to anchor at Jinling, we should see our fill of the abundance of mountains and rivers, of clouds and of things, and that too would be a fine thing." At that time a woman with child who was being brought home was in the ship, and the men said, "From of old a woman with child has been a great taboo aboard a sailing ship. She should be thrown into the sea to turn away the evil." The duke said, "To kill a person to seek one's own life is unlucky for virtue," and firmly stopped them. Presently the wind fell. When Munchung first passed the examination he was chosen into the Hall of Worthies. One day he was on night duty, went into the library pavilion, took out books he had never seen before, and read them. The water clock had already struck the third watch, and King Sejong sent a young eunuch to look in on him, and he was sitting upright reading. At the fourth watch he sent to look again, and it was the same. The king put a royal robe in a box and bestowed it on him in encouragement.

Duke Chungnyeol, Gu Chigwan, was upright and stern and fair by nature. He once had charge of the Ministry of Personnel, and private pleading did not get through. Before him, those who headed the selection office had as a matter of course taken the register of offices in their own hands when appointments were made and done exactly as they pleased, while the deputy officials and those below them folded their arms and looked on. The duke had long been indignant at this and wished to set the abuse right. In advancing men and putting them back he gathered the views of all widely, and even for a small office or a low post he never recommended anyone alone. Nor did he favor old friends out of private kindness, and he hated it when men made requests, so that if anyone did make such a request he did not appoint him even to a post he was due for. At that time I, Geojeong, was assistant minister, and one day in the personnel office I happened to be drowsy with wine. The duke raised his voice and said, "Does the assistant minister think that Chigwan ranks men exactly as he pleases, and will not take part and listen? On some later day, if there is a fault in the use of a man, will the assistant minister say he was at home and did not know?" He once ranked a certain famed man of letters for a post as censor, and one who objected said, "This man is a jester. It will not do." The duke said, "If that is so, what did Emperor Wu of Han take in Dongfang Shuo?" and in the end ranked him as censor. Again, a man of letters had been moved to be an instructor in an outer town and for ten years had not been moved again, and the duke wished to rank him for a county post. One who objected said, "This man is out of touch with the world." The duke said, "The way of heaven, in ten years, surely comes round again. How can a man be kept bowed down so long as this?" and in the end ranked him for the county post, and there was real effect in his governing. So wholly did what the duke used and what he set aside come out of the utmost fairness.

Duke Munjeong, Choe Hang, was modest and respectful, spare and correct, upright and firm, and without ornament. All his life, when he spoke with others he first showed himself yielding and giving way, and he did not set himself forward, nor did he raise himself like a cliff to stand apart. In writing he did not tread the field paths of the men of old, but brought out a loom of his own and gave it free rein, so that his writing was bold and grand and rich and ample, like a long river or a great stream rolling on and on, winding through a hundred bends, whose force cannot be stopped. He was skilled above all in parallel prose, and every memorial and letter of the court to the great country came from his hand. The men of China always said, "The wording of the memorials of your country is fine and to the point," and all of them were composed by the duke. In his ordinary life, even in deep winter or the height of summer, he kept his clothes and cap in order and sat upright all day and did not let himself be at ease, and he never spoke hastily or showed a sudden countenance. So was he made by nature.

King Sejo once lamented, saying, "The scholars of the East are not correct in the sounds of their speech, and their phrasing is not clear. Though there are the reading marks of the earlier scholars Gwon Geun and Jeong Mongju, the errors in them are still many, and rotten scholars and vulgar men pass on what is mistaken and inherit what is wrong." So he ordered the old ministers and the seasoned scholars to divide the Four Books and the Five Classics among them, to examine the old and prove it by the present, and to weigh and fix the reading marks. He also gathered the scholars of letters to argue out what agreed and what differed, and the king himself added his own clear judgment. Munjeong was always at his side, and whenever he was asked he divided things as fine as a hair and split them as fine as a thread, answering like an echo, and the king listened to him diligently and never tired of it. He said to those about him, "Yeongseong (寧城) is a true genius."

Duke Munheon, Bak Wonhyeong, had a clear command of the way things stand and was well versed in precedent. When the envoys of China, Chen Jian, Gao Run, Zhang Ning, and Chen Jiayou, came, he was host to them all, and in going about with them and meeting them he hit what was fitting in every case. When Zhang came bearing his mission he once said to Munheon, "Talent such as yours, had it been born in the Spring and Autumn age, would surely not have stood below Shuxiang and Zichan."

Duke Munheon, Yun Jaun, became inspector general of Hamgil province and had come to Anbyeon when he heard that Yi Siae had killed the military commander Gang Hyomun and killed Seol Jeongsin, magistrate of Gilju, as well, and had seized the district in revolt. He had sent his trusted men out among the several towns and killed nearly all the magistrates, and the wicked bands answered him wherever they were. The duke doubled his pace and came to Hamheung, and that evening the rebels rose again, killed Sin Myeon the provincial governor, and killed all the officials the duke had with him. Then they moved their troops to where the duke was, pushed open the door, and bared their blades, ringing the courtyard like a wall. The duke set his clothes and cap in order, sat upright, and spoke and smiled as calmly as ever, and the rebels took fright and withdrew. The bands they had whistled together did exactly as they pleased, and their treachery was past reckoning, yet the duke was inside the ring for seven days and bore it calmly, standing firm and unmoved in mind. The rebels came to repent, and some of them went about at his side and made a place for him, so that in the end he came back whole.

Ham Uchi, Lord of Dongwon, was once governor of Jeolla province. Two brothers of a house of rank quarreled over the size of a cauldron and brought their complaint to the office. Ham was angry and ordered the clerk to fetch the two cauldrons, the large and the small, at once, and said, "I shall break them up, make their weight even, and divide them between you." The two men gave way, and the complaint stopped there.

Hong Ildong of the Privy Council was outstanding in his capacity, and by nature he gave himself to his own plainness and did not trim his edges. He was good at rhymed prose and drank hard. Before long, when he was drunk, he would make the sound of a flute with a blade of grass, mournful and stirring and ringing out. In his ordinary life he stroked an old zither alone, which had strings but no score. He once said, "My zither has caught the savor of Tao Yuanming that a thousand ages have not handed down. Long ago when Bo Ya played the zither, only Zhong Ziqi knew it, and as for my zither, Tao Yuanming is not born, so there is none in the world who knows it." He was a remarkable man of this world between heaven and earth. He once argued against the affairs of the Buddha before the king, and King Sejo feigned anger and said, "I shall kill this rascal and make apology to the Buddha," and ordered his attendants to bring a sword. Ildong went on arguing as calmly as before, and when the attendants in pretense brushed his crown twice with the blade, he still did not turn his head and had no look of fear. King Sejo thought it splendid and said, "Can you drink?" Ildong said, "Fan Kuai was a subject of Han and King Xiang was another man's lord, and even so he did not dare refuse the great cup of wine and the shoulder of pork. Still more when it is bestowed by a sagely king." He gave him a silver basin of wine, and he tipped it back stoutly. The king said, "Do you greatly fear death?" Ildong said, "When I must die I die, and when I must live I live. Would I dare change my mind for life or death?" The king was pleased, gave him a sable coat, comforted him, and let him go.

Ildong once went to roam at Jingwansa and ate a bowl of rice cake, three bowls of noodles, three measures of rice, and nine bowls of bean curd noodles. When he came down to the foot of the hill someone entertained him, and he ate two steamed fowls, three bowls of fish soup, a tray of raw fish, and more than forty cups of wine, and the onlookers thought it splendid. The next day King Sejo heard of it, called Ildong, and asked, "Can you truly eat as much as that?" Ildong bowed and gave thanks. The king said, "A stout fellow indeed." Yet in his ordinary comings and goings he took only cake flour and strong wine and ate no rice. Later he came to Hongju, drank hard, and soon died, and men doubted whether his belly had not rotted away. He had aims and could not carry them out, and his post did not match his powers. It is a pity.

At the end of Tang, Zheng Gu was famed in the world for poetry, and the men of that time called him by his office, Zheng Duguan (鄭都官). In Song, Mei Shengyu in his later years got the post of duguan. One day they were gathered at the house of Ouyang Xiu, and Liu Yuanfu said to him in jest, "Shengyu's office will surely come to this. Of old there was Zheng Duguan, and now there is Mei Duguan." The guests at the seats were all startled and Shengyu too was not pleased, and before long he fell ill and died. I, Geojeong, studied in my youth together with Yun Seo. Yun Seo once said of himself, "If by any chance I pass the examination and become a remonstrance officer of the Saganwon, I shall certainly leave office. For a man it is enough to have the two characters for remonstrance officer written on his red funeral banner. Do not any of you think it strange." Yun Seo passed the examination of the gapja year together with me, and between the gyeongo and sinmi years he was first appointed remonstrance officer. I said in jest, "Now you must leave office." Yun Seo laughed and said, "Only wait and see." Before long he fell ill and died. So the jest of Liu Yuanfu against Mei Shengyu and the vow Yun Seo made for himself both came out as the words had it. What manner of thing is this?

Duke Munchung, Gwon Geun of Yangchon, wrote the Iphak doseol, and following the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate of Master Zhou and the teaching of the Zhongyong zhangju of Master Zhu, he made the Diagram of the Oneness of Heaven and Man, of Mind and Nature. It is broad and great and takes all in, fine and deep and subtle, widening what the earlier sages had not brought out and opening the way for later scholars without end. As for the teaching that the noble man who cultivates it has good fortune and the small man who goes against it has ill, he raised only the great outline of it to show learners, and its sense is deep. His nephew, Master Gwon Chae, following the Doseol and the teaching of Master Zhu's chapter and verse and his questions and answers on the Zhongyong and the Daxue, set out the form in which the principle of heaven flows abroad and brings forth growth, and the way by which a learner changes his material nature and becomes a sage. For the order, before and after, of advancing in virtue he drew on the teachings of Confucius, Zengzi, Zisi, and Mencius, and for the sense of how shallow or deep one's effort is he settled it by the discussions of Master Cheng, Master Zhu, and the other masters. In what he says of heaven and man, of mind and nature, there is much that carries forward the sense of Yangchon. So he made the Jakseongdo (作聖圖), the chart of becoming a sage.

Among those of late who love such things there is the Seongbuldo and there is the Jongjeongdo, and both use dice. The Jakseongdo made by Master Gwon Chae has thirteen heads: on the diagram itself, on nature and principle, on yin and yang, on the workings of creation, on material nature, on sincerity and reverence, on native endowment, on the shallowness and depth of effort, on keeping up one's effort or breaking it off, on the worthy and the wise, on the foolish and the unworthy, on the order of advancing in virtue, and a general discussion. Within these thirteen discussions there are further heads, large and small. Dice are used as well, with four characters written on the six faces, seong (誠), sincerity, gyeong (敬), reverence, sa (肆), license, and wi (僞), falsehood, but sincerity is written twice and license and falsehood once each. Each of the characters has its count, and one throws, and by the greatness or smallness of the count the order of advancing and cultivating is set. Now the nature of man is to weary of learning and to delight in play. Such things as the Seongbuldo and the Jongjeongdo are of the kind of gaming, and merely waste the days and one's strength and give the mind nothing to work on. The master did not make this chart as a plaything from the first. He wished to take hold of what learners delight in and open a window for them by it. Those who do not understand say that the use of dice comes near to gaming, and so do not look deeply into his meaning, and that is thoughtlessness indeed. For in using dice the sense does not lie in the dice; it is only to show the difference between sincerity and reverence, license and falsehood. Sincerity and reverence, license and falsehood are the very ground on which a learner works his mind. To borrow the dice and thereby open the way and point out the road to a beginner is closer and kinder still. Go to the chart and seek there, and even a foolish child can know which way to turn, and the order of advancing in virtue is orderly and not confused, so that one may come home together with the sages and the worthies. The chart had not yet gone into use when the master died, and now those who know of it are few. In his writing the master had the air of his uncle Yangchon.

Duke Munan, Yi Seokhyeong, once took the Daxue yanyi of Zhen Dexiu, pared away what was long-winded and made it spare, and added from the history of Goryeo what could serve for encouragement and for warning, making one book of it, which he named the Daehak yeonui jimnyak. He asked that it be expounded at the royal lecture, and the king praised it and took it up. The duke's thought was this: "The classics are even now being expounded before the king, while the affairs of Goryeo are within reach of what has been handed down by report, so that their mirror and their warning are the most pressing of all. Therefore I have pared some things, shortened some, and added others, and it is not without profit for the reader." Yet those who argued against it said, "The classics carry the Way and are all the words of the sages, and what Zhen Dexiu compiled was not carelessly done either, and now it has all been pared away, which is not easy to accept in point of right. Had he kept the wording of the old Yanyi and added the history of Goryeo, it would have come near the mark."

In the reign of Munjong of Goryeo, Jeong Yusan, minister of rites, set up the law of choosing scholars with the names pasted over. Every student who went to the examination wrote his name, his ancestral seat, and his four ancestors at the head of his paper, sealed it with paste, and handed it in at the examination office some days before the examination. On the afternoon of the day before the hall was opened, the chief examiner set out the heads of the questions on a sheet, went to the Purple Gate, and submitted it under seal. The king himself broke the seal and looked at it, marked a dot over each of the topics, sealed it again, pressed it shut, and sent it out. The chief examiner received it and carried it to the examination office, and at dawn the next day broke the seal and gave out the topics. The royal secretary on duty carried the golden seal to the examination office, sat with the chief examiner, and stamped it one by one on the sealed part of each candidate's paper. The king also sent two palace attendants to bestow wine and fruit, and the chief examiner likewise set out a table to comfort them. After a day between, the royal secretary on duty came to the examination office, broke the seals, and gave out the list. The second session went the same way. In the third session the topics were given out at the second watch, and the rest of the ceremony was the same. After two days between, the chief examiner pasted a slip of yellow paper with the ranking on the back of each chosen paper, sealed them in a box, and went to the Purple Gate. The king sat in the side hall, and two royal secretaries carried the box up and broke the seal before him, and the royal secretary of the literary office read out the rankings. High and low alike were settled just as the chief examiner had wished, and the list was given out. Afterward men followed this in turn, and in the main it went as here described. When we come to our dynasty, the law of the examinations grew steadily more complete. The papers with the names pasted over are as in Goryeo, but the rest is all unlike. Such matters as the sugwongwan who collects the papers, the bongmigwan who seals the names, the sadonggwan and the jidonggwan who check them, and the transcribing of papers all follow the institutions of Yuan. The two sessions began in the reign of King Sejong, and sometimes the classics were expounded and sometimes a piece was composed, differing from time to time.

In old days there was no military examination, and it was first set up in the reign of Taejong. By old practice, on the day the lists of the civil and military examinations were given out, tablets and flowers and wine were bestowed, and to the three men who stood first in each of the civil and the military a black parasol was given besides, and men held it an honor in their day. In the reign of King Sejo a parasol was given for the civil examination and a banner for the military, and on the day of parading the streets even silly children and simple women could tell which was the civil list and which the military. The military officials were not at all pleased, and before long it was stopped and the old practice restored.

By old practice those whose office had reached the third grade did not sit the civil examination, and those of the sixth grade did not sit the examinations for classics licentiate and letters licentiate. Sitting the examination while holding a post of the upper hall began with Gwon Ban, Lord of Hwasan; sitting it as a royal kinsman of the highest grade began with Bu, Lord of Yeongsun; and sitting it as a royal son-in-law of the highest grade began in the reign of King Sejo, and that was stopped before long.

Of late in the examination hall a topic for a rhapsody was set, Haedongcheong (海東靑). In the book called the Unbu gunok there is a couplet by a man of old: "A fair line is finer than the Cheonhabaek; high talent is swift as the Haedongcheong." One candidate read it wrongly and took it to mean, "What is fine in fair lines under heaven is Baekgo (白高) alone, a single man of talent, swift as the Haedongcheong." The whole hall took it up and wrote rhapsodies on Baekgo, and there was even one who made the line, "Tied to the blue of the Eastern sea, matching the swift talent of Baekgo." The examiners chose these too, and many of them passed. Those who heard of it drew in their necks.

Since the founding of this dynasty the style of writing in the examination hall had been mild and even, but from the gyeyu and gapsul years one or two men of letters were chosen high in the examinations with writing that was odd and strange and knotted and strained, and within four or five years the style changed wholly and became the Xikun manner. Now in the national academy and in the examination hall they raise the old example of Ouyang Xiu, who cast out Liu Ji, and cast out the worst of them, and the style has come back little by little to what it was. Yet it has not been wholly changed. Of late, at the head of the answers in the palace examination, one man wrote, "Parting the sand and picking out the gold, there is the exactness of a great smith; taking the whip and standing before the horse, there is the clear eye of Bole," and another wrote, "Heaven opened at ja (子), earth opened at chuk (丑), and man was born at in (寅)." Such floating ornament does not go to the point.

By old practice, at the metropolitan examinations of every kind, on each of the three session days the Ministry of Rites set out a feast, and besides that wine and fruit were bestowed from within, so that the examiners drank merrily and held it an honor. For the students too some tens of tubs of thin gruel and clear wine were set out to ease their dry throats. After the fixed regulations came out, all this was stopped. Of late in the examination office an assistant examiner made a couplet in jest: "The presiding examiner cannot drink one cup of fragrant wine, so with what shall he redden his head? The students gladly swallow a few doe of ink water, and they all blacken their lips." I had a couplet too: "The teacups grow large from today; the wine cups, I recall, were deep last year." The whole company laughed.

Jeong Inji the state councillor, of Hadong, took first place in the first examination of the gabo year and first again in the second examination of the jeongmi year, and since the founding of this dynasty he is the only one. Yi Seokhyeong of Yeonseong stood first in all three lists of the sinyu year, the letters licentiate, the classics licentiate, and the final examination, and since the Three Han such a thing has not been heard of. Nam Gyeyeong, director of the academy, stood first in two lists, the classics licentiate and the final examination, and he comes next.

Father and son who took first place one after the other were Duke Mungyeong, Gwon Je, and Duke Ikpyeong, Gwon Ram. Elder and younger brother who took first place one after the other were Yu Jabin the director and Yu Jahan the editor.

Father and son who entered the chancellery one after the other were Duke Ikseong, Hwang Hui, and Duke Seongnyeol, Hwang Susin, and Sim On the state councillor and Sim Hoe the Left State Councillor.

In this dynasty those who entered the chancellery after taking first place are Lord Jeong Inji of Hadong, Lord Gwon Ram of Gilchang, Lord Choe Hang of Yeongseong, and Hong Eung of Namyang. Those who took first place under the former dynasty and became state councillors after entering this one are Yu Ryang the state councillor and Maeng Saseong the state councillor.

In the special examination of the gabin year Choe Hang of Yeongseong took first place, Jo Seongmun of Changnyeong second, Bak Wonhyeong of Yeonseong third, and Gu Chigwan of Neungseong stood in the third class. In the reign of King Sejo the four of them entered the chancellery one after another, a thing not known in any age, old or new.

At the examination held by the king in person in the autumn of the gabo year, Ha Ryun and the other readers of the papers picked out the papers of three candidates and submitted them. Taejong said, "I shall follow the old example of burning incense and praying to choose the first man," and he drew one out just as his hand went, and it was Duke Mungyeong, Gwon Do.

The king was pleased and said, "I grieved that Gwon Geun, the father of Gwon Do, died early, and now I have got his son for the first place, and it is some comfort to me," and looking round at Ha Ryun and the others he said, "This list is my own disciples. You gentlemen may not take them for the peaches and plums of your own houses." Ha Ryun and the others in the end did not receive their formal calls. At the palace examination of the gyeongo year the readers of the papers ranked Duke Ikpyeong, Gwon Ram, fourth. When the list had already come out,

Munjong asked, "Where does Gwon Ram stand?" Those about him said, "Fourth." The king pressed them to bring up all the papers, and when he came to the fourth and read it he said, "This is truly the first," and with his own brush he made him first. Gwon Do later changed his name to Gwon Je. The first places of Gwon Je and his son were both bestowed by the king.