This translation was suggested not by any pretensions to range myself among the ranks of the body of sinologues but by the perplexities and difficulties experienced by me as a student in Peking when at the completion of the Tzu Erh Chi I had to plunge in the maze of the Hung Lou Meng
Shortcomings are I feel sure to be discovered both in the prose as well as among the doggerel and uncouth rhymes in which the text has been more adhered to than rhy...