No. 155.
Mr. Avery
to Mr. Fish.
Peking, April 29, 1875. (Received June 17.)
Sir: On the 16th instant S. Wells Williams, secretary and interpreter to this legation, availing himself of leave obtained from the State Department, departed for the United States, via India and Europe, accompanied by his family, having previously made arrangements, with my approval, with Mr. Chester Holcombe to perform the duties of his post during his absence. Mr. Holcombe served the legation in the same capacity during Mr. Lowe’s term, when Dr. Williams was at Shanghai, completing his Chinese dictionary, and both as secretary and interpreter gave entire satisfaction.
Dr. Williams has been a resident of China forty-two years, and has been in the diplomatic service of the United States continuously since the legation was established at Peking. His labors in the crowning literary effort of his life, above mentioned, have nearly exhausted the strength of his old age, and necessitate a prolonged rest. A brief reference to the nature of his dictionary may prove interesting, and, as the work of an officer of the United States in China, will not be inappropriate in the records of the Department. It is described by the title as “A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language, Arranged according to the Wu Fang Yuen Yin, with the Pronunciation of the Characters as heard at Peking, Canton, Amoy, and Shanghai.” It forms a quarto volume of 1,334 pages, and was wholly printed by the American Presbyterian Mission press, at Shanghai, whence it issued in 1874. The compilation of this work occupied the author during ten years; but his whole life in China had been a preparation for it. A preliminary work, his “Tonic dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect,” published in 1856, and consisting of 832 pages, octavo, is said to have inaugurated a new era of study in Chinese, giving to the colloquial usage of the language, for the first time, the attention it sorely needed, and taking an advanced step in the way of literary definition. His new dictionary, according to the criticism of a competent judge, (Mr. W. F. Mayers, the learned Chinese secretary of the British legation,) “amplifies his own previous work, and that of his predecessors, to a very great extent, increases and rectifies very largely the definitions heretofore supplied for the individual Chinese characters, and adds plentifully to the list of illustrative and idiomatic phrases, under each character, which in earlier dictionaries have been most unsatisfactorily represented.” The sounds of the language have been classified under 532 syllables, embracing 12,527 characters, and the variously-sounded characters are arranged in a minute index, according to the system of radicals which is accepted as the basis of Chinese study. For the first time, says Mr. Mayers, identifications are carried out, and this on a [Page 318] considerate scale, of the terms used in the different departments of natural science.
The importance of such, a work cannot readily be estimated, as the study of Chinese for diplomatic, educational, and commercial purposes is constantly extending, and as more and more attention is being given to the critical examination of Chinese literature, it must long supply a leading want, and be an indispensable help in the compilation of more exhaustive dictionaries hereafter. It will hardly be out of place here to mention the great service done to the cause of progress in China by another citizen of the United States, (by adoption,) the Rev. S. I. J. Schereschewsky, who was also at one time in the service of the legation as Chinese secretary, during Mr. Burlingame’s term, and before Dr. Williams had assumed the duties of his position. Mr. Schereschewsky had lately completed a translation of the Old Testament, directly from the Hebrew text into the Mandarin dialect, which is the common or general language of China. The book, in this dialect, can be read by about two-thirds of the population of the whole empire, for it is especially the (Chinese) language of Mongolia and the outlying districts of the empire. It may be said that the Mandarin is spoken by more people than any other language on the globe. Every literary man having a knowledge of some three thousand characters can read it. As the New Testament had previously been translated into Mandarin by Messrs. Blodget, Burdon, and others of the American and English missionary establishments here, the entire Bible is now accessible to the Chinese in the most widely-known dialect of their speech. Mr. Schereschewsky is a member of the American Episcopal Mission, and had been stationed at Peking previous to his recent departure for a visit to the United States, nearly fifteen years. His translation, however, was made under the auspices and at the expense of the American Bible Society. It occupied him over seven years. The work has recently been printed at the American Board Mission Press establishment, in Peking, by Chinese compositors and pressmen, and bound by Chinese binders, under the supervision of Mr. P. R. Hunt. The fact of such a work being done, in all its branches, in the capital of the Chinese empire, so lately closed to foreigners, is full of interest and encouragement.
I have, &c.,