Dr. Legge, who has just died at the patriarchal age of eighty-two, was the most charming of old men. After his long life of varied experiences he was the simplest of human beings. He was delightful to look at. The frostiest of silver hair, the pinkest of cheeks, the bluest of blue eyes - these went with the most benign expression. So honest, so healthy, so much of the open air life was in his aspect that he might have been anything rather than an Oxford don. One could have imagined his long life spent on Scottish hills in cold, pure air, tramping the heather all day long. How unlike his later years at Oxford, in his study walled in by mysterious books, and absorbed in his strange learning to which scarcely any other man held his key. Long ago, I have heard, he might have been a professor at a Scottish University - Aberdeen or another - if he had conformed to the Church of Scotland. What his special kind of Nonconformity was I do not know, but the conventicle he attended loyally during his Oxford days was a humble one. At Oxford, where High Church or Agnosticism is your only spiritual wear, Nonconformity smells rankly; but that was all the more reason for Dr. Legge's adherence to it. Sunday after Sunday he was to be found "sitting under" Mr. So-and-So, Reverend by courtesy, and listening, with the simplicity of his great learning, to, no doubt, somewhat turgid pulpit oratory in the midst of a congregation of small tradespeople.

Papistry might have been supposed to be a rank offence with him, but once he formed a most unexpected alliance with a Papist who had somehow or other found a way into his circle. She had expected the discovery of her religion to be a bombshell to him, and certainly the end of their friendly alliance - but au contraire. He hailed her as equally with himself the banned of Church people, and the Mother of all the Churches as another kind of Nonconformity. But the truth was that the dear old man was incapable of rancours.

He had a little resentment now and again over the sparse attendance at his lectures. If the Slade Professor could draw crowded class-rooms, why not he, with the learning of Confucius and Mencius? But his pupils were very few. Young men intending to be missionaries went to him, or a candidate for the Consular service; his class seldom contained more than four or five disciples.

Year after year he worked in his study at 3, Keble-terrace, Oxford, over his translations of the Chinese classics. The walls were lined with Chinese books, the "She-king, the "Shu-king," the "Texts of Confucianism," and so on. Such scholarship was for the very few. But Dr. Legge took comfort to himself by recalling the immense Chinese Universities where young men came for the wisdom of the Chinese sages in numbers and with zeal to put mere English Universities among the pigmies.

He was in his study every morning at three o'clock winter and summer. He retired to bed always at ten. When he got up in the morning the first thing he did was to make himself a cup of tea over a spirit-lamp. Then he worked away at his translations while all the household slept. Unlike the early riser, he was not arrogant. He was benevolently interested indeed when a slothful visitor at his house breakfasted in bed. Such laziness was so far beyond his experience as to make him curious.

His simplicity sometimes led to awkwardness. He always said what he thought, and it was fortunate that his thoughts were so kind and sweet. Sometimes he extricated himself from a faux-pas by an artfulness as simple as his offence. He was given to take down to dinner a lady sensitive about her age. "I was told," said he, with the loudness of a deaf person - "to take down the oldest lady present." Then as the storm gathered on the lady's brow he suddenly realised his offence, and said with the utmost sweetness, "- and here I am beginning with one of the youngest."

In politics Dr. Legge was a Liberal, and in those Home Rule days a Home Ruler. Mencius, he said, had taught him that every country had the right to govern itself. Could the most conservative of Tories resent a political belief dating from so many centuries ago?

His house was full of Chinese curios, which he would display to you with the pleasure of a child. Many of these were gifts to him from his old flock in Hongkong, where he was much beloved, as he could hardly fail to be.

I once heard some one ask him at a dinner party if he had not been left an enormous fortune for the work of his Chinese mission by some one or another.

"Ah, yes," said Dr. Legge - and then he mentioned a sum the magnitude of which made us stare. When he had given us time to digest the fact, he went on with his usual beaming placidity: "She was a dear, good old lady, but I had a great deal of trouble over her affairs. And when all was unravelled, it was found she had really nothing to leave. It was quite a delusion. On the contrary, I found myself liable for some hundred pounds' worth of debts."

He had had many troubles, but they never broke his serenity or dimmed his brightness. When I saw him a couple of years ago he was just the same, with his beautiful frosty colouring, and his benignant eyes under the enormous eyebrows. One could hardly imagine a personality more winning. In Oxford, where the life makes for self-consciousness or dryness, or both, this simple, fresh old man seemed "lovely as a Lapland night." - Pall Mall Gazette.

These facts show that he deserved the honours that he won and which seemed to come to him without his seeking them through the confidence he commanded. He was a steady, unwearied student with an all-round look on the Chinese worlds old and new, as they appeared to him. One who knew him well remembers his saying once in his hearing what every popular preacher has is power. James Legge had it himself; that is unquestionable. But if he had the eye of Thomas Chalmers which was like the crater of a volcano at rest, he had not when the volcano was in eruption the force, beauty, and sublimity of the famous pulpit orator of Scotland. Browning says, "Never shall I believe any two souls were made similar." It would be wrong to consider Julien and Legge one in all points. Julien pursued Pauthier as a hunter follows the deer into every cave and retired nook, determined to leave him no shelter. Pauthier had been guilty of mistranslation in not a few instances. Julien printed at least a hundred pages to show to the public where Pauthier in his understanding of Chinese was wrong. Legge never answered criticisms except in the briefest manner. He was not censorious. He was kind and indulgent by natural disposition. He had much Scotch humour and it was good-natured.

The Clarendon Press at Oxford printed a new edition of part of the Classics. Gradually they would have printed the whole. The four Books make two volumes, the Shuking, the Sheking, and theYiking comprise three volumes. The Chunchiu and the Liki make seven in all. Really they are bound in eleven substantial octavo volumes. Besides these there are two volumes of Taoist works in The Sacred Books of the East. They consist of Laotze and Chuantze with the Kanyingpien. They constitute a very useful introduction to the Taoist religion and philosophy. Legge is thorough in his scholarship but never deep in his thought. In the Introduction to Taoist texts he has a chapter to show that Taoism commenced before Laotze, a second discusses the authenticity, genuineness, and arrangement of the books of the two principal authors, a third chapter discourses on the meaning of the name Tao and the main points of Taoist belief, a fourth chapter gives an account of the two notices of the philosophers by the greatest Chinese historian, Szema-chien. A fifth chapter is an introduction to the Book of Retribution the Kanyingpien. These chapters are full of facts useful to know and they well illustrate the capacity for hard work which their author possessed as well as the constancy of his desire to be thorough on all sides.

What was it to him that the Chinese language needs to be studied philologically? The written characters, the early philosophy, the cast and fashion of the literature, the features of the early civilisation, may all be borrowed from the West. All such subjects of enquiry he brushed aside and did this one thing. Here was the splendid old literature of the most ancient and most numerous nation on the face of the earth. He said, I will translate faithfully the works of the best and oldest Chinese authors for the benefit of missionaries and students of all professions. He did it, and he did it well.

The Notions of the Chinese concerning God and Spirits is the name of one of his early works. He wrote to missionaries in India to know what terms were there in use for the Supreme Ruler of the world and for spiritual beings. He printed their answers in this book. He showed convincingly that God is a relative term, and should be rendered in Chinese by some terms which should express attributes of the divine being. He translated the travels of Fahien, the Chinese who in the fifth century went to Benares, Ceylon, and Java, and on his return to his native country landed at Kiaochou now occupied by a German naval force. Such are the major results of Professor Legge's ceaseless industry. Now he sleeps beneath the sod of an Oxford cemetery waiting for the resurrection morn. Well done, Christian warrior! There is no need to ask the world to remember you. Your books remain a valuable legacy to students of the past and coming time. They are an honourable monument more lasting than the carved inscriptions of the lapidary, and more useful than laudatory biographical memoirs could ever be.

From the North-China Herald of January 28, 1898