The term "literature" here means serious literature, the classics,
histories, poetry, and the works of philosophers, of recognised
authorities, and of brilliant writers generally.

It was not possible, for obvious reasons, to arrange this collection of
phrases according to the 214 indicators, as in a dictionary of words. It
is arranged according to the Tones and Rhymes.

Let me try to express all this in terms of English literature. Reading
a famous poem, I come across the lines

"And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale."

Now suppose that I do not know the meaning of "tells his tale." [I
recollect perfectly that as a boy I thought it meant "whispered the old
story into the ear of a shepherdess."] I determine to hunt it up in the
Concordance. First of all, I find out from the Dictionary, if I do not
know, to what Tone _tale_, always the last word of the phrase, belongs.
Under that tone will be found various groups of words, each with a
key-word which is called the Rhyme, that is to say, a key-word with
which all the words in this group rhyme. There are only 106 of these
key-words all together distributed over the Tones, and every word in the
Chinese language must rhyme with one of them.

The question of rhyme in Chinese is a curious one, and before going any
farther it may be as well to try to clear it up a little. All Chinese
poetry is in rhyme; there is no such thing as blank verse. The _Odes_,
collected and edited by Confucius, provide the standard of rhyme. Any