The enormous respect which the Chinese have given to the works produced during their classical period is believed by authorities like Williams and Wade to have exercised an influence on the whole detrimental to the development and to the originality of their later literature. The first active literary period preceded Confucius, 500 B.C. From this period have been preserved the classics already referred to. The next important epoch is that of the “interpreters,” the counsellors and the lawgivers, extending from Confucius to Mencius, 350 B.C. They were followed by a long line of annalists and commentators, whose work came to an abrupt close with the reign of the Emperor Che Hwang-ti, 221-226 B.C. Hwang-ti was evidently a man with opinions of his own. He objected to what seemed to him an exaggerated and mischievous reverence for the “good old times,” and he proposed to discourage the _laudator temporis acti_. He issued an edict directing all books to be burned excepting those treating of medicine, divination, and husbandry. This _index expurgatorius_ (possibly the earliest in history) included all the writings of Confucius and Mencius, comprising both their original work and their compilations and editions of the earlier classics. It was further ordered that any one who dared to mention the _Book of History_ or the _Book of Odes_ should be put to death. Any one possessing, thirty days after the issue of the edict, a copy of the books ordered destroyed, was to be branded and put to labor for four years upon the great wall. This is probably the most drastic and comprehensive policy for the suppression of a literature that the world has ever seen. Fortunately, like similar attempts in later centuries, it was only partially successful. While the destruction of books was enormous, and while, of long lists of works, it is probable that all existing copies actually did disappear, the texts of the most important, including the specially obnoxious _Book of History_ and _Book of Songs_, were preserved. According to one tradition, a large number of the songs were saved only by having been retained in the memory of public reciters and their hearers. After the death of the Emperor Che, the text of these was taken down and again committed to writing. This instance is, one recalls, fully in line with the methods by which in Greece, before the general use of writing, the earlier classics were preserved in the memories of the rhapsodists and their hearers. It is the opinion of Dr. Williams that the command of the Emperor Che for the destruction of all books was so thoroughly executed that “of many classical works not a single copy escaped destruction. The books were, however, recovered in great part by rewriting them from the memories of old scholars.... If the same literary tragedy should be enacted to-day, thousands of persons might easily be found in China who could rewrite from memory the text and the commentary of their nine classical works.”