We have now, however, one source of information for these early wares upon which, although it is in a measure a literary source, we can place greater reliance. This is nothing less than an illustrated list, a _catalogue raisonné_, of famous specimens of porcelain, drawn up by a distinguished Chinese art connoisseur and collector as long ago as the end of the sixteenth century. In this manuscript there were more than eighty coloured reproductions of pieces, both from the author’s own collection and from those of his friends. The work came from the library of a Chinese prince of high rank, and it was purchased in Pekin by Dr. Bushell some twenty years ago. Since then this valuable document has perished in a fire at a London warehouse, where it had been deposited, but not before the illustrations had been copied by a Chinese artist and its owner had made a careful translation and analysis of its contents.[29] The writer, Hsiang-yuan-pien, better known as Tzu-ching, after giving a brief sketch of the early history of ceramics in his country, exclaims apologetically: ‘I have acquired a morbid taste for pot-sherds. I delight in buying choice specimens of Sung, Yuan, and Ming ware, and exhibiting them in equal rank with the bells, urns, and sacrificial wine-vessels of bronze dating from the three ancient dynasties, from the Chin and the Han’ (2250 B.C. to 220 A.D.)--that is to say, in placing them in the same rank as antiquities that are acknowledged to be worthy of the attention of the scholar. Porcelain at that time, we see, had hardly established its claim to so dignified a position; hence the apologetic tone. After telling us how with the advice of a few intimate friends he had selected choice specimens, which he then copied in colour and carefully described, Tzu-ching concludes with these words: ‘Say not that my hair is scant and sparse, and yet I make what is only fit for a child’s toy.’ This appeal is evidently addressed to the Lord Macaulays of his day.[30]