[Footnote 3: Basil Hall Chamberlain, who has done the world of learning such signal service by his works on the Japanese language, and especially by his translation, with critical introduction and commentary, of the Kojiki, is an English gentleman, born at Southsea, Hampshire, England, on the 18th day of October, 1830. His mother was a daughter of the well-known traveller and author, Captain Basil Hall, R.N., and his father an Admiral in the British Navy. He was educated for Oxford, but instead of entering, for reasons of health, he spent a number of years in western Mid southern Europe, acquiring a knowledge of various languages and literatures. His coming to Japan (in May, 1873) was rather the result of an accident--a long sea voyage and a trial of the Japanese climate having been recommended. The country and the field of study suited the invalid well. After teaching for a time in the Naval College the Japanese honored themselves and this scholar by making him, in April, 1886, Professor of Philology at the Imperial University. His works, The Classical Poetry of the Japanese, his various grammars and hand-books for the acquisition of the language, his Hand-book for Japan, his Aino Studies, Things Japanese, papers in the T.A.S.J. and his translation of the Kojiki are all of a high order of value. They are marked by candor, fairness, insight, and a mastery of difficult themes that makes his readers his constant debtors.] [Footnote 4: "If the term 'Altaic' be held to include Korean and Japanese, then Japanese assumes prime importance as being by far the oldest living representative of that great linguistic group, its literature antedating by many centuries the most ancient productions of the Manchus, Mongols, Turks, Hungarians, or Finns."--Chamberlain, Simplified Grammar, Introd., p. vi.] [Footnote 5: Corea, the Hermit Nation, pp. 13-14; Mr. Pom K. Soh's paper on Education in Korea; Report of U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1890-91.] [Footnote 6: T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI., p. 74; Bramsen's Chronological Tables, Introd., p. 34; T.J., p. 32.] [Footnote 7: The Middle Kingdom, Vol. I., p. 531.] [Footnote 8: "The frog in the well knows not the great ocean." This proverb, so freely quoted throughout Chinese Asia, and in recent years so much applied to themselves by the Japanese, is of Hindu origin and is found in the Sanskrit.]