China and the West

Goldsmith, Oliver. On the instability of worldly grandeur [ID D26914].
Er schreibt : A Chinese, who had long studied the works of Confucius, who knew the characters of fourteen thousand words, and could read a great part of every book that came in his way, once took it into his head to travel into Europe, and observe the customs of a people whom he thought not very much inferior even to his own countryman, in the arts of refining upon every pleasure. Upon his arrival at Amsterdam, his passion for letters naturally led him to a bookseller's shop : and, as he could speak a little Dutch, he civilly asked the bookseller for the works of the immortal Ilixofou. The bookseller assured him he had never heard the book mentioned before. "What ! have you never heard of that immortal poet ?" returned the other, much surprised ; "that light of the eyes, that favourite of kings, that rose of perfection ! I suppose you know nothing of the immortal Fipsihihi, second cousin to the moon ?" "Nothing at all, indeed, sir," returned the other. – "Alas !" cries our traveller, "to what purpose, then, has one of these fasted to death, and the other offered himself up as a sacrifice to the Tartarean enemy, to gain a renown which has never travelled beyon the precincts of China !"