China and the West

Cambridge, Richard Owen. The works of Richard Owen Cambridge [ID D27062].
Miscellaneous verses (geschrieben 1751-1801).
(1)
The Monarch, worthy Britain's crown,
Sought not in private fields renown :
And none by her example,
Did castles for their porter rear,
A Chinese pagoda for their deer,
Or for their horse a temple.

(2)
Don't you admire the Chinese bridges,
That wave in furrows and in ridges?
They've finish'd such an one at Hampton:
Faith 'twas a plan I never dreamt on—
The prettiest thing that e'er was seen—
Tis printed in the Magazine.

(3)
Can't I cajole the female tribe
And gain her woman with a bribe?
Refused to-day, suck up my sorrow,
And take my chance again to-morrow?
Is there no shell-work to be seen,
Or Chinese chair or Indian screen?

Book the fifth
Nigh to the borders of the silver flood,
Sacred to Plutus, stands a lofty wood,
Beneath its shadowing branches, grows a flow'r
Whose root the god endues with wondrous pow'r;
Not the famed Moly which great Hermes bore
To sage Ulysses on th' Aeaean shore;
Nor that restorative the Tartar boasts, (137)
Nor all the growth of Arab's blissful coasts,
Nor balsams which from northern trees transpire,
Tho' six successive months th' aetherial fire
With constant rays the balmy juice sublime,
Can match this offspring of the German clime.
Fussnote Line 137 : The Gin-seng ; one of the principal curiosities of China, called also, by the Chinese, the pure spirit of the earth, the plant that gives immorality. By the Tartars, Orhota, the first of plants. The virtues ascribed to this plant are hardly credible. Many volumes have been written by their Physicians, to set them forth. One of the Missionaries witnesses, that being himself so fatigued, that he could hardly sit on the horse, a Mandarin gave him one of these ; upon eating half of it, in an hour's time he was not, in the least, sensible of any weariness. That since, he had often made use of it with the same success. See Du Halde's History of China.

Fussnote
Bishop Wilkins was much pleased with the contrivance of a sailing carriage. What can be more delightful, says he, or better husbandry, than to make use of the wind (which costs nothing, and eats nothing) instead of horses ? That such chariots are commonly used in the champaigns plains of China, is frequently affirmed by divers credible authors.