China and the West

Hunt, Leigh. Works.
Hunt, Leigh. A day by the fire. In : The Reflector (1812).
With tea or coffee.
… The eulogies pronounced on his favourite beverage by Dr. Johnson are too well known to be repeated here, and the commendatory description of the Emperor Kien Long, to an European taste at least, is somewhat too dul, unless his Majesty's teapot has been shamefully translated… Besides, I never see it but I reminds me of the Turks, and their Arabian tales, an association infinitely preferable to any Chinese ideas ; and, like the king who put his head into the tub, I am transported to distant lands the moment I dip into the coffee-cup…
"For lo ! the board with cups and spoons are crowned,
The berries crackle, and the mill turns round ;
On shining altars of Japan they raise
The silver lamp ; the fiery spirits blaze ;
From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide ;
And China's earth receives the smoking tide…

Hunt, Leigh. The old lady. In : The round table (1817).
… In the sitting-room is rather a spare assortment of shining old mahogany furniture, or carved armchairs equally old, with chintz drperies down to the ground ; a folding or other screen, with Chinese figures, their round, little-eyed, meek fraces perking sideways…

Hunt, Leigh. Far countries. In : The Indicator ; Dec. 8 (1819).
… At the time when the French had this fit upon them of praising the English (which was nevertheless the honester one of the two), they took to praising the Chinese for numberless unknown qualities. This seems a contradiction to the near-sightedness we speak of : but the reason they praised them was, that the Chinese had the merit of unbounded religious toleration ; a great and extraordinary one, certainly, and not the less so for having been, to all appearance, the work of one man. All the romance of China, such as it was – anything in which they differed from the French – their dress, their porcelain towers, their Great Wall – was nothing. It was the particular agreement with the philosophers. It happened, curiously enough, that they could not have selected for their panegyric a nation apparently more contemptuous of others ; or at least more self-satisfied and unimaginative. The Chinese are cunning and ingenious, and have a great talent at bowing out ambassadors who come to visit them. But it is somewhat inconsistent with what appears to be their general character that they should pay strangers even this equivocal compliment ; for, under a prodigious mask of politeness, they are not slow to evince their contempt of other nations whenever any comparison is insinuated with the subjects of the Brother of the Sun and Moon. The knowledge they respect in us most is that of gun-making, and of the East Indian passage. When our countrymen showed them a map of the earth, they inquired for China ; and, on finding that it only made a little piece in a corner, could not contain their derision. They thought that it was the main territory in the middle – the apple of the world's eye.

Hunt, Leigh. Hats, new and ancient. In : The Indicator ; March 8 (1820).
… The Chinese, who carry their records farther back than any other people, are a hatted race, both narrow-brimmel and broad…

Hunt, Leigh. Seamen on shore. In : The Indicator ; March 15 (1820).
… He will tell you how the Chinese drink and the NEGURS dance, and the monkeys pelt you with cocoa-nuts ; and how King Domy would have built him a mud hut and made him a peer of the realm, if he would have stopped with him and taught him to make trousers…

Hunt, Leigh. An earth upon heaven. In : The Companion ; April 2 (1828).
… We cannot well fancy a celestial ancient Briton delighting himself with painting his skin, or a Chinese angel hobbling a mile up the Milky Way in order to show herself to advantage. For breakfast we must have a tea beyond anything Chinese…

Hunt, Leigh. The world of books. In : Hunt, Leigh. Men, women, and books. (London : Smith, Elder and Co., 1847).
…China, is a very unknown place to us, - in one sense oft he word unknown ; but who is not intimate with it as the land of tea, and china, and ko-tous, and pagodas, and mandarins, and Confucius, and conical caps, and people with little names, little eyes, and little feet, who sit in little bowers, drinking litte cups of tea, and writing little odes ? The Jesuits, and the teacups, and the novel of Iu-Kiao-Li, have made us well acquainted with it ; better, a great deal, than millions of its inhabitants are acquainted – fellows who think it in the middle of the world, and know nothing of themselves. With one China they are totally unacquainted, to wit, the great China of the poet and old travellers, Cathy, "seat of Cathian Can ", the country of which Ariosto's "Angelica" was princess-royal ; yes, she was a Chinese, "the fairest of her sex, Angelica"…

Hunt, Leigh. The town : its memorable characters and events : St. Paul's to St. James's. (London : Smith, Elder, and Co., 1848).
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42060/42060-h/42060-h.htm.
… In this court are the premises of the eminent tea-dealers, Messrs. Twining, the front of which, surmounted with its stone figures of Chinese, has an elegant appearance in the Strand…
Kneller, besides being an admired painter (and it is supposed from one of his performances, the portrait of a Chinese, that he could have been admired by posterity, if he chose), was a man of wit; but so vain, that he is described as being the butt of all the wits of his acquaintances…