pid succession on the throne; not one of
them was of any personal significance. They had no influence on the
government of China. Their life was spent in intriguing against one
another. There were seven Mongol emperors after Kublai.

6 _Cultural_

During the Mongol epoch a large number of the Chinese scholars withdrew
from official life. They lived in retirement among their friends, and
devoted themselves mainly to the pursuit of the art of poetry, which had
been elaborated in the Later Sung epoch, without themselves arriving at
any important innovations in form. Their poems were built up
meticulously on the rules laid down by the various schools; they were
routine productions rather than the outcome of any true poetic
inspiration. In the realm of prose the best achievements were the
"miscellaneous notes" already mentioned, collections of learned essays.
The foreigners who wrote in Chinese during this epoch are credited with
no better achievements by the Chinese historians of literature. Chief of
them were a statesman named Yeh-lue Ch'u-ts'ai, a Kitan in the service of
the Mongols; and a Mongol named T'o-t'o (Tokto). The former accompanied
Genghiz Khan in his great campaign against Turkestan, and left a very
interesting account of his journeys, together with many poems about
Samarkand and Turkestan. His other works were mainly letters and poems
addressed to friends. They differ in no way in style from the Chinese
literary works of the time, and are neither better nor worse than those
works. He shows strong traces of Taoist influence, as do other
contemporary writers. We know that Genghiz Khan was more or less
inclined to Taoism, and admitted a Taoist monk to his camp (1221-1224).
This man's account of his travels has also been preserved, and with the
numerous European accounts of Central Asia written at this time it forms
an important source. The Mongol Tokto was the head of an historical
commission that issued the annals of the Sung dynasty, the Kitan, and
the Juchen dynasty. The annals of the Sung dynasty became the largest of
all the historical works, but they were fiercely attacked from the first
by Chinese critics on account of their style and their hasty
composition, and, together with the annals of the Mongol dynasty, they
are regarded as the worst of the annals preserved. Tokto himself is less
to blame for this than the circumstance that he was compelled to work in
great haste, and had not time to put into orde