《清史列傳‧文苑傳》識誤

An Evidential Examination of Wenyuan Zhuan in Biographies of the Qing Dynasty

《清史列傳‧文苑傳》四卷，蓋就有清國史館先後纂定之《文苑傳》稿集錄而成。其稿雜出眾手，各傳精粗不一，間有違誤。然其列傳頗多出於《清史稿‧文苑傳》之外者，其記事亦遠較《清史稿》為詳，故學者考論清代藝文故實，仍多取資是書。今摘〈文苑傳〉杭世駿、王鳴韶、汪憲、吳騫、張雲璈、趙翼、法式善、黎簡、胡亦常、彭兆蓀等十家傳記，辨其違誤，亦古人「訂其偶失，成其百是」之義也。

Composed of 4 volumes, Wenyuan Zhuan in Biographies of the Qing Dynasty (《清史列傳‧文苑傳》) is redacted from Wenyuan Zhuan (《文苑傳》), a collection of compilations of the Imperial Historiography of the Qing Dynasty. Being carried out by various authors, the Biographical entries in Wenyuan Zhuan vary, accordingly, in quality from one another. Some of them contain evidential mistakes. Despite of this, Wenyuan Zhuan is more considerably informative than the counter-descriptions in the Draft History of the Qing Dynasty (《清史稿》), and more modern scholars tend to align on it upon addressing on the literary history of Qing. The task of the present article is to critically verify evidential descriptions in the biographies of Hang Shijun, Wang Mingshao, Wang Xian, Wu Qian, Zhang Yunao, Zhao Yi, Fa Shishan, Li Jian, Hu Yichang and Peng Zhaosun. It is a task resembles the spirit that the ancients like to reveal in the saying: ＂to amend careless mistake of one, but to appreciate the accuracy of hundreds.＂