Original Text
Guo Sheng was a native of Dongshan in Zichuan. From childhood, he was ardently fond of reading, but in that mountain village there was no one from whom he could seek instruction, and by the time he was over twenty, his writing still contained many errors in strokes. Previously, a fox had been causing trouble in Guo Sheng's home; articles of food, clothing, and daily use were frequently lost, causing him great distress. One night as he was reading, he placed his book on the desk, and it was smeared by the fox; in the worst places, the ink was a mess, making it hard to distinguish even the lines of characters. Guo Sheng then selected the relatively clean portions to read together, leaving only sixty or seventy pieces. He was exceedingly angry but utterly helpless. He then accumulated over twenty essays he had composed, waiting to seek the opinion of a renowned scholar. When he rose in the morning, he saw the essays spread open on the desk, completely smeared over with thick ink. Guo Sheng was filled with intense rage.
It happened that Scholar Wang went to the Eastern Mountains on business, and because he had always been on good terms with Scholar Guo, he came to visit him. Seeing the defaced books, Wang asked the reason. Guo poured out his troubles completely, and brought out his mutilated practice essays for Wang to examine. Wang studied them carefully and found that the deletions and retained passages seemed to imply a subtle judgment of praise and blame; he looked again at the marked books, and for the most part the prose was verbose and could be excised. Startled, he said, "The fox seems to have acted with purpose. Not only need you not worry, but you should take it as your teacher." After several months, Guo reviewed his old compositions and suddenly felt that the alterations were entirely correct. So he rewrote two of his old pieces and placed them on his desk to observe any changes. By dawn, the essays were defaced again. Over the course of more than a year, the essays were no longer altered, but were merely splattered with many thick ink blots, drenching the paper. Guo found this strange and took the essays to tell Wang. Wang looked them over and said, "This fox is truly your teacher. The revised essays are excellent and will surely earn you a degree." That year, Guo indeed passed the district examination and became a xiucai. Grateful to the fox, Guo often set out guest dishes for it to eat and drink. Whenever he bought the model essays of successful candidates, he made no choices himself but relied solely on the fox's judgment. Thus, in the two subsequent examinations, Guo ranked among the top, and in the provincial examination he was additionally selected as a secondary tribute scholar.
At that time, the essays of Masters Ye and Miao were elegant and ornate, recited in every household. Scholar Guo possessed a handwritten copy of their works, which he treasured dearly, when suddenly a bowl of thick ink was poured over it, staining nearly every character beyond recognition. He then composed some essays on set topics, feeling quite pleased with his own skill, but they were all arbitrarily blotted out. Thus, he gradually ceased to believe in the fox. Not long after, Master Ye was arrested for rectifying the literary style, and Guo began to admire the fox's foresight somewhat. However, every essay Guo wrote, though painstakingly crafted, was invariably defaced. Priding himself on having ranked high in examinations repeatedly, he grew increasingly arrogant and suspected the fox was merely causing mischief. He then copied out the heavily ink-stained essays from before to test the fox, and the fox blotted them out again. Laughing, he said, "This is sheer nonsense! Why approve what was once denied?" He stopped preparing food for the fox and locked his reading materials in a chest. The next morning, the chest remained securely locked, but upon opening it, he found four lines drawn on the cover, each thicker than a finger; the first chapter had five lines, the second also five lines, and the rest were left untouched. From then on, the fox was silent and vanished. In subsequent annual examinations, he ranked fourth once and fifth twice, and only then did he realize that the portents of his results had been conveyed through those strokes.
The Chronicler of the Strange remarks: Complacency invites loss, while humility brings benefit—this is the supreme principle under heaven. One who gains a small reputation and then presumes himself infallible, clinging to the stale remnants of the practices of Masters Ye and Miao, stubbornly adhering to old conventions without adapting, will inevitably meet with utter ruin before ceasing. Such is the harm of self-satisfaction!
Commentary
According to the "Account of the Conduct of the Late Qing Dynasty's Honored Father, the Sui-Year Presented Scholar and Candidate for Confucian Instructor, Liuquan Gong" written by Pu Ru, although Pu Songling long taught at the Bi family estate, his literary fame was so illustrious that "in guiding and nurturing the younger generation, he did not limit himself only to those who studied within his gates; with ears ever attentive and words ever ready, he led them step by step with gentle persuasion, never showing weariness or a lazy countenance. Even for impoverished scholars who came to seek his judgment on their literary works, he would skillfully point out the path of confusion, enabling them to know how to advance, and never recklessly applied red and yellow ink, lest they fall into the fox's den." Pu Songling possessed broad and rich experience in guiding writing, and thus the fable in this tale of a fox guiding the art of composition was likely inspired by his own heartfelt reflections.
It is worth noting that what this chapter refers to as writing actually means the eight-legged essay. Although the eight-legged essay was formalized in structure and conservative in content, adhering to established rules, its process of guided training and progressive practice was no different from our modern composition writing. Scholar Guo moved from confusion and disbelief regarding the fox's guidance to understanding and belief, then back to confusion and disbelief, which was closely related to his tendency to become complacent and self-satisfied upon making slight progress or gaining a little achievement. Thus, Pu Songling remarked: "Complacency invites loss, while humility brings benefit—this is the way of heaven."