Lin Zexu's eulogy

In the early years of Xianfeng, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom rose rapidly, which shocked the Qing court. Emperor Xianfeng took a fancy to Lin Zexu, an important minister of the first generation, who was recovering from illness at home, granted him an imperial envoy to act as the governor of Guangxi and ordered him to suppress the Taiping Army. Who knows that God never shuts one door but he opens another? Lin Zexu was ordered to set out from Fujian to Guangxi, just arrived at the border of Chaozhou, Guangdong, and died suddenly. When the bad news came, Xianfeng was in shock and heartbroken, and suddenly destroyed the pillar he used to appease Hongyang. Sad, the young emperor waved imperial pen, wrote a pair of elegiac couplet:

Answer your kindness, sincerity and diligence. After decades of hard work, he returned from the group and hesitated whether to be a militarist.

I am rugged and dangerous, and I will never leave the ground for six thousand miles. He rode away on a dustpan and wept at the hero.

Let me explain "disassembly" and "riding a basket" first. Dissolving the group and unlocking the seal means resigning from the official position (the group is the official seal). Specifically, Lin Zexu was dismissed because the main battle was banned from smoking. Riding a basket is an allusion. The dustpan, the star name, is one of the 28 lodgings. There is a "Fu Shuo Star" between Jisu and Su Wei. According to the old legend, Fu Shuo, the sage of Wuding in Yin Dynasty, ascended to heaven after his death, so "riding a dustpan" and "riding a dustpan tail" are often used to refer to the death of a state official in later poems. On this basis, we can understand this elegy. For decades, Lin Zexu spared no effort to repay the emperor's honesty, prudence, loyalty and diligence. Even if he lost his official position and went home, he still cared about military affairs; (On another occasion, he was ordered to suppress the West), and he tried his best to go on a rugged journey full of hardships and dangers. Unfortunately, he gave up his life before he got the opening, and died in the west, which made people cry for this hero.

Although this imperial elegy is not exquisite, it is hard to say whether it was written by the emperor himself. But after all, it spoke highly of Lin Zexu's life as a minister, with decent words, deep style and sincere feelings. His writing of Lin Zexu's personality is much better than some thousands of people's eulogizing, and it can finally be regarded as a good couplet. In particular, Shanglian's "quitting the group and hesitating to be a militarist" gives people insight into Gong Lin's lofty sentiments, which is not about personal advancement and retreat, but about the rise and fall of the country; In the second half of the couplets, the words "You didn't get off to a good start" and "You shed tears on heroes" are also poems sung by Du Fu about Zhuge Liang's "You die before you conquer, and the heroes shed tears on their long clothes", which deepens the regret for the sudden death of famous officials and reveals uncontrollable sadness.

According to historical data, this couplet spread and caused strong repercussions among the subjects for a while. In terms of the reputation of the detainee and the identity of the author, it is no exaggeration.