Chen Lu

Life

Orphaned in childhood, he devoted himself to learning rather than pursuing a livelihood and entered the Minhai Confucian educational service through recommendation. When he went to the capital, Ma Zuchang was immediately impressed and urged him to travel there; Yu Ji read his writings, praised him as broadly learned, and invited him into the academy for daily study.

Strongly recommended by the chief councillor Zhao Shiyan, he was appointed assistant instructor at the Directorate of the Imperial Academy. After completing a three-year term, he was retained at the students’ request. He later served as superintendent of Confucian learning in Jiangzhe; the office is also given as deputy superintendent of the Office for the Promotion of Confucian Learning, and he was summoned as an expectant Hanlin writer. In the first year of Zhizheng, he was transferred to assistant director at the Directorate of the Imperial Academy; he died two years later at the age of fifty-six.

Chen Yizeng was his friend, and Chen Shuo was his nephew in the collateral line.

Literary work

Yu Ji praised him as broadly learned; his prose was characterized as elegant and severe, aimed at conformity with ancient writers rather than at pleasing contemporary taste. He wrote the *Anya Hall Collection* (《安雅堂集》), in fourteen juan.

His writings covered book prefaces, epitaphs, farewell poems and prefaces, colophons on calligraphy and painting, school records, Daoist temple records, records of living shrines, portrait eulogies, Buddhist temple records, and prose praising administrative achievements. He exchanged poems with Wu Ke'gong and Chen Xianzeng, exchanged poems with Sadu-la (薩都剌), and received poems or prose from Yu Ji and Zhou Quan.