Wei Su

Life

His father was 危永吉 (1272–1328), and his father-in-law was 趙嗣椿 (1277–1344); he had a younger brother, 危瓛, and two sons, 危㫃 and 危游, as well as a nephew listed as 危. Fangshan is also given as a registered place, and he was later banished to Hezhou.

He studied under 吳澄 and 范槨 and mastered the Five Classics. Under the Yuan, he entered official life through recommendation. In the second year of the Zhizheng era (1342), he was appointed a 經筵檢討 and took part in compiling the histories of Song, Liao, and Jin.

His other Yuan appointments included 國子學助教, 翰林國史院應奉翰林文字, 治書侍御史, 中書省參政, and 大司農司大司農少卿; he eventually rose to 翰林國史院學士承旨. Together with Song Lian, he worked on the Yuan History.

After the Ming was founded, at the beginning of the Hongwu era he was summoned to the capital and appointed a 翰林侍講學士. He was dismissed for missing a court audience, soon restored to his former office, and concurrently made a 弘文館學士 to serve as an adviser. He was later banished to Hezhou because a subject of a fallen dynasty was deemed unfit to remain among the court attendants; he guarded the temple of Yu Que and died embittered.

His circle of friends included Zheng Shen, with whom he had an unbroken literary friendship, as well as the monk Miaosheng and Cen Anqing.

Scholarship and historiography

Wei Su was regarded as a scholar of the Confucian classics, a historian, a calligrapher, and an accomplished writer, and was known for broad learning. At the beginning of the Zhizheng era, he petitioned the government to compile the histories of Song, Liao, and Jin, traveled by relay to the two Song capitals to search out omissions, and was said to have contributed most to the completed histories.

Works and reception

Titles associated with his writings include 危學士集, 學士集, 危太樸集, 危太樸文續集, 說學齋稿, 雲林集, and 元海運志. Accounts differ over the number of volumes: 危太樸集 is given as twenty-five volumes and 學士集 as fifty; another account describes a fifty-volume literary collection, two volumes of memorials, a fifty-volume 宋史稿, and an unspecified number of volumes of 元史稿.

The transmitted manuscript of 說學齋 contains 137 pieces; the two-volume 雲林詩集 was printed in the Yuan. His prose was highly regarded in the early Ming, and Song Lian praised it; after his entry into the Ming, his collected writings became dispersed and later transmission was incomplete.