Abstract: He Shaoji has historically been considered a theoretician of the Song poetry school during the Daoguang and Xianfeng reigns, his poetics often taken as a representative of scholar poetry and as an altered form of Wen Fanggang’s concept of textuality. However, when his poetics is studied on itself disregard of his personal link with the poetry school, it could be argued that He Shaoji was practically a follower of Yuan Mei. He's poetics is grounded in Ye Xie and Yuan Mei’s concept of natural spirituality (xingling), and the shared features with Ye and Yuan’s poetics show in his elucidation on poetic lines, theorization of poetic concepts, and poetic commentaries. He’s poetics share some distinctive features with the concept of natural spirituality in that He Shaoji emphasized the grace in temperament, textual study, description- and agenda-focused poetic criticism and evaluation. In sum, He Shaoji prioritized temperament over knowledge, and the concept of natural spirituality served as the base of his poetics and the starting point of his argument.

Key words: He Shaoji, Yuan Mei; poetics, natural spirituality (xingling)