Lǐ Zhì 李廌
Zì Fāngshū 方叔, hào Jǐnán xiānsheng 濟南先生 and Tàihuá yìmín 太華逸民; studio name Déyúzhāi 德隅齋. Native of Huázhōu 華州 (modern Huáxiàn 華縣, Shǎnxī). Orphaned at six and raised by an uncle. Biography: Sòng shǐ 宋史 j. 444 (列傳 203, 文苑六).
Presented his writings to 蘇軾 at Huángzhōu and was acclaimed; Sū called him “in the line of Zhāng Lěi and Qín Guān”. Counted as one of the Sūmén liù jūnzǐ 蘇門六君子 (“Six Gentlemen of the Sū School”) alongside 黃庭堅, 秦觀, 張耒, 晁補之, and 陳師道.
The central episode of his biography is the examination disaster of Yuányòu 3 (1088). Sū Shì, presiding over the lǐbù 禮部 examination, intended to pass Lǐ; under anonymous marking (húmíng 糊名), Sū misidentified another candidate’s paper (by Zhāng Chí / Zhāng Yuán) as Lǐ’s and elevated it to the top of the list, leaving Lǐ to fail. Lǚ Dàfáng 呂大防 lamented, “the examiners have lost this rare talent” (有司試藝，乃失此奇才); Sū wrote a self-reproaching poem and — with Fàn Zǔyǔ 范祖禹 — attempted to recommend Lǐ to the throne directly, only for the post-Yuányòu purges to intervene. Lǐ failed again in 1091, abandoned official ambition, settled in Chángshè 長社 in the Yǐngzhōu 潁州 region, and died there at 51.
Surviving works: Shīyǒu tánjì 師友談記 (KR3j0097, 1 juan, WYG — his principal surviving prose work, recording conversations with the Yuányòu literary circle); Déyúzhāi huàpǐn 德隅齋畫品 (an important Sòng painting-connoisseurship treatise, also in the Sìkù); Jǐnán jí 濟南集 (collected works, reconstituted by the Sìkù editors from Yǒnglè dàdiǎn fragments after the YuánMíng loss of the original). Also wrote a series of military essays called Bīngjiàn 兵鑑, singled out for praise by the Sìkù editors.