a recent evaluation called waley "the great transmitter of the high literary cultures of china and japan to the english-reading general public; the ambassador from east to west in the first half of the 20th century", and went on to say that he was "self-taught, but reached remarkable levels of fluency, even erudition, in both languages. it was a unique achievement, possible (as he himself later noted) only in that time, and unlikely to be repeated."