1, Ceng Gong's literary achievements are outstanding.
Although Ceng Gong's reputation in the Song Dynasty was not very great, it only refers to the social field. Ceng Gong's reputation in the field of literature resounded through the sky. The world called him Mr. Nanfeng, and he was the backbone of the new ancient prose movement in the Song Dynasty. He has his own ideas about ancient prose, and he advocates the way before writing, that is, when writing prose poems, tell the truth first, and then send emotions. This can make readers feel the general idea and central idea of the whole article more intuitively. Ceng Gong's prose is outstanding. His prose has a wide range of contents, slow pace, obvious temperament and concise language. He is particularly good at using parallelism and duality. Wang Anshi, a politician at that time, spoke highly of him. He was evaluated as quaint and plain, natural and simple in the literary world at that time, but he did not lose his literary talent.
2. Sima Guang is outstanding politically.
Sima Guang was famous at that time, mainly because of his high official position and obvious political achievements. When Wang Anshi's political reform, Sima Guang was the leader of the group that opposed Wang Anshi. Both of them have a high voice among the people. The struggle between the two makes them more and more popular among the people. Therefore, Sima Guang's reputation is not reflected in his literary creation. This can explain why he can't rank among the eight masters in Tang and Song Dynasties.
To sum up, the Eight Masters in the Tang and Song Dynasties are aimed at literary creation and are special awards in unique fields. Therefore, it is understandable that Sima Guang cannot comment.