How Archaic is James Legge's Written Chinese in this Side by Side English/Chinese Book? I'm not sure if this is even an appropriate question for this venue, but here's hoping. I want to read the translated works of Zhuangzi on this site, but I'd like to know how archaic the original Chinese is. The characters are traditional, which is fine, and makes sense given that James Legge (the translator) was writing in the 19th century. 

However, my Mandarin is nowhere near good enough to tell me if the grammar and word choice is simply quaint (e.g. circa 1850s modern Chinese), a faithful rendition of the Old Chinese that Zhuangzi was writing in, or something in between. In other words, is this an English translation of an translation (ancient to modern Chinese) or is it a translation directly from Old Chinese?
This is a hard question which even puzzles many advanced Chinese researchers, such as this piece of The Question of Authorship in Chuang Tzu

http://140.122.100.145/ntnuj/j29/j29-10.pdf


found here.

Put simply, it may be a little too hard for Chinese writing beginner to pick it up something like Chuang Tzu, being hard not only for the text classical grammar text, but its introduction to a world of idea.

Just because it's hard to learn doesn't mean it's not helpful. Chuang Tzu is a legendary that has been continuously influencing many people.

On the website you mentioned, that piece is quite classical formatted, though not necessarily the authentic one. It's really hard to tell how authentic a piece of writing like that can be, and that's the job of some specialists, such as historians.

Hope you learn Chinese well :D