more gigantic than the rest-a veritable king of bookswhose broad phylactery reads: "Trott's Laws." Nicholas Trott, sometime Chief Justice of South Carolina, finding himself by certain turns of fortune out of employment, occupied his leisure in codifying the whole body of English statutes, so far as applicable to South Carolina, together with all the laws of the province itself. As regards the laws of England, this great work was the first of its kind in America. It was adopted by the Legislature in 1712, and is the basis of South Carolina law. The constitutional significance of this appears from the enacting clause of the act adopting Trott's work: "An act to put in force in this Province the several statutes of the kingdom of England or South Britain therein particularly mentioned," which "shall be of the same force in the Province as if they had been enacted in the same." The assembly declared the common law adopted with such modifications as they had made. Quite sovereign proceedings. These were excellent good British subjects until their old habit of doing as they pleased was interfered with; and then?- these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent." The principle was assumed (which had been asserted as early as 1692, but denied by the Proprietors as a dangerous doctrine, as indeed it was) that, to be of force in South Carolina, general laws of Parliament must first be reënacted by the colonial Legislature. We cannot dwell upon the import of this doctrine, but it surely suggests reflection.

Gen. McCrady has to a marked degree one essential feature of the true historian. He is a most straightforward truth-teller. Whether the fact be pleasing or the opposite to South Carolina pride or prejudice, he tells it with an unapologizing simplicity. Yet he is altogether free from any ostentatious aggressiveness which makes such a parade of its fearless truth-telling that we begin to be suspicious. Indeed, its simple truthfulness is the most marked characteristic of the book. Hardly less admirable is the sympathetic understanding of the colonists, of their virtues and their faults, and the freedom from any sentimental chauvinism,

which too often renders the works of Southern authors so tiresome to those seeking history and not eulogies.

Gen. McCrady's use of original sources has been very extensive, though at times his respect for Rivers has led him to allow that author to speak for him when we should much prefer to hear his own voice. He has used manuscripts and other rare original sources very thoroughly, and with the result of correcting many misconceptions. manuscript records of the colony recently obtained from London doubtless became available after Gen. McCrady's work was nearing completion, and this perhaps accounts for the small number of citations of these invaluable documents.

The

Gen. McCrady's style is lucid, straightforward, unadorned, without fire, flash, or enthusiasm. It is the transparent medium for the truth he wishes to make plain. While not tiresome, it is not inspiring. His presenting plainly and fully, however, such engaging subjects as social life, Indian wars and the conquest, trial, and execution of the pirates, is inspiring, and leads the reader on with eager interest.

Quite a number of errors appear, which a careful proof reading should have corrected: such as "piece" and "Casor," where I am sure the manuscript will show on examition "parcel" and "Cassoe." In dates there are a number of misprints, which can be corrected by cross references within the book itself. These are mistakes, not blunders; from these Gen. McCrady is not only free, but corrects extensively those of many less-informed or less-careful writers.

It is easy to conclude that this "History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government" supersedes all others. It is not only a reliable, philosophical history of South Carolina during that period, but it is an addition to American colonial history. It is written from the standpoint of the historian, not of a South Carolinian. Free from prejudice, free from provincialism, neglecting no important side of the people's life, full, mature, thorough, it is the ripe fruit of many years' research, observation, living, in the history of South Carolina. D. D. WALLACE.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

IF a reason must be given for a study of Matthew Arnold's works at this time, one might say, perhaps first of all, that the "Letters" have not only thrown new light upon Arnold's personality, but have made clearer than ever before the task he had set himself, and especially the spirit in which he gave himself to that task. Arnold knew himself better, of course, than anybody else knew him, and in his familiar letters, especially those to his mother and sistersletters meant only for the family circle, and free from a shadow of suspicion that a wider audience was ever in mind. -we have his own estimate of the worth of his work, and his own statement of the hindrances that hampered his literary effort.

In this paper the object has been, so far as possible, to let Arnold, by means of his "Letters," state his own case, and the same purpose has determined the extensive quotations made from his works. Those who would get the most out of the "Letters" must consider them in the light of a selfrevelation, not as a collection from which Arnold's opinions of other men and other men's works may be learned. In bulk Arnold's twenty-one volumes constitute a sufficiently large output; and in prose, at least, we all feel, perhaps, that he found adequate expression of himself. He was a great literary critic, doubtless the greatest and safest that the English-speaking race has yet produced, and though hindered much by his outward circumstances, he yet found opportunity to deliver his message. If things had been different, we should doubtless have had more of those incomparable introductions to the poets; and we shall always regret that he did not leave the evidently intended further essay on Shelley. Still we have his "secret" and his "method" of literary criticism in the collected edition of his critical works prepared with his own hand. He was greatly hindered, it is true, by the fact that he had to give his main effort during

his whole life to the exacting duties of a school inspectorship, in order to win bread for his family. "Qualified by nature and training for the highest honors and successes which the world can give, he spent his life in a long round of unremunerative drudgery, working even beyond the limits of his strength for those whom he loved, and never, by word or sign, betraying even a consciousness of that dull indifference to his gifts and services which stirred the fruitless indignation of his friends."1

He rose superior to these hindrances, I think, in the matter of the prose expression of himself; but it was his poetic faculty that suffered, and it is there that the world has cause chiefly to regret that he was so hampered. He himself told F. W. H. Myers that "his official work, though it did not check his prose writing, checked his poetry." If any one, considering what his great contemporaries, Tennyson and Browning, achieved, be inclined to criticise Arnold, let him blame if he can after reading the following: "Indeed, if the opinion of the general public about my poems were the same as that of the leading literary men, I should make more money by them than I do. But, more than this, I should gain the stimulus necessary to enable me to produce my best-all that I have in me, whatever that may be—to produce which is no light matter with an existence so hampered as mine is. People do not understand what a temptation there is, if you cannot bear anything not very good, to transfer your operations to a region where form is everything. Perfection of a certain kind may there be attained, or at least approached, without knocking yourself to pieces, but to attain or approach perfection in the region of thought and feeling, and to unite this with perfection of form, demands not merely an effort and a labor, but an actual tearing of one's self to pieces, which one does not readily consent to (although one is sometimes forced to it), unless one can devote one's whole life to poetry. Wordsworth could give his whole life to it; Shelley and Byron both could, and were besides driven by their demon to do it. Tennyson, a far in

1 Preface to "Letters," by G. W. E. Russell.

ferior natural power to either of the three, can; but of the moderns Goethe is the only one, I believe, of those who had an existence assujettie who has thrown himself with a great result into poetry. And even he felt what I say, for he could no doubt have done more poetically had he been freer; but it is not so light a matter, when you have other grave claims on your powers, to submit voluntarily to the exhaustion of the best poetical production in a time like this. Goethe speaks somewhere of the endless matters on which he had employed himself, and says that with the labor he had given to them he might have produced half a dozen more good tragedies; but to produce these,' he says, 'I must have been sehr zerrissen.' It is only in the best poetical epochs (such as the Elizabethan) that you can descend into yourself and produce the best of your thought and feeling naturally and without an overwhelming, and in some degree morbid, effort; for then all the people around you are more or less doing the same thing. It is natural, it is the bent of the time, to do it; its being the bent of the time, indeed, is what makes the time a poetical one."1

I have quoted this passage at length, because it is the most important reference in the "Letters" to the hindrances which clogged Arnold's poetic effort, and because it is an admirable general statement, to be supported by the passages which follow here. "I am now at the work," he writes at forty-one, "I dislike most in the world: looking over and marking examination papers. I was stopped last week by my eyes, and the last year or two these sixty papers a day of close handwriting to read have, I am sorry to say, much tried my eyes for the time. They soon recover, however, and no reading ever seems to hurt them. At present I can do nothing after my papers are done but write the indispensable letters for that day's post." The next year he writes to Lady de Rothschild as follows: "I must go back to my charming occupation of hearing students give lessons. Here is my programme for this afternoon: AvalanchesThe Steam Engine-The Thames-India Rubber-Bricks "Letters," I., 72 f. 21bid., I., 207.