What may be regarded as the real secret of our rather scanty knowledge of Godfrey is the fact that all research heretofore has been begun and ended in the city of Godfrey's birth, Philadelphia. The trail led from the Quaker City to North Carolina, and no one, before Professor Henderson, has been in a position, or has had the opportunity to follow the scent in precisely the location that promised new and greater returns. Professor Henderson has not, it is true, added much to our Northern knowledge of Godfrey's career, but he has added an entirely new chapter by the careful and diligent industry he has applied to Godfrey's last days in North Carolina.

Virtually all he has to say connected with the poet and his life on Masonboro Sound and in Wilmington is new even to students of Godfrey. There is but one statement in this connection on which I have not felt in agreement with the editor of this edition, and that is the impression that the whole of The Prince of Parthia was written in North Carolina.

In the collected edition of Godfrey's poems, in 1765, the statement is made that the poet finished his tragedy in the South, which gives the distinct impression to me that it had been begun before Godfrey had set out for North Carolina. This is one of those questions that probably might be argued and debated for a long time without resulting in any definite solution, but I feel inclined to mention this trifling incident in order that it may not be regarded as settled, past all reopening of the argument, should occasion arise.

We have here, thanks to Professor Henderson, a fairly full account of Godfrey during the period when he lived away from his native city, and we have also settled for us the exact location of his grave in Wilmington, a spot not heretofore known to those interested in the subject.

The critical part of the introduction, while it cannot fail to be illuminating to the student of American literature, especially as Professor Henderson traces the influences that apparently guided our early poet, is scarcely so valuable as an addition to our knowledge as the historical portion. So much that is interesting is given of Thomas Godfrey, the elder, who was the inventor of the mariner's quadrant, that the book might also be said to

contain the biographies of both these worthy pioneers, father and son, the one a remarkable natural mathematician and the younger quite as wonderful as a poet, both of them having succeeded without those educational advantages that would undoubtedly have made them greater.

In the use of illustrations that really illustrate, Professor Henderson has adopted a novelty in the reprint of poetry. There is no good reason why illustrative material of this kind should not be used in introductions of this character, but the fact remains that it is all too seldom adopted.

It will probably be a good many years before this biographical account of Godfrey is superseded, if indeed it ever is, and it so far travels over untrodden ground that whoever follows must of necessity pass in Professor Henderson's footsteps.

JOSEPH JACKSON.

HISTORICAL GRAMMAR OF THE ANCIENT PERSIAN LANGUAGE. By Edwin Lee Johnson. Cincinnati and New York: American Book Company. This book is the eighth volume of the Vanderbilt Oriental Series, issued under the general editorship of Professor H. C. Tolman and James Henry Stevenson. Professor Tolman, author of Ancient Persian Lexicon and Cuneiform Supplement, in the same series, is acknowledged to be one of the foremost authorities in this country on the old Persian language, and it was under his careful supervision that this excellent piece of work by Dr. Johnson has been brought to completion. The volume is designed to serve a twofold purpose: "to present in systematic arrangement the results of the most recent as well as the earlier investigations in this field, and to show by comparative examples the development of the Ancient Persian from the parent speech and its relation to the other languages of the family, particularly the Sanskrit and the Avestan." In comparison with A. Meillet's Grammaire du Vieux Perse, which emphasizes the inflectional forms and the syntax, the distinctive feature of Dr. Johnson's grammar is the historical treatment of the subject. Of especial interest is the chapter on the decipherment of the inscriptions, showing how the determination of the cuneiform characters was brought about by the combined labors of English, French, and

German scholars after nearly fifty years of patient, persistent toil. It is an inspiring story. Other chapters deal with the vowel and consonant systems, word formation, declensions and conjugations, syntax, order of words, etc. It is a scholarly piece of work, clear and logical in arrangement, interesting in its method of presentation. By all students of comparative philology the book will be welcomed as a valuable contribution to knowledge of a field hitherto inacessible save to a few rare specialists.

Southern Life in Southern LITERATURE. By Maurice Fulton. New York: Ginn and Company.

No other section of our country has presented in its history more varied and interesting forms of social life than the South. The picturesque life of its ante-bellum aristocracy, the racy wit and humor of its middle and lower classes as represented by the "Cracker" life of Georgia, the wildness and pathos of its mountaineer life, the naïve simplicity of the negro, the beauty and romance of the Creole life, - all these varied forms have combined to make the South a particularly rich field for the literary portrayal of local and racial peculiarities.

Other works have presented the general history of this literature in peculiar form. Such writers as Professor William Trent, Professor Carl Holladay, Professor Baskerville, Miss Manly, Miss Rutherford, and Samuel Link have given abundant historical and critical material for the study of the general field of Southern literature. The writer of this present article has also treated in a monograph the topic of the Southern short story. The value of Professor Fulton's work consists in the fact that it gathers, as no other work has done, all the varied elements of Southern life in one composite literary picture of the section. Colonel Watterson in his Oddities in Southern Life made a collection of numerous sketches, accompanied by brief biographical notices of the authors included, but his book portrayed only unusual humorous types of Southern character. Professor Fulton's work gives a comprehensive view of phases of Southern life well worth preserving. With the rapid changes now in progress in our nation the unique elements of the old Southern life will soon

be lost to memory unless preserved for the present generation in some such concise literary form. This is evidently the purpose of Professor Fulton's book, and the task has been very satisfactorily performed. The selection he has made is varied and, for his purpose, practically complete. The brief biographical sketches furnish the essential data in regard to the writers represented. The work will supply the need of a supplemental textbook for the study of Southern literature, and will also furnish a useful and attractive book for the home library. R. C. BEALE.

A HARMONY OF THE SYNOPTIC Gospels for HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL STUDY. By Ernest DeWitt Burton and Edgar Johnson Goodspeed, Professors in the University of Chicago. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1917.

$1.25.

Most of the Bible-study of to-day is of relatively little value, because it fails to take into account the historical and critical aspects so characteristic of all serious study in this age. "Organization" and "esprit du corps" and other secondary motives may succeed in bringing together and keeping interested "banner" classes, and the so-called Bible-class becomes a useful adjunct of the devotional life of the church; but the need of the hour is for wrestling with the angel of the spirit of the Bible; this the methods in vogue do not bring about. Such books as the various parts of Kent's Historical Bible would be used much more extensively were it not that spiritual pastors and masters are afraid of letting adolescents and adults look the facts of modern historical criticism in the face. Hence the hopeless naïveté and banality of the average Bible-student. We lament the notorious fact that our young folk know so little of the contents of the Bible. Well, they cannot be expected to study subjects in a modern critical and scientific way in their ordinary school-work and literary clubs and the like, and then proceed to use antiquated methods with the Word of God, which, to say the least, ought surely to be able to prove its value the more critically it is investigated.

Fortunately, teachers are beginning to see that the most important portion of the Bible, the Gospels, must be studied with the aid of a Harmony. Stevens and Burton's admirable Har

mony of the (Four) Gospels, when studied faithfully, is an excellent introduction to modern Bible-study. J. M. Thompson's Synoptic Gospels is eminently well suited for advanced study. And now comes the subject of this notice to fill the gap between the beginner's Harmony and the advanced book.

Both authors are well known, not only for expert work, but also for their pedagogic skill. Clergymen, students, and teachers in Bible-classes, and individual students who wish to put real thought and effort in place of lazy and perfunctory "reading," will find Burton and Goodspeed's Harmony indispensable. Indeed it has the basal merits of Stevens and Burton, and the additional advantage of word for word comparison. By underlining with ink the words peculiar to each Gospel the student can obtain the most useful feature of Thompson's Synoptic Gospels, and thus at once secure a mode of study that is typical, phrasic, and verbal. Such a mode of study will do much to put out of commission the squid and ostrich tactics of much Bible teaching and study. And the Word of God is unafraid!

THOMAS PEARCE BAILEY.

A STUDENT IN ARMS. By Donald Hankey. New York: Dutton and Co. The scientist of the future will have an abundance of material garnered from the present world-struggle upon which to reflect and by which to profit; the historian will be fairly overwhelmed with whole libraries covering every conceivable phase of the economic, social, and political life of the nations now engaged. But to the poet and dramatist, the seer and philosopher,-all those who deal, not with material things, nor with the deeds or habitations of men, but with man himself and his spirit's destiny, the resources fortunately will not be too plentiful. The winnowing flail of time will ensure that. And of the choice residual treasure,-those mirrors into the very soul of man at the time of his greatest trial since first he reared his head above the level of the beast and acknowledged the existence of his own soul,-A Student in Arms will not hold the least place.

Donald Hankey, before he lost his life to gain it, had contributed from time to time many short sketches to the London Spectator. Some of these are gathered by the editor of that paper in the present volume. Mr. Hankey saw things whole, in the white,