might be called for, under the right conditions, in the matter of Hurrell Froude’s edited correspondence. It will be seen, on the whole, that neither close study nor long acquaintance with the subject could keep the reprinting, as it pressed forward, from degenerating into more or less of a game of guesswork. Yet exclusions and limitations may cast a befitting half-light upon used literature of long ago, which was in itself elliptical, and tends to create new ellipses, inasmuch as its purpose now is to throw stress less on historic or theological issues than on human character. Many given data, or few, yield pretty much the same residuum when the personality which reigns over them is as rich and strong as Hurrell Froude’s. Says one of the most penetrating of modern writers: ‘The art of biography has accustomed those who read to expect … as the word implies, the portrayal of a life, of a process: the record of the growth and unfolding of a soul and character. This it is which interests the subjective temper of our days…. Our mind has learnt that its choicest food need not be sought from afar, but lies scattered with the wild flowers by the wayside, and that nothing is so extraordinary as the ordinary. Thus we have come to care less for a full inventory of the events which make up a man’s life, or for the striking nature of those events in themselves, than for such a judicious selection and setting of them as shall best bring out and explain that individuality which is our main interest. We care less for what a man does and more for what he is; and it is mainly as a key to what he is that we study the circumstances which act upon him, and the conduct by which he reacts upon them.’[2] A selection and setting to explain individuality: such is the aim, such (it is to be feared) is only very partially the achievement, of this book.