tion. Of course, too, actors are going to trip their tongues occasionally no matter how simple and natural their lines may be, but it is certain that in these days of realistic stage dialogue and intensive rehearsals such blunders will not be SO common as they were in the days of ornate stage language and inadequate rehearsals in consequence of short runs and the old star system. Whenever they do occur, they will be laughed at just as heartily as they were in the times of Davies and Wilkinson and the rest, and they will be copied just as sedulously in the jest-books of the future. If by any chance such mistakes are not made hereafter, they will, of course, continue to be manufactured by the afterdinner speaker and the compiler of theatrical anecdotes.

THE BARD OF COOSAWHATCHIE

BY THE EDITOR

In Volume XV of the Library of Southern Literature 1910), a volume made up of biographical sketches of more or less notable Southern authors, on page 111, is found this brief paragraph:

DAVIS, JOHN, poet, was one of the earliest of the colonial minstrels. Though a foreigner by birth, he became an adopted son of South Carolina, and, on the authority of Mr. Ludwig Lewisohn, his "Sonnet to the Whippoorwill" was probably the first production of its kind in the Palmetto State. He published in pamphlet form, a number of poems, and a copy of the little duodecimo is preserved in the library of the College of Charleston. In view of the remote period at which he wrote, the merit of his work is most pronounced. He always styled himself "John Davis of Coosawhatchie."

The same writer is the subject of a very similar, but slightly more accurate, sketch in Professor Wauchope's Writers of South Carolina (1910, p. 131), to which these two sentences are appended:

My attention has been called by my colleague, Professor Yates Snowden, to a book of travels, which contains some graphic sketches of life in the low country of South Carolina, during the early years of the last century. A copy is owned by the Charleston Library.

I.

It is unfortunate that the author of neither one of these somewhat vague sketches was apparently acquainted at first hand with Davis's Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America, first printed in 1803, but reprinted with introduction and notes by A. J. Morrison in 1909. A reading of this interesting and well printed volume would

convince one that Davis was not in any sense a "colonial minstrel;" that he did not always style himself "John Davis of Coosawhatchie;" that he could scarcely be termed "an adopted son of South Carolina," by reason of the limited term of his sojourn there; and that he did not sketch South Carolina life during the early years of the nineteenth century, but during the closing years of the eighteenth century. It might be added that his pictures are colored with no pronounced sympathy for the life that he portrays. This can best be shown by citing passages from his Travels about the neighborhood of Charleston in 1798 and 1799:

It appears to me that in Carolina, the simplicity of the first colonists is obliterated, and that the present inhabitants strive to exceed each other in the vanities of life. Slight circumstances often mark the manners of a people. In the opulent families, there is always a negro placed on the look-out, to announce the coming of any visitant; and the moment a carriage or horseman is descried, each negro changes his every day garb for a magnificent suit of livery. As the negroes wear no shirts, this is quickly effected; and in a few moments a ragged fellow is metamorphosed into a spruce footman. And woe to them should they neglect it; for their master would think himself disgraced, and Sambo and Cuffy incur a severe flogging.1

In Carolina, the legislative and executive powers of the house belong to the mistress, the master has little to do with the administration; he is a monument of uxoriousness and passive endurance.'

It may be incredible to some that the children of the most distinguished families in Carolina are suckled by negro women. Each child has its Momma, whose gestures it will necessarily copy.

. . If Rousseau in his Emile could inveigh against the French mother, who consigned her child to a woman of her own color to suckle, how would his indignation have been raised to behold a smiling babe tugging with its roseate lips at a dug of a size and color to affright a Satyr?3

Of the understanding of negroes, the masters in Carolina have a very mean opinion. But it is obvious to a stranger of discernment,

'Opus cit., ed. Morrison, p. 97.

Ibid., p. 97.

Ibid., pp. 93-4.

that the sentiments of black Cuffy who waits at table, are often not less just or elevated than those of his white ruler, into whose hand Fortune, by one of her freaks, has put the whip of power. Nor is there much difference in their language; for many planters seem incapable of displaying their sovereignty, by any other mode than menaces and imprecations. Indeed, it must occur to everyone, that were things to be re-organized in their natural order, the master would in many parts of the globe, exchange with his servant."

To be brief, such is the pride of the people of Charleston, that no person is seen on foot unless it be a mechanic, or some mechanical Tutor. He who is without horses and slaves incurs always contempt. Even negroes are infected with this idea; and Cuffy shall be heard to exclaim, He great blackguard that-he got no negur. Where his horse? He always walk."

No climate can be hotter than that of South Carolina and Georgia. In the piazza of a house at Charleston, when a breeze has prevailed, and there has been no other building near to reflect the heat of the sun, I have known the mercury in Fahrenheit's thermometer to stand at 101. In the night it did not sink below 89. . It is, I think, incontrovertible, that no two places on the earth are hotter than Savannah and Charleston. I do not remember that the thermometer in the shade at Batavia exceeded 101.

But if the heat of the weather in the southernmost states be excessive, not less sudden are its changes. . . . I have known one day the mercury to stand at 85; and the next it has sunk to 39. But it is from the middle of June to the middle of September, that the excessive heats prevail. It is then the debilitating quality of the weather consigns the languid lady to her sopha, who, if she lets fall her pocket handkerchief, has not strength to pick it up, but calls to one of her black girls, who is all life and vigour. Hence there is a proportion of good and evil in every condition; for a negro girl is not more a slave to her mistress, than her mistress to a sopha; and the one riots in health, while the other has every faculty enervated.'

Many more passages might be quoted to the same effect as well as others which laud the natural beauty of Carolina

Ibid., p. 99.

"Ibid., p. 117. Ibid., pp. 102-3. 'Ibid., pp. 103-4.

woods, or praise the courtesy and genuine culture of Mr. Drayton and his wife, in whose home Davis spent a little more than a year. But these passages have been cited to show that Davis's observation, whether just or unjust, was not wholly sympathetic; that he wrote, not as an adopted son of Carolina, but as a British traveler who rejoiced with Cowper that slaves could not breathe in England.

Of Davis's early life, Morrison in his introduction to the Travels gives a concise but adequate account. Born in Salisbury, England, in 1776, self-taught in Latin, Greek, and French, he went to sea at the age of eleven, voyaged to China, India, and the East Indies, and later saw active service in the British Navy against France. Seeking further adventure, he shipped from Bristol in 1798 for New York, there translated Bonaparte's Campaign in Italy for Caritat, the publisher, fell in with William De Bow, M. D., and walked with him from New York to Trenton, New Jersey. This foot journey Davis graphically relates in his book and then tells how he accompanied Dr. De Bow by boat from Philadelphia to Charleston, where they arrived in the autumn of 1798. At Charleston he advertised for a position as tutor, and obtained employment for six weeks in the College of Charleston, and for almost a year thereafter in the family of a Mr. Drayton, then residing on a large estate in the woods near Coosawhatchie. In the late spring of 1799 Davis accompanied the Draytons, first to Ashley River, the present site of Magnolia Gardens, which is still in the possession of the Drayton family, and then to Sullivan's Island in Charleston Harbor. But wearying of this life he gave up his position, trudged on foot from Charleston to Georgetown, South Carolina, and thence sailed back to New York. Later on he was associated with Chas. Brockden Brown, the novelist, Joseph Dennie, the critic, and their group, and with Aaron Burr. After teaching in Virginia, he returned to England, meanwhile publishing, either in England or in America, some ten books, including essays, poems, books of travel, and an historical novel.