SPRING-CLEANING
Charles Dickens and Other Victorians. By "Q." (Cambridge University Press. 10s. 6d.) WHEN Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch entered upon his labours as lecturer at Cambridge, how the dust of centuries must have been disturbed by the sudden inflow of fresh air ! And, while lie remains there, no dark corners in the Palace of Learning will be safe from the attacks of his lusty broom. Sir Arthur is, indeed, the spring-cleaner of literature ; and if sometimes his brush is plied a little too assiduously, like that of the Uncompromising housewife, there can be no doubt that, in the main, his spring-cleaning is, no less than hers, for the good of our souls. For it is essentially about our souls that Sir Arthur is concerned. As for the militant housewife, spring-cleaning for him is primarily a moral crusade. Cleanliness is next to Godliness ; and it is spiritually harmful for us to live in stuffy and fusty rooms.
In the present volume, our humane, humorous and entirelybeloved " Q " plunges, in his most spirited manner, into an Onslaught upon the theories, which were beginning to settle comfortably i3 our minds, about the Victorian" complacency" and the Victorian "hypocrisy." He reminds us that, if the Victorians had their limitations, they were in that respect uncommonly like ourselves. The true aim of criticism, Tie swears, should not be to emphasize limitations, and still less to weigh one artist against another, arranging "the names of great men in class-lists; in terms of a Tripos." Dickens and Thackeray and Trollope were "grand creators, lords of literature all," and the vital question is not which of them stands highest on some imaginary roll of fame, but what each contributed, out of his own individual genius, to the enrichment of Life.
Sir Arthur has little to say that is original. But, if he offers us commonplaces, they are, in the words in which he himself characterizes all true literature, "commonplaces exquisitely turned to catch and hold new hearts." All the chapters in his present volume, with the possible exception of that on Disraeli, maintain a finely-tempered excellence of wisdom and vivacity, and we are particularly grateful to " Q " for his noble tribute to Mrs. Gaskell, whose fame as the author of Cranford has too long overshadowed her other and equally great claims to attention.
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