Charlie Villars at Cambridge. By George L. Tottenham, Trinity College.
(Hurst and Blackett.)—The critics, we suppose, are for the most part University men, and the public is pleased to take a great interest at present in University matters. It is thus that we must account for the notice which this book has received ; for it has no merits, and, we might almost say, no demerits of its own. It is harmless and inoffensive enough ; beyond a little foolish swagger, which the writer assumes in speaking of the "small colleges," there is nothing to object to in tone or temper. Nor is there anything in it conspicuously improbable or absurd. It is even pos- sible that some of the talk recorded in it may have been actually uttered by undergraduates. It is vapid enough to make this supposable. But to record, however faithfully, the vapid talk of undergraduates, or to chronicle their doings, is not to describe University life. A picture cannot be drawn without art, and in art this writer seems to be wholly wanting. He lets us know in his preface that he half expects to suc- ceed in a task in which previous writers have failed. We, on the contrary, think that no one has ever failed so completely. Peter Priggins was a caricature ; but it was at least brilliant fun, and oven gave a truer picture of at least one aide of undergraduate life than anything we find here, just as a caricature will give one a better idea of a man's face than a daub which does not exaggerate, but which gives no expression. As for Torn Brown at Orford, one chapter of it is worth volumes of such poor stuff as this. The most interesting thing that we have found in the book is a question which it incidentally raises about the value of the criticism which pronounces for or against authenticity on internal evi- dence. We do not doubt that Mr. Tottenham is, as he professes to be, of Trinity College ; but there are certain statements in his book which, considering that fact, are remarkable. A Senior Fellow of Trinity is represented as reading the grace before dinner ; and the Mathematical Tripos list is spoken of as coming out early in February. As this is the most important event in the academical year, and Mr. Tottenham pro- fesses to respect academical matters, it is hardly credible that he should have forgotten that it takes place without variation on the last Friday in January. Altogether the chronology of the book is in such a state that a critic of destructive tendencies would pronounce the whole to be spurious.
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