The Dickens Circle. By J. W. T. Ley. (Chapman and
Hall. .21s. net.)—This is a very readable book, well illustrated with por- traits, on the chief friends of Charles Dickens, which forms an agreeable supplem3nt to Forster's biography. Lord John Russell is rightly included, but it is surely imprudent of Mr. Ley to assert that " but for Lord John Russell we should never have known Angelo Cyrus Bantam, Esq., M.O.," and so on ; though Dickens went to Bath in 1835 to report the Whig statesman for the Morning Chronicle, Bath, then in its decline, was an obvious and familiar subject for the satirist of that day. Mr. Day enters at length into such matters as the quarrel between Dickens and Thackeray over Edmund Yates, Dickens's large theatrical acquaintance, his liking for the Gore House coterie, and his very generous dealings, as editor, with young contributors to whom he took a fancy, like George Augustus Sala.
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