STORIES OF THE VICTORIAN WRITERS. By Mrs.
Hugh Walker. (Cambridge University Press. 8s. 6d.) The aim of Mrs. Hugh Walker's short biographies is "to induce those readers who are not already familiar with the great Victorians to seek at least a bowing acquaintance with them and their works." Whether or not this object is achieved will depend on the reader's way of approaching the books he reads----whether he likes to be on equal terms with his author or in an attitude of subjection. The Victorians seem to have venerated their Great Men yet tempered their austere sanctity with anecdotes of the trivial. It is the compromise of a democracy faced with a stark denial of its fundamental tenet. Those who deplore the tendency to belittle Browning, Ruskin, Tennyson and their contemporaries will find scant support from these lives. Mrs. Walker has such an exhaustive know- ledge of the period that she would have done it better service by removing, instead of redecorating, the inhuman mask which public opinion once pressed on its heroes.
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