"Q"

REVIEWS 103 purpose was only incidentally a revolutionary one; basically his book is a strictly philosophic inquiry into the true basis of government. When he concludes that governmental machinery is on the whole more evil than good, and that the best government is the least government, the conclusion is a strictly philosophic one unaccompanied by revolutionary incitement. Even the most common and most valid objection to Godwin's theories-that reason is not the almost exclusive motive for conduct that he supposesmust take into account both his willingness to wait patiently a long time until reason grows stronger and the growing recognition of emotion, particularly the domestic affections, shown by his revisions. His later additions are not, as De Quincey asserted, virtually a renunciation of the first views; most of his many chang~ were efforts to improve clearness and proportion, and the not very fundamental changes in idea are the honest results of experience (e.g., his marriage) rather than of expedience. Godwin distrusted direct appeal to the masses, and was well satisfied that his book cost too much ever to have a genuinely popular audience. He preferred (like Shelley in Prometheus Unbound) to teach the teachers. Professor Priestley's volumes are so soberly scholarly in tone (and also rather costly) that their effect on established opinion will also be slow, but they are undoubtedly a sound and valuable corrective which must necessarily modify opinion. "Q"* GILBERT NoRwooD A man who counted among his friends both Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde, when the latter (believe it or not) was editor of The Woman's World, who wrote thirty volumes of fiction and superintended elementary education in Cornwall, who was a military officer paternal enough to bring his men home for tea after a route-march, who served with dignity as mayor of a seaport, and also composed at least one excellent limerick, Two students of psycho-analysis Corresponded on sexual fallacies Till confusion arose, And now nobody knows Which Algernon was or which Alice is, who was commodore of a yacht club but was assaulted on a political platform as a pro-Boer, who knew how to cook a Spanish ham in chablis and completed the unfinished St. l ves so deftly that one cannot tell where Stevenson 's part ends--such a man must be saluted as an exceptionally versatile professor. Most universitites would have been rent asunder by so vigorous a *Arthur Quiller-Couch: A Biographical Study of Q. By F. BRITTAIN. Cambridge: at the University Press [Toronto: Macmillan Co. of Canada]. 1947. Pp. 174, illus. ($4.25) The "Q" Tradition: An Inaugural Lecture. By BASIL WILLEY. Cambridge: at the University Press [Toronto: Macmillan Co. of Canada]. 1946. Pp. 35. (45c.) 104 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY prodigy: it is a cogent testimony to the greatness of Cambridge that it loved, honoured, and hugely relished him. All these qualities and exploits, with many more, you will find in this biography, a masterpiece of arrangement, good taste, unobtrusively skilful writing, and perfect depiction of those different sprroundings wherein Q lived his eighty-one years. But a humble reviewer who should attempt to mirror all the colours of that personality would meet the doom of the chameleon who invaded a tartan blanket and burst into pieces: he must dwell only on those activities which appeal most to his own puny soul. The novels, so thrilling and debonair , need little comment at this time of day. My own favourite, I rejoice to learn, was the author's also: Sir john Constantine. Many prefer The M ayor of Troy and other tales about his home, Fowey (pronounced Foy). The name perhaps caused queer confusion in the last war. Q wrote to a friend: "A German broadcast, the other day, announced that Fowey was in flames. Which it ain't, and hasn't been. Dr. Goebbels must have heard of Troy, for the first time, and got the story mixed up." Since half of his life fell in Victoria's reign, he yielded to the urge which drove the unlikeliest writers of that epoch-even George Eliot and Longfellow-to write a play. The Mayor of Troy was dramatized by its author; but...