Literary and Philosophical Studies

338 LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES Passage, an ill-informed public giving all the credit to the Canadian government. Captain McClure of H.M.S. Investigator does not seem to have bothered to add his voice to the controversy from the other side of the Styx. VI. LITERARY AND PHILOSOPIDCAL sTunms The first two reviews have been contributed by Professor F. E. L. Priestley. Dickens and his Readers, by George H. Ford (Princeton University Press [Saunders], xviii, 318 pp., $6.90), is a history of Dickens criticism from 1836 to 1952; but, accurate as this description is, it conveys little of the variety, liveliness, and scope of the work. Mr. Ford manages to achieve, without congestion or confusion, several important ends. As he discusses, in the first part of the book, Dickens' sudden rise to fame with Pickwick and his equally sudden failure with Chuzzlewit , he brings out in detail the nature of the relation between Dickens and his public, "a more tempestuous affair than is always recognized," and the nature of Dickens' response to reviews and to his public reception . A long appendix documents his argument that Dickens was aware of the reviewers and that his prefac.es are less desil!lled 1,0 exd his principles of art than to -m