Possible Clues:

• Like Wilkie Collins's novels
• The boy might follow this till all is blue for the blower
• See special instructions
• 6 down can tell it all
• That'll give not much of a tilt to the French
• Book by Dickens
• Undersized but large when it gets let out
• One of the things you go to university for? Not much!
• The way to give a tilt to the French, but not too much
• Let it get lit to a minute extent