Bickerby's Folly. By Tom Gallon. (Methuen and Co. 6s.)— Mr.
Tom Gallon has drunk so deeply of the literature of Dickens that nothing he writes can avoid reminding us of the master. The unfortunate thing is that it is not Dickens the humourist to whom Mr. Gallon gives the sincerest flattery in his power. It is the Dickens of the murder in "Martin Chuzzlewit," and of the house by the river in "Little Dorrit," who lends his inspiration to Mr. Gallon. Rickerby's Folly is a melodrama, and reads as though written in a nightmare. When Mr. Gallon presents us with a second Mrs. Gamp or Pecksniff—nay, if he would condescend to so small a sketch as "Mr. F.'s Aunt "—we shall welcome his work most heartily. Meanwhile perhaps the whole- sourest thing for him would be the study of some other great writer of fiction as a literary corrective.
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