30 MARCH 1878, Page 22

Thomas Brown's Will. By Adolphus Pohl. 3 vols. (Tinsley Brothers.)—This

novel might have been called " Thomas Brown's Will and Tudor Brown's Bill,". and so acquired the attraction of rhyme. More than seven hundred pages of somewhat close print are devoted to narrating a complication which arises out of these two things. The elder Brown makes a will, and the younger Brown unhappily does, or seems to do, something which hinders him from inheriting under it. Of course there are love-affairs, that make the complications more entangled. Indeed the difficulty looks sufficiently serious,—on paper. In real life it would have been more easily disposed of by the younger Brown telling the truth to the only person he could tell it to, the cul- prit's father. However, we will allow that there are the materials for a story here, but not for a story of this length. Mr. Pohl crowds his pages with characters, as a spirited manager crowds his stage with supernumeraries. If he had got rid of two-thirds of, them and two- thirds of his seven hundred pages, he might have made—so we judge, from indications here and there—a fairly good story.