7 MARCH 1903, Page 25

The Little Bed Fish. By Philip Laurence Oliphant. (Edward Arnold.

6s.)—If a reader takes up a novel called The Little Red Fish, he must expect to find that he has a melodrama before him. The mysterious element in the book is not quite well enough handled to save it from the taint of the Adelphi school. The concluding chapters, in which some exciting events take place, are by far the best, but as a whole the book is not convincing.