My Friend and My Wife. By Henry James Gibbs. 3
vols. (Samuel Tinsley.)—The title is not very happily chosen, for it does not repre- sent the best part of the book, which finds its chief interest in a subject which never wearies us, when it is at all adequately treated, —the struggle, first, for the subsistence, and then for the fame, which literature has to bestow. The hero refuses the wealth which his father's business promised to him, because be will not consent to securing contracts by giving doucenrs (a practice, we hope, not so common as the language put into the mouth of the elder Hamilton seems to imply). He tries various employments in London, some of his experiences, as, for instance, that of a copyist in a public office, being described with considerable force and humour. Ultimately he -wins his way to fame. But, meanwhile, he has had to pass through more than one dark place ; one of them being the complication which the title of the book suggests. This might, we think, have been better managed, might almost have been dispensed with altogether. There is plenty of ability in the story, and we hope to see it one day applied in away to which we shall be able to give heartier and more unmingled praise.
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