11 APRIL 1896, Page 3

We deeply regret to record the death on Good Friday,

at the comparatively early age of fifty-one, of Mr. James Ash- croft Noble, who had been for many years a regular con- tributor to the literary columns of the Spectator. He was a man of fine taste, of sound judgment, and of very considerable literary reading, whose work was always conscientious and always inspired by a high ethical instinct. Those who knew him best valued him most ; and his own published essays show how much of poetical feeling as well as of literary insight there was in the experienced journalist we have lost.