27 DECEMBER 1884, Page 23

Lives Great and Simple. By Mrs. G. W. Tooley. (Kent

and Co.) —Mrs. Tooley tells here in the space of some 280 pages twenty lives- She should, we think, have named her authorities. Not one of the lives, we may safely conjecture, but has been put together out of some original biography ; but we do not notice acknowledgment of any kind, unless the quotation of a sentence from Mrs. Oliphant by way of conclusion to the life of " Edward Irving " can be reckoned as such. Surely the whole article owes much to Mrs. Oliphant's biography. Why not say as much ?