30 JULY 1870, Page 20

Brilliant Prospects. By R. L. Johnson. (Griffin.)—Is it fair to

criticize a book the whole of which one has not read ? Any one who saw our "reviewer's copy" of this tale would observe that the pages are cut up to 65 and that half of page 64 is occupied with a description of how Mrs. Titbit finished her plum-pudding, done in this style—"Mrs. Titbit was on the finish, and just then actively engaged collecting into a polygon the unadhesive fragments, detached by accident or design from their sustaining influence, and the removal of which fragments from her plate was only required by the most keen observer then

present in order to pronounce Mrs. Titbit's plate a perfectly clean finish." And so it goes on. We could not get beyond this. There is a point at which the patience even of a writer of " short notices " fails him. What comes after page 64 we do not know, but up to that point this book is about the most intolerably wearisome that ever we saw.