Mrs Craigie or " John Oliver Hobbes " as she chooses to call herself, has gained for herself a leading position amongst novelists of the day by her wealth of felicitous epigram, her seemingly inex haustible store of satire and her wonderful knack of hitting off an eccentric characteri sation with such a paucity of description that one of her now famous character sketches is like a caricature by Phil May»

so few arc the lines. I confess, however, J do not care ?o much for her last noVel» " A Bundle of Life," as 1 did for " The Sinner's Comedy " or " Soino Emotions and a Morf.l," the latter 1 think being fur the strongest of her works but, neverthe less, it is a most amusing story. Of plot, as the ordinary novel reader understands it-, there is hardly any—the oook is a series of brilliant sketches, the outlines filled in with those wonderful epigrammatic touches which aro so pecu liarly Mrs Craigie's own. The "good things" too in "A Bundle of Life"" aro perhaps not quite so numerous as they were in her previous stories, but they are ten times as many as one find- in most nOvell and some of them are remarkably happy.
