So great is my admiration for the humorous gifts of Mr. WILLIAM CAINE and so strong my gratitude to him for such books as _Boom_ and _Old Enough to Know Better_, that I have decided to erase from my memory with all possible speed his latest effort, _Bildad the Quill-Driver_ (LANE.) A man with so many bull's-eyes to his credit may be forgiven an occasional miss; and, to be candid, _Bildad the Quill-Driver_ seems to me to come nowhere near the target. Most of Mr. CAINE'S work would be the better for a certain amount of condensation, but this is the only occasion on which he has really lost control of his pen. He has had the unfortunate idea of writing a comic _Arabian Nights_ in close imitation of the style of the original translation, even to the insertion of short poems at every possible opportunity. Now, this is one of those ideas which at first blush would seem to contain all the elements of delightful humour; but it has the deadly flaw that it involves a monotony which becomes after a few pages more than irritating. For a while the novelty is entertaining, and then the reader becomes crushed by the realisation that he has got to rely for his amusement on the same sort of joke repeated over and over again for more than three hundred pages. And, once that happens, the doom of the book is sealed, for the adventures of _Bildad_ are not in themselves diverting--his love-affair with the giantess is as unfunny a thing as ever I yawned over--and if you cease to chuckle at the burlesque pomposity of the style there is nothing left. There are some things which do not lend themselves to sustained parody, and the manner of the _Arabian Nights_ is one of them. But, as I say, I am not going to allow this book to shake my opinion that Mr. CAINE is one of our most engaging humorists. * * * * * [Illustration: HOW A PRUSSIAN ST. GEORGE WOULD HAVE DONE IT.] * * * * *