The signed article not only adds weight to the views expressed, but enhances, and most justly, the reputation of the writer, through the publicity it extends to his name. As things are at present, the public are kept entirely in the dark as to the authorship of the criticism they read, and, therefore, have no means of knowing what precise importance need be attached to it. It may be written by the eminent and experienced chief musical representative of the journal, or some callow youth making his first efforts in a difficult, and, it must be admitted, often a very thankless occupation. The public know nothing. I think, however, that among the immense majority of readers, whatever may be put forward, is usually accepted as the reasoned view of the paper in which it appears. It is then, obviously unfair to public and critic alike, and if to them, what is to be said of the person criticised? He is the one who suffers most, and, what is more, has no means of retaliation. Judged from any point of view, anonymity in criticism, seems to me to be absolutely indefensible. The question is an old one, I admit, but it is none the less serious for that, and comes readily to the pen and the memory. That the critic, in the long run, is in the ascendant will be granted, but when he, in the person of Lord Brougham, attacked Byron, or through some less powerful channel, attacked Keats, thereby bringing down the magnificently expressed scorn of Percy Bysshe Shelley, he did not come off with his accustomed success. The criticisms were ephemeral, the replies immortal. One may venture upon a wish that more such offences should be perpetrated, could similar results be certain of arrival. At any rate we owe to them Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," the first work which revealed his genius to the world, and made himself conscious of it, and the still greater "Adonais," of Shelley. In the rush and flurry of musical events to-day, it is naturally impossible for one representative of a paper to record, much less criticise them, and this fact often leads to things that, if inevitable, are none the less regrettable. I have in my possession two issues of a prominent London paper. They contain critical notices of a certain orchestral work. In the first, it is written of in terms of high appreciation, among others, the word "remarkable" being applied to it. In the second, it is alluded to in language that makes one wonder not only that an educated gentleman could find it in him to put pen to, but that a sub-editor could be found to pass it. It would often appear as if the modern editor valued literary ability in his colleagues, rather than critical acumen. If the idea is a correct one, it would largely account for such inconsistencies.