On this clear, critical note let us leave the always delightful writer, the once charming man. “Oh, Daudet, _c’est de la bouillabaisse_!” cries the author of Evelyn Innes. Yes, but is not _la bouillabaisse_ a fascinating dish, especially when a master _chef_ has prepared it? GEORGE MOORE I EVELYN INNES There must be a beyond. In Wagner there is none. He is too perfect. Never since the world began did an artist realize himself so perfectly. He achieved all he desired, therefore something is wanting.—GEORGE MOORE. At last a novel with some intelligent criticism of music—George Moore’s Evelyn Innes. For years I have browsed amidst the herbage offered by writers of musical fiction, and usually have found it bitter and unprofitable. We all smile now at the inflated sentimentalities of Charles Auchester, and shudder at the mistakes of the literary person when dealing with musical themes. Jessie Fothergill’s The First Violin is very pretty, but it is badly written and reeks of Teutonic _Schwärmerei_. The characters are the conventional puppets of fiction armed with a conductor’s stick and violin bow, instead of sword, cloak, and dagger. A novel dealing with genuine musical figures has yet to be written, so George Moore’s Evelyn Innes is an attempt in the right direction. The book is full of faults, but at least it deals sanely with music, and contains several very acute criticisms of Wagner’s music, acute without being too literary or too technical. Whenever I read a novel by George Moore I feel like dividing the English-speaking world into three parts: those who read Moore and like him—a determined and growing class; those who read him and hate him—a very much larger class; and those who never heard of him—to this class belong the admirers of Marie Corelli, Hall Caine, and Sienkiewicz. Yet for certain young men every stroke of his pen has a hieratic significance. I remember well when the Confessions of a Young Man appeared. With what eagerness was it not seized upon by a small section of the community, a section that represented the vanguard of a new movement and recognized a fellow-decadent. George Moore may be truthfully called the first of the English decadents—I mean the Verlaine crop of the early eighties, not the gifted gang that painted and sonneted under the name of the Pre-Raphaelitic Brotherhood. It was George Moore who first brought to England’s shores the “poisonous honey of France.” In his Confessions were criticisms of acuity and several positive discoveries. He it was who introduced Arthur Rimbaud and Verlaine, Jules Laforgue and Gustave Kahn, to a public that speedily forgot them. To read these Confessions to-day is like stirring up stale musk. There is an odd comminglement of caviare and perfume in the book, and its author evidently had more to say.