There stands the real Berlioz--musician and poet; eager to drain life to the dregs, be they sweet or bitter, to taste the fulness of being. There we find a faithful record of thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and a reflection of every passing mood. With one notable exception: even to Ferrand he never admitted that the poor reception of _The Trojans_ (for it met with but a _succès d’estime_) broke his heart. * * * * * As a record of events the Autobiography is deficient, and after 1848 becomes a mere sketch. Thus, while writing pages of description of orchestral players and musical institutions in German and Austrian cities--quite suitable to his newspaper articles, but wearisome in their iteration, and throwing no light upon himself--he is almost entirely silent on his later trips to London. And the visits to Baden--brightest days of his later years--are dismissed in a footnote. He lingers pathetically over young days, and hurries through the dreary time close at hand. So, for a record of the daily conflict with physical pain; of the overshadowed domestic life--none the easier to bear in that it was partly his own fault; of the grinding, ever-present shortness of money; of his wild and beautiful dreams; and of the large place that Ferrand, Morel, Massart, Damcke and Lwoff (many of whom are not named in the memoir) held in his heart--we turn to the Letters. The fearless, unbroken affection for his Jonathan--Humbert Ferrand; the passionate love for his only son, mingled with impatience at Louis’ youthful instability; the whole-hearted ungrudging appreciation he extended to young and honest musicians--particularly to Camille Saint-Saëns--are a grateful contrast to the gloomy defiance, tornado-like fury, and eternal jeremiads over the hypocrisy and hollowness of Paris that mar the Memoir. * * * * * Of his ill-starred first marriage he says but little, either in Memoir or Letters. He and Miss Smithson were far too highly-strung for peaceful life to be possible, even without the added friction of ill-health, want of money (which, however, he says never daunted her), and the probable misunderstandings so likely to arise from their different nationalities. It may be due to his special form of artistic temperament--that well-worn apology for everything _déréglé_--that he could find room in his heart, or head, for more than one love at a time, and could even analyse and classify each. Within a month he bounds from the nethermost despair over the uncertainties of his English divinity to the highest rapture over his Camille, his Ariel, as he calls Marie Pleyel. Later on, when Marie is safely disposed of and Henriette is again in the ascendant, while she vacillates between family and lover, he seriously contemplates running off to Berlin with a poor girl whom he has befriended, and whom, when Henriette finally relents, he calmly hands over to Jules Janin to provide for.