"Perhaps the most surprising circumstance connected with 'Trilby' in the eyes of American readers is the way the book has been received in England. At best it has been accorded lukewarm praise, and the tone of its reviews has run the gamut down to downright slating. Some have been spiteful enough to be exceptionally entertaining. Of these, that of _The Pall Mall Gazette_ is the most striking, the reviewer of that journal showing himself to be (as an exchange puts it) a master of vituperative diction. To this reviewer, 'Trilby's' three Englishmen are 'British prigs cut in pasteboard,' and their biographer is denied even the poor ability to express himself in grammatical English." * * * * * TO THE EDITORS OF THE CRITIC:-- If there yet remains a word to be said in criticism of this book, it may, perhaps, be in regard to the musical part of it. Whether intentionally or not, du Maurier has certainly added an instance, which tends to prove the theory true, that music in itself is neither elevating nor refining. Svengali is drawn with inimitable skill, and with so much realism that the reader feels that he must have been known and hated by du Maurier in all his repulsiveness. And yet this loathsome creature has the power of so seizing and expressing the noblest works of the great masters of harmony as to move his hearers to tears, to sway them at his will by the tenderness and feeling he puts into the notes. It is a hard thing for a music-lover to comprehend, that a man of low and vicious life, and utterly without aspirations, can so express the penetrating beauty that lies in music more than in any other art. It shows, too, that music gives us only what it finds in us, and proves the folly of "program music," or music with a translation. AUBURN, N. Y. S. M. COX. (_Mrs. Emma Carleton, in the Louisville Courier-Journal._) "A great deal has been said and written about 'Ben Bolt,'" said a woman who doesn't pretend to be musical, "and the other songs of the Trilby repertoire; but I have not yet seen or heard any comment on Trilby's 'great and final performance'--the vocalization of Chopin's Impromptu, A flat. Du Maurier devotes two entire pages to most wonderful description of this wonderful musical achievement; two exquisite pages of music painted in words, in most masterly and matchless fashion. Who can forget the depiction of La Svengali's voice, 'as a light nymph catching the whirl of a double-skipping rope as she warbles that long, smooth, lilting, dancing laugh, that wondrous song without words.' This impromptu should be rechristened the 'Trilby Impromptu,' and musicians everywhere should now--while the Trilby wave is riding high--be charming their audiences by playing it." * * * * *