"Three sailors of Bristol city Who took a boat and went to sea," the second stanza running thus:-- "There was gorging Jack, and guzzling Jimmy _And the youngest, he was Little Billee_. Now when they got as far as the Equator They'd nothing left, but one split pea." And the unpleasant ultimatum being arrived at, that "We've nothing left, us must eat we," the poem continues:-- "Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy, With one another we shouldn't agree, There's little Bill, _he's young and tender_, We're old and tough, so let's eat he." Here, I say, we have the origin of the novelist's "Little Billee," while, in the italicized phrases, we have also du Maurier's, "the third, he was little Billee" (page 6), and "he was young and tender, was little Billee." It would be sheer nonsense, of course, to urge against the famous novelist any charge of unacknowledged borrowing in matters so entirely trivial. The point is merely a curious one of origins; a little siccatine botanizing, so to speak, on the _folia disjecta_ that have been wonderfully spun by du Maurier's genius into a fabric of grace and beauty so rare as is this "Trilby." Nor, indeed, should the further fact be a detraction from the gifted author of "Trilby," that his indebtedness to Thackeray is obviously greater than in the minutiæ under consideration--that, in fact, he has caught from the great immortal the note of much that is best in his book. In his limpid, graceful simplicity of words, and their easy, natural flow--in his delicate, playful humor, and tender but not overwrought pathos, we discover a careful study of found only a few general remarks about fairies, their habits and habitations, nothing in the least resembling the story of Jeannie's lover. Perhaps Nodier was mistaken about his source. As he travelled in the Highlands, he may possibly have "collected" the tale at first hand, and, there being no folk-lore societies in those early days of romanticism, he was not aware of the honor that thus accrued to him. It cannot have evolved itself from a mere hint. We appeal to Mr. Lang to take up and follow the chase farther. He might be worse occupied than in tracing out the original John Trilby MacFarlane, and whence he got his English-sounding name, his fairy powers and his connection with Saint Columba--the last probably from Nodier himself, who may have been reading Montalembert's "Monks of the West" before setting out upon his pilgrimage. Mr. Dole, by the way, irreverently converts the Dove of the Churches into a "Saint Columbine," unknown to any respectable hagiographer. Think, Mr. Lang, what a delightful coil this romancing Frenchman, let loose among your Hielan' men, fairies, monks and Scotch novels, has made for you to straighten out, and how many strange discoveries may be made while you are about the job!