ity, I venture upon introducing a practice, the
expediency of which I will submit to the judgment of the reader. It is
one which has been adopted by musicians for more than a century--to the
great convenience of all who are fond of music--and I observe that
within the last few years two such distinguished painters as Mr.
Alma-Tadema and Mr. Hubert Herkomer have taken to it. It is a matter for
regret that the practice should not have been general at an earlier
date, not only among painters and musicians, but also among the people
who write books. It consists in signifying the number of a piece of
music, picture, or book by the abbreviation "Op." and the number
whatever it may happen to be.

No work can be judged intelligently unless not only the author's
relations to his surroundings, but also the relation in which the work
stands to the life and other works of the author, is understood and
borne in mind; nor do I know any way of conveying this information at a
glance, comparable to that which I now borrow from musicians. When we
see the number against a work of Beethoven, we need ask no further to be
informed concerning the general character of the music. The same holds
good more or less with all composers. Handel's works were not
numbered--not at least his operas and oratorios. Had they been so, the
significance of the numbers on Susanna and Theodora would have been at
once apparent, connected as they would have been with the number on
Jephthah, Handel's next and last work, in which he emphatically
repudiates the influence which, perhaps in a time of self-distrust, he
had allowed contemporary German music to exert over him. Many painters
have dated their works, but still more have neglected doing so, and some
of these have been not a little misconceived in consequence. As for
authors, it is unnecessary to go farther back than Lord Beaconsfield,
Thackeray, Dickens, and Scott, to feel how much obliged we should have
been to any custom that should have compelled them to number their works
in the order in which they were written. When we think of Shakespeare,
any doubt which might remain as to the advantage of the proposed
innovation is felt to disappear.

My friends, to whom I urged all the above, and more, met me by saying
that the practice was doubtless a very good one in the abstract, but
that no one was particularly likely to want to know in what order my
books had been written. To which I answered that even a bad bo