ferent to his
sentiment. This 'Trilby' attained a considerable degree of popularity;
it became, indeed, a French classic; Sainte-Beuve has particularly
praised the charm of its style. * * * In his preface to the story,
Nodier says: 'The subject of this story is derived from a preface or a
note to one of the romances of Sir Walter Scott, I do not know which
one.' This is a very indefinite acknowledgment While Nodier may have got
his subject from Scott, the Listener doubts if he got the name 'Trilby'
from him. It is just the sort of name that a French writer would give to
a Scotch fay. Nevertheless, Trilby may be a real Scotch elfin. The
Listener would hardly claim personal acquaintance with them all.

"Du Maurier's 'Trilby' is curiously prefigured, in part at least, in
Nodier's; and yet there is not the smallest thing that the most jealous
critic could call a plagiarism; it is a legitimate parentage. As you go
on with Nodier's story, you love his Trilby more and more, as you do du
Maurier's, until you think that there was never so bewitching a fairy;
and your love for Trilby is interwoven with your love for Jeannie, his
mortal sweetheart, just as your love for du Manner's Trilby is forever
mixed up with your tender sentiment for Little Billee. You feel a sort
of enchantment over you like the hypnotism that you are under in du
Maurier's strange book. And both stories, while abounding in wit and
pretty things, are deeply tragical. It has been said of Nodier's
'Trilby' that it belongs to the realm of the _supra-sensible_, and so,
in large measure, certainly does du Maurier's. Du Maurier has confessed
his obligation flatly in giving his story the very name that Nodier's
bore. It is conceivable that the image of the Frenchman's haunting fairy
dwelt with him until he resolved to reincarnate the adorable elf in the
body of a girl as adorable. He gave his Trilby a Scotch ancestry to
connect her the more naturally with the _lutin d'Argail_; and her fairy
ancestry will easily account not only for her early prankishness, but
for her later unreality. But it is a prefiguring merely, and not a
direct suggestion. Whatever du Maurier's 'Trilby' lacks, it isn't
originality!"

* * * * *

(_From Mr. C. E. L. Wingate's Boston Letter in The Critic of 20 April,
1893._)

It appears that the first mention of the French book appeared in _The
Critic_, last November. It was in the same month that Mr. Bradford
To