ook have been sold. Du Maurier had sold
the book outright for L2,000, but when it became apparent that the
work was to be a success, the publishers admitted the author to a
royalty, paying at one time $40,000. They also shared with him the
large sums paid for the dramatization of the work. For 'The Martian,'
his last novel, he received L10,000 outright. This also was published
in Harper's Magazine.

It is perhaps too early to pass judgment upon the merits of these
works. They have, no doubt, grave faults. The story of 'Peter
Ibbetson' has been completed when it is but two-thirds told. The
remaining portion of the book is a dream. This is of course a
dangerous reversal of the usual method of the story-teller, which is
to make dreams seem like facts. The hypnotic part of 'Trilby' is said
by the professional authorities on the subject to be bad science. The
hypnotism in 'Trilby' was perhaps a journalist's idea, that subject
being much talked of at the time the book was written. Du Maurier, it
need hardly be said, was by training a journalist, although the
training had been of the pencil rather than of the pen. The literary
style of the novels is curious. It makes no pretensions to finish; the
grammar even is sometimes at fault. But on the other hand, it has
decided merits. It is particularly easy, flowing, and simple. These
are not the qualities we should have expected from the nature of Du
Maurier's literary training. The brief dialogues which he has for so
many years appended to his sketches in 'Punch' would have educated, we
should have thought, the qualities of brevity and point rather than
those of ease and fullness. Certain peculiarities of the style cannot
be defended, but the author produces his effects in spite of such
solecisms. This is true of the matter of his stories as well as of the
style. They are at many points inartistically constructed; but the
stuff is good, and the works therefore hold their own in spite of
these drawbacks. They certainly have one virtue, which is most
necessary to the success of any work of the imagination: they have
reality. We believe as we read, and continue to believe after we have
ceased reading, that the Major and Mimsey and Taffy and Trilby are
real persons. They are real to us because they have in the first case
been real to their creator. It is possible, however, that the pictures
which accompany the text may increase the strength of the illusion.

No book, in recent years