at any rate, has had so instantaneous and
prodigious a popular success as 'Trilby.' Popularity is always hard to
explain with any certainty. It seems to be a quality in the warp and
woof of the mind of the man that has it. One condition appears to be
that he shall be in sympathy with the minds of the mass of his
fellow-beings. There was such a sympathy in Du Maurier's case; and to
be more particular, his kindly and friendly enthusiasm was a quality
to commend him to men. He had a power of enjoying beauty in his
fellow-beings. Then he had had a long education in the qualities that
make popularity. He had long studied the art of pleasing. It is not
improbable that in these novels, which were intended for the American
public, he may have played upon certain of our national
susceptibilities. We in this country like to have our literature
taken seriously by the European. It may be that Du Maurier may have
had an inkling of this, for it is curious to note how much of our
poetry appears in these novels. Du Maurier had a very nice taste in
poetry, a genuine enthusiasm for it which it is heartily to be wished
were shared by all college professors of English literature. Thus, he
could not have chosen better lines than those which Peter Ibbetson was
in the habit of reciting to Mimsey, 'The Water-fowl' of
Bryant,--perhaps the most perfect poem ever produced in this
country,--a poem so "beautifully carried," as Matthew Arnold once
described it to the present writer. Poe's beautiful and musical lines,
written by him at fourteen,--'Helen, thy beauty is to me,'--are also
made use of. We have a good deal of Longfellow and other American
writers. 'Ben Bolt' is of course an American song. These appeals to
our national predilections may have influenced us. But the interest
and curiosity of our practical and hard-working American public in the
Bohemian art life of the Latin Quarter was also, no doubt, a chief
cause of the popularity of 'Trilby.'

Du Maurier did not live long to enjoy his success. He had always been
known to his friends as a sensitive man, this quality being ascribed
to ill health. Ill health was no doubt a chief cause of the vexation
with which he received certain comments upon his books, in some cases
inspired by envy of his success. Many of his recent contributions to
Punch have been at the expense of the unsuccessful author, and have
supported the thesis that ill success was not an indubitable proof of
genius. When Lord