Somebody said of Berlioz, twenty years ago, “He has not achieved success, but he has gained glory.” He is now in a fair way to win both, and that is the reason why the materials for this book have been collected, and this notice has been written.

Glory and success at one and the same time! To unite these two desiderata, which as a rule go hand in hand, and, in the case under notice, were separated by the merest chance, Berlioz had only to do a very simple thing—a thing to which we are all exposed, a thing inevitable alike to the birds that fly in the air, the fish that swim in the waters, the flowers that turn their petals to the warm kisses of the sun, the beggar in his rags and the sovereign in his purple, a thing that we can neither find when we seek it, nor avoid when we seek it not—he had merely to die.

Berlioz, alive, suffered from all the inconveniences incidental to the state of living, and although, by reason of his frequent illnesses, he held out great hopes to those who were waiting for his disappearance, none the less did he occupy a certain position in the journalistic world, a chair at the Institut, a box at the theatre, breathing room of some kind. I do not allude to his musical prestige; some critics thought they had destroyed that for ever, or imagined that they thought so, for in reality, they were not very certain about it.