h he too often felt
himself bound to adopt. In these his failure to grapple with a big
objective, or to rise to some prosperous situation, is often painfully
marked. A master of explanation and description rather than of animated
narrative or sparkling dialogue, he lacked the wit and humour, the
brilliance and energy of a consummate style which might have enabled him to
compete with the great scenic masters in fiction, or with craftsmen such as
Hardy or Stevenson, or with incomparable wits and conversationalists such
as Meredith. It is true, again, that his London-street novels lack certain
artistic elements of beauty (though here and there occur glints of rainy or
sunset townscape in a half-tone, consummately handled and eminently
impressive); and his intense sincerity cannot wholly atone for this loss.
Where, however, a quiet refinement and delicacy of style is needed as in
those sane and suggestive, atmospheric, critical or introspective studies,
such as _By the Ionian Sea_, the unrivalled presentment of _Charles
Dickens_, and that gentle masterpiece of softened autobiography, _The
Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_ (its resignation and autumnal calm, its
finer note of wistfulness and wide human compassion, fully deserve
comparison with the priceless work of Silvio Pellico) in which he indulged
himself during the last and increasingly prosperous years of his life, then
Gissing's style is discovered to be a charmed instrument. That he will _sup
late_, our Gissing, we are quite content to believe. But that a place is
reserved for him, of that at any rate we are reasonably confident. The
three books just named, in conjunction with his short stories and his _New
Grub Street_ (not to mention _Thyrza_ or _The Nether World_), will suffice
to ensure him a devout and admiring group of followers for a very long time
to come; they accentuate profoundly the feeling of vivid regret and almost
personal loss which not a few of his more assiduous readers experienced
upon the sad news of his premature death at St. Jean de Luz on the 28th
December 1903, at the early age of forty-six.

ACTON,

_February_ 1906.

_A CHRONOLOGICAL RECORD_

1880. Workers in the Dawn.
1884. The Unclassed.
1886. Isabel Clarendon.
1886. Demos.
1887. Thyrza.
1888. A Life's Morning.
1889. The Nether World.
1890. The Emancipated.
1891. New Grub Street.
1892. Born in Exile.
1892. Denzil Quarrier.
1893. The Odd Women.
1894. In the Year of Jubile