_Thyrza_. Renewed
recollections of Tibullus and of Theocritus may have served to give his
work a more idyllic tinge. But there were much nearer sources of
inspiration for _A Life's Morning_. There must be many novels inspired by a
youthful enthusiasm for _Richard Feverel_, and this I should take to be one
of them. Apart from the idyllic purity of its tone, and its sincere
idolatry of youthful love, the caressing grace of the language which
describes the spiritualised beauty of Emily Hood and the exquisite charm of
her slender hands, and the silvery radiance imparted to the whole scene of
the proposal in the summer-house (in chapter iii., 'Lyrical'), give to this
most unequal and imperfect book a certain crepuscular fascination of its
own. Passages in it, certainly, are not undeserving that fine description
of a style _si tendre qu'il pousse le bonheur a pleurer_. Emily's father,
Mr. Hood, is an essentially pathetic figure, almost grotesquely true to
life. 'I should like to see London before I die,' he says to his daughter.
'Somehow I have never managed to get so far.... There's one thing that I
wish especially to see, and that is Holborn Viaduct. It must be a wonderful
piece of engineering; I remember thinking it out at the time it was
constructed. Of course you have seen it?' The vulgar but not wholly inhuman
Cartwright interior, where the parlour is resolved into a perpetual
matrimonial committee, would seem to be the outcome of genuine observation.
Dagworthy is obviously padded with the author's substitute for melodrama,
while the rich and cultivated Mr. Athel is palpably imitated from Meredith.
The following tirade (spoken by the young man to his mistress) is Gissing
pure. 'Think of the sunny spaces in the world's history, in each of which
one could linger for ever. Athens at her fairest, Rome at her grandest, the
glorious savagery of Merovingian Courts, the kingdom of Frederick II., the
Moors in Spain, the magic of Renaissance Italy--to become a citizen of any
one age means a lifetime of endeavour. It is easy to fill one's head with
names and years, but that only sharpens my hunger.' In one form or another
it recurs in practically every novel.[12] Certain of the later portions of
this book, especially the chapter entitled 'Her Path in Shadow' are
delineated through a kind of mystical haze, suggestive of some of the work
of Puvis de Chavannes. The concluding chapters, taken as a whole, indicate
with tolerable accuracy