Italian sky. One remembers all
they have suffered, all they have achieved in spite of wrong. Brute
races have flung themselves, one after another, upon this sweet and
glorious land; conquest and slavery, from age to age, have been the
people's lot. Tread where one will, the soil has been drenched with
blood. An immemorial woe sounds even through the lilting notes of
Italian gaiety. It is a country, wearied and regretful, looking ever
backward to the things of old.'--(p. 130.)

The _Ionian Sea_ did not make its appearance until 1901, but while he was
actually in Italy, at Siena, he wrote the greater part of one of his very
finest performances; the study of _Charles Dickens_, of which he corrected
the proofs 'at a little town in Calabria.' It is an insufficient tribute to
Gissing to say that his study of Dickens is by far the best extant. I have
even heard it maintained that it is better in its way than any single
volume in the 'Man of Letters'; and Mr. Chesterton, who speaks from ample
knowledge on this point, speaks of the best of all Dickens's critics, 'a
man of genius, Mr. George Gissing.' While fully and frankly recognising the
master's defects in view of the artistic conscience of a later generation,
the writer recognises to the full those transcendent qualities which place
him next to Sir Walter Scott as the second greatest figure in a century of
great fiction. In defiance of the terrible, and to some critics damning,
fact that Dickens entirely changed the plan of _Martin Chuzzlewit_ in
deference to the popular criticism expressed by the sudden fall in the
circulation of that serial, he shows in what a fundamental sense the author
was 'a literary artist if ever there was one,' and he triumphantly refutes
the rash daub of unapplied criticism represented by the parrot cry of
'caricature' as levelled against Dickens's humorous portraits. Among the
many notable features of this veritable _chef-d'oeuvre_ of under 250 pages
is the sense it conveys of the superb gusto of Dickens's actual living and
breathing and being, the vindication achieved of two ordinarily rather
maligned novels, _The Old Curiosity Shop_ and _Little Dorrit_, and the
insight shown into Dickens's portraiture of women, more particularly those
of the shrill-voiced and nagging or whining variety, the 'better halves' of
Weller, Varden, Snagsby and Joe Gargery, not to speak of the Miggs, the
Gummidge, and the M'Stinger. Like Mr. Sw