, for which
the scarred and troublous portions of Gissing's earlier life had served as
a preparation. Some there are, no doubt, to whom it will seem no
extravagance in closing these private pages to use the author's own words,
of a more potent Enchanter: 'As I close the book, love and reverence
possess me.'

* * * * *

Whatever the critics may determine as to the merit of the stories in the
present volume, there can be no question as to the interest they derive
from their connection with what had gone before. Thus _Topham's Chance_ is
manifestly the outcome of material pondered as early as 1884. _The Lodger
in Maze Pond_ develops in a most suggestive fashion certain problems
discussed in 1894. Miss Rodney is a re-incarnation of Rhoda Nunn and
Constance Bride. _Christopherson_ is a delicious expansion of a mood
indicated in _Ryecroft_ (Spring xii.), and _A Capitalist_ indicates the
growing interest in the business side of practical life, the dawn of which
is seen in _The Town Traveller_ and in the discussion of Dickens's
potentialities as a capitalist. The very artichokes in _The House of
Cobwebs_ (which, like the kindly hand that raised them, alas! fell a victim
to the first frost of the season) are suggestive of a charming passage
detailing the retired author's experience as a gardener. What Dr. Furnivall
might call the 'backward reach' of every one of these stories will render
their perusal delightful to those cultivated readers of Gissing, of whom
there are by no means a few, to whom every fragment of his suave and
delicate workmanship 'repressed yet full of power, vivid though sombre in
colouring,' has a technical interest and charm. Nor will they search in
vain for Gissing's incorrigible mannerisms, his haunting insistence upon
the note of 'Dort wo du nicht bist ist das Glueck,' his tricks of the brush
in portraiture, his characteristic epithets, the _dusking_ twilight, the
_decently ignoble_ penury, the _not ignoble_ ambition, the _not wholly
base_ riot of the senses in early manhood. In my own opinion we have here
in _The Scrupulous Father_, and to a less degree, perhaps, in the first and
last of these stories, and in _A Poor Gentleman_ and _Christopherson_,
perfectly characteristic and quite admirable specimens of Gissing's own
genre, and later, unstudied, but always finished prose style.

* * * * *

But a few words remain to be said, and these, in