ABSTRACT
Mr Gissing's new book will astonish his admirers. It is totally unlike anything of his we have read before. Apparently, so far as method goes, he has been studying Mrs Hungerford, 'John Strange Winter,' Mr Norris and the 'Young Ladies' Journal.' The result is a grammatical novelette. Langley and the widow Lady Revill loved long ago, and did not marry because she was pure-minded, and Langley, albeit a bachelor, was a father. So she married an elderly baronet to mortify the flesh. Afterwards, unknown to Langley, she adopted the boy. Then, in the simple way of novelettes, the father and the son meet at Athens, and the reader is amazed at the stupidity of Langley and the world generally, in ignoring the glaring, the scandalous likeness upon which Mr Gissing insists. The son dies, and the widow and Langley rejuvenesce and marry. In addition to the story, there is a curious flavour ofpurpose in this book which is strange in Mr Gissing's work. Instead of being driven by the inevitabilities of character, these people move just as Mr Grant Allen's Hill Top populace moves, on the strings of principle. Lady Revill is respectable, religious, and given to making herself miserable, out of sheer righteousness, and the backbone of the book is her conversion to a belated joyousness. It would be a commonplace story from anyone but Mr Gissing. From him it is possibly something more than an artistic lapse; it may be the indication of a change of attitude. We must confess that the possibility of a gospel
