ABSTRACT
Again: 'It is better to die in a hovel by the Ionian Sea than in a cellar at Shoreditch.' (But, after all, 0 author of Demos, is it?) Sometimes his bias against modem England seems to amount to a rancour, an.d certainly tempts him to be inconsistent. For example, in describing the general talk at the cafe at Catanzaro, he says:
Yet, he asserts: 'In all the South of Italy money is the one subject of men's thoughts; intellectual life does not exist.' ['Cotrone', ch. vii.] But it has been proved that one may love and hate the same object, and Mr Gissing is doubtless equally sincere in his love and his hatred of England. He has the rare faculty of loving without illusions. This faculty governs also his attitude towards Italy, a country which he sees steadily, and sees it whole. He never idealises, and seldom generalises. He has the virtues ofthe true traveller. His sensibility is so mature. He knows so much, and is so willing to learn. He has seen so much, and so broadly, that he is now a seer. He has an instinct for picking the one suggestive detail out of a mass of trivialities. He can be Roman in
Rome, and take what comes. He can 'put yourself in his place.' He is, above all, human. In his journeying, what occupies him first is man, not art nor relics. His sketch of the female drudge at the hotel at Cotrone is characteristic.
