ABSTRACT
The appearance ofa novel ofmore than average merit by an unknown author is not too common to leave the reviewer without excuse for expressing his gratification thereon when he enjoys the exceptional experience; and the novel before us is only inadequately described when it is defmed by this hackneyed phrase. Mr Gissing is, we believe, a young man, and no one who reads his book will require to be told that he is a young author. The faults ofhis work are apparent enough, and they are not least notable in the lack of constructive skill; but far more striking than the short-comings is the power displayed, the ability to portray and discriminate character, the vivid and graphic descriptive sketches oflife in the London slums, and the intense pathos which often quickens the reader's interest in incidents unattractive in themselves. Then we are never allowed to forget the author's almost overwhelming earnestness. He enters so thoroughly into the varied emotions of the principal characters that we often wonder in reading even the improbable incidents-and the story abounds with suchwhether the author is not sketching from the experience of some one he has personally known. His boldness is fettered by no scruples; he deals with the gravest subjects, and with the most difficult and delicate phases of modern social life; but the utterance of the most outspoken divergence from received opinion never suggests irreverence, and the most realistic pictures of vice and degradation are never open to the charge oflicentious description. We are at a loss to determine whether Mr Gissing shares the opinions ofhis hero and heroine, both ofwhom rise into the serene air of sweetness and light above the mists of such superstitions as Christianity at a very early age. The lady was scarcely
17 when she chanced to find Strauss's Life ofJesus, and before she was 20 she had satisfied herself by a severe course of theological and metaphysical study at Tiibingen, by a close examination of the Positive philosophy and of modern Pessimism, that the human hope of immortality was nothing but a pretty fancy, and that the belief in an all-wise Providence was illogical and unscientific. But she is a beautiful soul, spotless, and only undeserving of the name by which some of her friends called her because she was sympathetic to a degree that Pallas Athenae never was. She devoted her time and her fortune to the amelioration of the poor, and this not merely by means which Miss Octavia Hill would approve, but by daring the dangers of such haunts of vice as would try the courage of the boldest and most philanthropic .of men. The hero, if less immaculate, is more human, and his experience is much more varied. He, too, escapes entirely from the trammels of religious and theological superstitions, and faces cheerfully the issues involved in a belief that there is nothing for us but this world, and that the scheme of man's regeneration must be completed in the sphere of what is known to his material senses. Yet the moral oftheir life and death is not in harmony with the aspirations of the 'advanced.' Their scheme is an utter failure, and more than once at the moment of agony with both of them there is an unconscious appeal to an unknown power. Their aims are unattained, they feel the anguish of despair, each of them utterly fails to reclaim one who is near and dear from degradation and infamy. The lady dies lonely and broken hearted, and the hero, after having seen to his own satisfaction courses of duty in labour and sacrifice, and hopes of amelioration by devotion to art, throws himself down the falls of Niagara, and ends life a miserable failure. Then there is a man of the world, who is utterly indifferent to either religion or philosophy, who, having no principle to guide him, succumbs to temptation, and is guilty of a most dishonourable conspiracy against the young man he had promised to befriend. And we find it equally difficult to determine whether Mr Gissing shares the opinion of the very excellent working men who advocate social changes as the means of elevating the working classes. He certainly guards himselfagainst responsibility for the more extravagant doctrines by setting forth arguments against them, and we are disposed to think that there is no more powerful moral in the novel than that involved in the fall of the lost girl whom the young hero most injudiciously marries. Mr Gissing, indeed, perhaps unconsciously, intensifies the lesson of the doctrine that the elevation ofa class is only
possible by the reformation of its individuals. The girl is presented to us in the midst of temptation, but with the power of choice. The good is set before her, she knows its value; she has no doubt about the impropriety of her conduct, but she allows her appetites and passions to rule, and, not once or twice, she falls. Yet even at her lowest depths we are reminded that there is a possibility of restoration; but it is equally clear that this can only be exercised by a firm determination to resist. Friendly counsels will do much, example and sympathy more, but because she will not herself walk in the way pointed out as the only road to happiness she falls lower and lower.
