ABSTRACT
The literary descent of the second-rate is rarely in doubt. There can be no obscurity as to the parentage of the imitators or school fictionists who flood the markets with tolerable reading matter at six shillings per volume. But their individual descent, whether it be legitimate or illegitimate, has no interest for the critic. He is content to view them as he weighs them, in the mass, when he estimates common tendencies only. It is a different thing when a new development or a striking
personality compels his attention and individual interest. Among those who have by slow, by very slow, degrees compelled this particular interest Mr George Gissing stands in a high and solitary place. Mr Gissing belongs to no school, certainly not to any English school. The sincerest form offlattery in any admirer cannot imitate and cannot even caricature him. There is truly nothing visible to copy. His essence lies in a bent, in a mood ofmind, not by any means in any subject, even though his satiric dissection of what he has called 'the ignobly decent' showed his strength, and, indirectly, his inner character. His very repugnance to his early subjects led him to choose them. He declared what he wished the world to be by showing that it possessed every conceivable opposite to his desire.
