ABSTRACT
It is almost impossible, in dealing with Mr George Gissing's last book, Our Friend the Charlatan to avoid a comparison with The Egoist of Mr Meredith. In many points Dyce Lashmar (who is the charlatan of Mr Gissing's novel) bears a strong resemblance to the great Sir Willoughby. True, he is not quite the gentleman, and the head of the house of Patterne, with all his faults, was always well-bred; he has no sense of chivalry whatsoever, whereas the baronet preserved some touch of the true feeling even in the most adverse circumstances. But both men laboured under a magnified sense of their own importance; both, curiously enough, found themselves engaged at different times-once at the same time-to three several ladies ; and both ended by marrying, as a last resort, the woman whom they had at first ruthlessly sacrificed for the sake of greater attractions. These coincidences are sufficiently remarkable to make some comparison almost inevitable, and it is a comparison from which very few of our novelists could emerge unscathed. Mr Gissing's work is always interesting; he writes far better than the mob ofnovelists, and his psychology is wonderfully subtle and acute. Dyce Lashmar is drawn with great power and delicacy; as a character study he is hardly inferior to the Egoist himsel£: and, indeed, the characters, one and all, with the possible exception ofMrs Toplady, are unmistakably living men and women. But the story has not the breadth and spacious atmosphere of Mr Meredith's masterpiecethere is no Crossjay, and no Clara Middleton. This, ofcourse, is to try the book by a lofty standard, but Mr Gissing invites comparison with the best. His work is very good indeed; his insight and observation very much above the ordinary. He has probed Dyce Lashmar relentlessly-perhaps almost too relentlessly-until we are all but forced to feel pity for a fellow mortal whose soul is so laid bare to the world. And, after all, was the conveyance of that 'bio-sociological' theory (from the French of M. Jean Izoulet) so very terrible a matter? Miss Constance Bride, to our thinking, was a little hard on the unhappy man about this business, in spite of the plausibility with which he argued his case. And Miss Bride herself: for some little time, seems to
