ABSTRACT
At this rate, M. Taine would hardly have had patience w~th the confidences of Henry Ryecroft in Mr Gissing's new book; and Henry Ryecroft was not, by his own statement, and on the face of it, a Wordsworth. His diary, a collection of short unconnected essays, is hardly, as the author describes it, written gossip. It is nowhere sufficiently personal nor sufficiently human for good gossip (for there is such a thing as good gossip). Nor does it carry conviction as an honest diary, except, of course, the diary of a literary man who hopes some day to sell his meditations. The suppositious author, while he was in a sense an individualist, had not the winning kind of egotism which makes a fascinating diarist.
