, 'Lyrical'), give to this
most unequal and imperfect book a certain crepuscular fascination of its
own. Passages in it, certainly, are not undeserving that fine description
of a style _si tendre qu'il pousse le bonheur a pleurer_. Emily's father,
Mr. Hood, is an essentially pathetic figure, almost grotesquely true to
life. 'I should like to see London before I die,' he says to his daughter.
'Somehow I have never managed to get so far.... There's one thing that I
wish especially to see, and that is Holborn Viaduct. It must be a wonderful
piece of engineering; I remember thinking it out at the time it was
constructed. Of course you have seen it?' The vulgar but not wholly inhuman
Cartwright interior, where the parlour is resolved into a perpetual
matrimonial committee, would seem to be the outcome of genuine observation.
Dagworthy is obviously padded with the author's substitute for melodrama,
while the rich and cultivated Mr. Athel is palpably imitated from Meredith.
The following tirade (spoken by the young man to his mistress) is Gissing
pure. 'Think of the sunny spaces in the world's history, in each of which
one could linger for ever. Athens at her fairest, Rome at her grandest, the
glorious savagery of Merovingian Courts, the kingdom of Frederick II.
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