Tread where one will, the soil has been drenched with
blood. An immemorial woe sounds even through the lilting notes of
Italian gaiety. It is a country, wearied and regretful, looking ever
backward to the things of old.'--(p. 130.)
The _Ionian Sea_ did not make its appearance until 1901, but while he was
actually in Italy, at Siena, he wrote the greater part of one of his very
finest performances; the study of _Charles Dickens_, of which he corrected
the proofs 'at a little town in Calabria.' It is an insufficient tribute to
Gissing to say that his study of Dickens is by far the best extant. I have
even heard it maintained that it is better in its way than any single
volume in the 'Man of Letters'; and Mr. Chesterton, who speaks from ample
knowledge on this point, speaks of the best of all Dickens's critics, 'a
man of genius, Mr. George Gissing.' While fully and frankly recognising the
master's defects in view of the artistic conscience of a later generation,
the writer recognises to the full those transcendent qualities which place
him next to Sir Walter Scott as the second greatest figure in a century of
great fiction. In defiance of the terrible, and to some critics damning,
fact that Dickens entirely changed the plan of _Martin Chuzzlewit_ in
deference to the popular criticism expressed by the sudden fall in the
circulation of that serial, he shows in what a fundamental sense the author
was 'a literary artist if ever there was one,' and he triumphantly refutes
the rash daub of unapplied criticism represented by the parrot cry of
'caricature' as levelled against Dickens's humorous portraits.
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