His mind had considerable natural
affinity with that of Tennyson.[26] He was passionately fond of old
literature, of the study of metre and of historical reverie. The subtle
curiosities of Anatole France are just of the kind that would have appealed
irresistibly to him. His delight in psychological complexity and feats of
style are not seldom reminiscent of Paul Bourget. His life would have
gained immeasurably by a transference to less pinched and pitiful
surroundings: but it is more than doubtful whether his work would have done
so.
[Footnote 26: In a young lady's album I unexpectedly came across the line
from _Maud_, 'Be mine a philosopher's life in the quiet woodland ways,'
with the signature, following the quotation marks, 'George Gissing.' The
borrowed aspiration was transparently sincere. 'Tennyson he worshipped'
(see _Odd Women_, chap. i.). The contemporary novelist he liked most was
Alphonse Daudet.]
The compulsion of the twin monsters Bread and Cheese forced him to write
novels the scene of which was laid in the one milieu he had thoroughly
observed, that of either utterly hideous or shabby genteel squalor in
London. He gradually obtained a rare mastery in the delineation of his
unlovely _mise en scene_.
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