inburne and other true men, he
regards Mrs. Gamp as representing the quintessence of literary art wielded
by genius. Try (he urges with a fine curiosity) 'to imagine Sarah Gamp as a
young girl'! But it is unfair to separate a phrase from a context in which
every syllable is precious, reasonable, thrice distilled and sweet to the
palate as Hybla honey.[22]

[Footnote 22: A revised edition (the date of Dickens's birth is wrongly
given in the first) was issued in 1902, with topographical illustrations by
F.G. Kitton. Gissing's introduction to _Nickleby_ for the Rochester edition
appeared in 1900, and his abridgement of Forster's _Life_ (an excellent
piece of work) in 1903 [1902]. The first collection of short stories,
twenty-nine in number, entitled _Human Odds and Ends_, was published in
1898. It is justly described by the writer of the most interesting
'Recollections of George Gissing' in the _Gentleman's Magazine,_ February
1906, as 'that very remarkable collection.']

Henceforth Gissing spent an increasing portion of his time abroad, and it
was from St. Honore en Morvan, for instance, that he dated the preface of
_Our Friend the Charlatan_ in 1901. As with _Denzil Quarrier_ (1892) and
_The Town Traveller_ (1898) this was one of the books which Gissing
sometimes went the length of asking the admirers of his earlier romances
'not to read.' With its prefatory note, indeed, its cheap illustrations,
and its rather mechanical intrigue, it seems as far removed from such a
book as _A Life's Morning_ as it is possible for a novel by the same author
to be. It was in the South of France, in the neighbourhood of Biarritz,
amid scenes such as that described in the thirty-seventh chapter of _Will
Warburton_, or still further south, that he wrote the greater part of his
last three books, the novel just mentioned, which is probably his best
essay in the lighter ironical vein to which his later years inclined,[23]
_Veranilda_, a romance of the time of Theodoric the Goth, written in solemn
fulfilment of a vow of his youth, and _The Private Papers of Henry
Ryecroft_, which to my mind remains a legacy for Time to take account of as
the faithful tribute of one of the truest artists of the generation he
served.

[Footnote 23: It also contains one of the most beautiful descriptions ever
penned of the visit of a tired town-dweller to a modest rural home, with
all its suggestion of trim gardening, fresh country scents, indigenous
food, and h