’He saw much company and all of low intellectual order; he had purchased a bicycle and regarded it as a source of distinction, or means of displaying himself before shopkeepers’ daughters; he believed himself a moderate tenor and sang verses of sentimental imbecility; he took in several weekly papers of unpromising title for the chief purpose of deciphering cryptograms, in which pursuit he had singular success.  Add to these characteristics a penchant for cheap jewellery, and Oliver Peak stands confessed.’

The story of the book is revealed in Peak’s laconic ambition, ’A plebeian, I aim at marrying a lady.’  It is a little curious, some may think, that this motive so skilfully used by so many novelists to whose work Gissing’s has affinity, from Rousseau and Stendhal (Rouge et Noire) to Cherbuliez (Secret du Precepteur) and Bourget (Le Disciple), had not already attracted him, but the explanation is perhaps in part indicated in a finely written story towards the close of this present volume.[15] The white, maidenish and silk-haired fairness of Sidwell, and Peak’s irresistible passion for the type of beauty suggested, is revealed to us with all Gissing’s wonderful skill in shadowing forth feminine types of lovelihood.  Suggestive too of his oncoming passion for Devonshire and Western England are strains of exquisite landscape music scattered at random through these pages.  More significant still, however, is the developing faculty for personal satire, pointing to a vastly riper human experience.  Peak was uncertain, says the author, with that faint ironical touch which became almost habitual to him, ’as to the limits of modern latitudinarianism until he met Chilvers,’ the sleek, clerical advocate of ’Less St. Paul and more Darwin, less of Luther and more of Herbert Spencer’:—­

’The discovery of such fantastic liberality in a man whom he could not but dislike and contemn gave him no pleasure, but at least it disposed him to amusement rather than antagonism.  Chilvers’s pronunciation and phraseology were distinguished by such original affectation that it was impossible not to find entertainment in listening to him.  Though his voice was naturally shrill and piping, he managed to speak in head notes which had a ring of robust utterance.  The sound of his words was intended to correspond with their virile warmth of meaning.  In the same way he had cultivated a habit of the muscles which conveyed an impression that he was devoted to athletic sports.  His arms occasionally swung as if brandishing dumb-bells, his chest now and then spread itself to the uttermost, and his head was often thrown back in an attitude suggesting self-defence.’

[Footnote 15:  See page 260.]