Madame Cibot of Balzac's _Le Cousin Pons_, render the book an intensely
gloomy one; it ends on a note of poignant misery, which gives a certain
colour for once to the oft-repeated charge of morbidity and pessimism.
Gissing understood the theory of compensation, but was unable to exhibit it
in action. He elevates the cult of refinement to such a pitch that the
consolations of temperament, of habit, and of humdrum ideals which are
common to the coarsest of mankind, appear to elude his observation. He does
not represent men as worse than they are; but he represents them less
brave. No social stratum is probably quite so dull as he colours it. There
is usually a streak of illusion or a flash of hope somewhere on the
horizon. Hence a somewhat one-sided view of life, perfectly true as
representing the grievance of the poet Cinna in the hands of the mob, but
too severely monochrome for a serious indictment of a huge stratum of our
common humanity. As in _Thyrza_, the sombreness of the ground generates
some magnificent pieces of descriptive writing.

'Hours yet before the fireworks begin. Never mind; here by good
luck we find seats where we can watch the throng passing and
repassing. It is a great review of the people. On the whole, how
respectable they are, how sober, how deadly dull! See how worn-out the
poor girls are becoming, how they gape, what listless eyes most of
them have! The stoop in the shoulders so universal among them merely
means over-toil in the workroom. Not one in a thousand shows the
elements of taste in dress; vulgarity and worse glares in all but
every costume. Observe the middle-aged women; it would be small
surprise that their good looks had vanished, but whence comes it they
are animal, repulsive, absolutely vicious in ugliness? Mark the men in
their turn; four in every six have visages so deformed by ill-health
that they excite disgust; their hair is cut down to within half an
inch of the scalp; their legs are twisted out of shape by evil