further. Mr. Swinnerton has written four or five other novels before
this one, but none of them compare with it in quality. His earlier books
were strongly influenced by the work of George Gissing; they have
something of the same fatigued greyness of texture and little of the
artistic completeness and intense vision of _Nocturne_. He has also made
two admirable and very shrewd and thorough studies of the work and lives
of Robert Louis Stevenson and George Gissing. Like these two, he has had
great experience of illness. He is a young man of so slender a health,
so frequently ill, that even for the most sedentary purposes of this
war, his country will not take him. It was in connection with his
Gissing volume, for which I possessed some material he needed, that I
first made his acquaintance. He has had something of Gissing's
restricted and grey experiences, but he has nothing of Gissing's almost
perverse gloom and despondency. Indeed he is as gay a companion as he is
fragile. He is a twinkling addition to any Christmas party, and the
twinkle is here in the style. And having sported with him "in his times
of happy infancy," I add an intimate and personal satisfaction to my
pleasant task of saluting this fine work that ends a brilliant
apprenticeship and ranks Swinnerton as Master. This is a book that will
not die. It is perfect, authentic, and alive. Whether a large and
immediate popularity will fall to it I cannot say, but certainly the
discriminating will find it and keep it and keep it alive. If Mr.
Swinnerton were never to write another word I think he might count on
this much of his work living, as much of the work of Mary Austen, W.H.
Hudson, and Stephen Crane will live, when many of the more portentous
reputations of to-day may have served their purpose in the world and
become no more than fading names.

DECEMBER, 1917