splendid answer to the objection against what has been called the
episodical novel. The story deals only with ten glorious days in the
life of Hoopdriver, a callow assistant in a draper's "emporium" at
Putney. He learnt to ride a bicycle, set out to tour the south coast
for his short summer holiday and rode into romance. One section of the
book is a trifle too hilarious, coming perilously near to farce, but
underlying the steady humour of it all is a perfectly consistent, even
saddening, criticism of the Hoopdriver type. He has imagination
without ability; life is made bearable for him chiefly by the means of
his poor little dreams and poses; he sees himself momentarily in the
part of a detective, a journalist, a South African millionaire, any
assumption to disguise the horrible reality of the draper's assistant;
and yet there is fine stuff in him. (Perhaps the suggested antithesis
is hardly justified!) We leave him at the door of the Putney shop full
of resolution to read, to undertake his own education, in some way, no
doubt, to better himself, as he might have phrased it. But we doubt
the quality of his determination and of the lasting influence of the
"more wonderful desires and ambitions replacing those discrepant
dreams." We have only followed Hoopdriver through a ten-day episode,
but all his story has been told.

We are in quite a different position with regard to Lewisham. The
history of his encounter with love and the world, published in 1900,
covers a period of four or five years, but while we leave him
down-at-heel, with a wife and a mother-in-law dependent upon him, and
the prospect of fatherhood adding to his responsibilities, we are
uncertain whither his career will take him. Lewisham is the first
sketch for the type that was to be elaborated in five subsequent
books. The allurements of his love for Ethel Henderson spoilt his
chances at the science school, but he has the quality that is so