He said it in A Mummer’s Wife, one of the strongest, most disagreeable books I ever read. But, while the hands were Moore’s, the voice was Zola’s. Moore has always been the victim of methods. He has dissected Tolstoy, Turgénieff, Flaubert, Balzac, and the de Goncourts to see how they do the trick; and as he possesses in a rare degree the mocking-bird voice, his various books were at first echoes of his passionate delvings in the minds of others. A Mummer’s Wife dealt with the English stage—certain phases of it. It was Zola Anglicized. Then followed the trilogy of brutal naturalistic novels, Spring Days, A Modern Lover, and Mike Fletcher, the last being the biggest. The writer exploited to the full his love for what he conceived to be the real, and there are certainly many telling passages in Mike Fletcher. To-day A Modern Lover is recognized as a very truthful study of artistic London, the London that paints and goes to picture galleries. The new man—he was very new then to the younger men—had the gift of gripping your hand with chilly, withal powerful, fingers. He forced you to look at certain surfaces and see them the way he saw them. Because nature had imposed upon him restrictions, he strove earnestly to see more clearly, and by dint of hard gazing he did see, and saw some extraordinary things. Having studied Germinie Lacerteux until he had mastered her, George Moore transposed her into the key of Fielding. His Esther Waters, by far simpler and healthier than the rest, is the Goncourts’ gutter-martyr, Germinie Lacerteux, done into English. But it is admirably done, and the paraphrase became known to the novel-reading world. There was a brief silence, and Celibates appeared. And there were things performed within its pages that sent shivers to your stomach. An outrageous theme was fashioned superbly. One story was a recurrence to Moore’s favorite subject, the Roman Catholic church. Whether he is a Catholic or not, I cannot say, but the church literally obsesses him. Her ritual dominates his vision, and, like a sickly woman, he loves to finger the gorgeous livery of the Lord. He continually returns to this topic. He is exercised, almost haunted, by the notion that outside of her pale salvation is impossible. “What if this be true?” cries George Moore, as he arises from his midnight bed, fearing the dark and looking for some sign of a dawn! I suppose, being a product of our times, he enjoys this acrobatic flirting and balancing on the rope of faith swung over the chasm of doubt and despair. Religion is one of his leading motives, art the other.