Great Possessions Part 44

"The foundation of Mr. Galsworthy's talent, it seems to me, lies in a remarkable power of ironic insight combined with an extremely keen and faithful eye for all the phenomena, on the surface of the life he observes. These are the purveyors of his imagination, whose servant is a style clear, direct, sane, illumined by a perfectly unaffected sincerity. It is the style of a man whose sympathy with mankind is too genuine to allow him the smallest gratification of his vanity at the cost of his fellow creatures, ... sufficiently pointed to carry deep his remorseless irony, and grave enough to be the dignified vehicle of his profound compa.s.sion. Its sustained harmony is never interrupted by those bursts of cymbals and fifes which some deaf people acclaim for brilliance. Mr. Galsworthy will never be found futile by anyone and never uninteresting by the most exacting."

MR. JOSEPH CONRAD in _The Outlook_.