[OCTOBER, 1919.




_The Poetry of Mr Hardy_


One meets fairly often with the critical opinion that Mr Hardy's poetry
is incidental. It is admitted on all sides that his poetry has curious
merits of its own, but it is held to be completely subordinate to his
novels, and those who maintain that it must be considered as having
equal standing with his prose, are not seldom treated as guilty of
paradox and preciousness.

We are inclined to wonder, as we review the situation, whether those of
the contrary persuasion are not allowing themselves to be impressed
primarily by mere bulk, and arguing that a man's chief work must
necessarily be what he has done most of; and we feel that some such
supposition is necessary to explain what appears to us as a visible
reluctance to allow Mr Hardy's poetry a clean impact upon the critical
consciousness. It is true that we have ranged against us critics of
distinction, such as Mr Lascelles Abercrombie and Mr Robert Lynd, and
that it may savour of impertinence to suggest that the case could have
been unconsciously pre-judged in their minds when they addressed
themselves to Mr Hardy's poetry. Nevertheless, we find some significance
in the fact that both these critics are of such an age that when they
came to years of discretion the Wessex Novels were in existence as a
_corpus_. There, before their eyes, was a monument of literary work