articles, and books, and pays elaborate
civilities to all new members. I have only seen him at long intervals
of late years; but he has stayed with me once or twice, and has often
pressed me to go and see him in town. I had some business to attend
there this Christmas, and I proposed myself. He wrote a letter of
cordial welcome, and I have now been his guest for four days.

I can't express to you the poignant distress which my visit has caused
me; not exactly a personal distress, for Hardy is not a man to be
directly pitied; but the pathos of the whole thing is very great. His
house has large and beautiful rooms, and I recognised many of the
little treasures--portraits, engravings, statuettes, busts, and
books--which used to adorn the house in Half Moon Street. But the man
himself! He has altered very little in personal appearance. He still
moves briskly, and, except that his hair is nearly white, I could
imagine him to be the same hero that I used to worship. But his egoism
has grown upon him to such an extent that his mind is hardly
recognisable. He still talks brilliantly and suggestively at times; and
I find myself every now and then amazed by some stroke of genius in his
talk, some familiar thing shown in a new and interesting light, some
ray of poetry or emotion thrown on to some dusty and well-known
subject. But he has become a man of grievances; he still has, at the
beginning of a talk, some of the fine charm of sympathy. He will begin
by saying that he wants to know what one thinks of a point, and he will
smile in the old affectionate kind of way, as one might smile at a
favourite child; but he will then plunge into a fiery monologue about
his ambitions and his work. He declaims away, with magnificent
gestures. He still interlards his talk with personal appeals for
approbation, for concurrence, for encouragement; but it is clear he
does not expect an answer, and his demands for sympathy have little
more personal value than the reiterated statement in the Litany that we
are miserable sinners has in the mouth of many respectable church-goers.

The result is that I find myself greatly fatigued by my visit. I have
spent several hours of every day in his society, and I do not suppose
that I have uttered a dozen consecutive words; yet many of his
statements would be well worth discussing, if he were capable of
discussion.

The burden of his song is the lack of that due recognition which he
ought to receive; and th