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
having a unity unlike that of any contemporary author. The poems became
public only after they had laid the foundations of their judgment. For
them Mr Hardy's work was done. Whatever he might subsequently produce
was an interesting, but to their criticism an otiose appendix to his
prose achievement.

It happens therefore that to a somewhat younger critic the perspective
may be different. By the accident of years it would appear to him that
Mr Hardy's poetry was no less a _corpus_ than his prose. They would be
extended equally and at the same moment before his eyes; he would embark
upon voyages of discovery into both at roughly the same time; and he
might find, in total innocence of preciousness and paradox, that the
poetry would yield up to him a quality of perfume not less essential
than any that he could extract from the prose.

This is, as we see it, the case with ourselves. We discover all that our
elders discover in Mr Hardy's novels; we see more than they in his
poetry. To our mind it exists superbly in its own right; it is not
lifted into significance upon the glorious substructure of the novels.
They also are complete in themselves. We recognise the relation between
the achievements, and discern that they are the work of a single mind;
but they are separate works, having separate and unique excellences. The
one is only approximately explicable in terms of the other. We incline,
therefore, to attach a signal importance to what has always seemed to us
the most important sentence in _Who's Who?_--namely, that in which Mr
Hardy confesses that in 1868 he was compelled--that is his own word--to
give up writing poetry for prose.

For Mr Hardy's poetic gift is not a late and freakish flowering. In the
volume into which has been gathered all his poetical work with the
exception of 'The Dynasts,'[12] are pieces beari