rfectly reducible, takes time to think out, and at a
hasty glance seems muffled up in obscurity beyond the darkness of Donne;
moreover, it is scarcely worthy in form of the virtuoso which Mr. Hardy
was presently to become. Perhaps of the poems certainly attributable to
this earliest period, the little cycle of sonnets called "She to Him"
gives clearest promise of what was coming. The sentiment is that of
Ronsard's famous "Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, a la
chandelle," but turned round, as Mr. Hardy loves to do, from the man to
the woman, and embroidered with ingenuities, such as where the latter
says that as her temperament dies down the habit of loving will remain,
and she be

"Numb as a vane that cankers on its point,
True to the wind that kissed ere canker came,"

which attest a complexity of mind that Ronsard's society knew nothing
of.

On the whole, we may perhaps be safe in conjecturing that whatever the
cause, the definite dedication to verse was now postponed. Meanwhile,
the writing of novels had become the business of Mr. Hardy's life, and
ten years go by before we trace a poet in that life again. But it is
interesting to find that when the great success of _Far from the Madding
Crowd_ had introduced him to a circle of the best readers, there
followed an effect which again disturbed his ambition for the moment.
Mr. Hardy was once more tempted to change the form of his work. He
wished "to get back to verse," but was dissuaded by Leslie Stephen, who
induced him to start writing _The Return of the Native_ instead. On
March 29th, 1875, Coventry Patmore, then a complete stranger, wrote to
express his regret that "such almost unequalled beauty and power as
appeared in the novels should not have assured themselves the
immortality which would have been conferred upon them by the form of
verse." This was just at the moment when we find Mr. Hardy's
conversations with "long Leslie Stephen in the velveteen coat"
obstinately turning upon "theologies decayed and defunct, the origin of
things, the constitution of matter, and the unreality of time." To this
period belongs also the earliest conception of _The Dynasts_, an old
note-book containing, under the date June 20th, 1875, the suggestion
that the author should attempt "An Iliad of Europe from 1789 to 1815."

To this time also seems to belong the execution of what has proved the
most attractive section of Mr. Hardy's poetry, the narratives, or short