ich is the consequence of this neglect. Ben Jonson said that
"Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging"; perhaps we may go
so far as to say that Mr. Hardy, for his indifference to a mellifluous
run lays himself open to a mild rebuke. He is negligent of that eternal
ornament of English verse, audible intricacy, probably because of
Swinburne's abuse of it. But most of what is called his harshness should
rather be called bareness, and is the result of a revolt, conscious or
unconscious, against Keats' prescription of "loading the rifts with
ore."

In saying this, all has been said that an enemy could in justice say in
blame of his metrical peculiarities. Unquestionably he does
occasionally, like Robert Browning, err in the direction of cacophony.
But when we turn to the broader part of prosody, we must perceive that
Mr. Hardy is not only a very ingenious, but a very correct and admirable
metricist. His stanzaic invention is abundant; no other Victorian poet,
not even Swinburne, has employed so many forms, mostly of his own
invention, and employed them so appropriately, that is to say, in so
close harmony with the subject or story enshrined in them. To take an
example from his pure lyrics of reflection first, from "The
Bullfinches":--

"Brother Bulleys, let us sing
From the dawn till evening!
For we know not that we go not
When the day's pale visions fold
Unto those who sang of old,"

in the exquisite fineness and sadness of the stanza we seem to hear the
very voices of the birds warbling faintly in the sunset. Again, the
hurried, timid irresolution of a lover always too late is marvellously
rendered in the form of "Lizbie Browne":--

"And Lizbie Browne,
Who else had hair
Bay-red as yours,
Or flesh so fair
Bred out of doors,
Sweet Lizbie Browne?"

On the other hand, the fierceness of "I said to Love" is interpreted in
a stanza that suits the mood of denunciation, while "Tess's Lament"
wails in a metre which seems to rock like an ageing woman seated alone
before the fire, with an infinite haunting sadness.

It is, however, in the narrative pieces, the little _Wessex Tales_,
that Mr. Hardy's metrical imagination is most triumphant. No two of
these are identical in form, and for each he selects, or more often
invents, a wholly appropriate stanza. He makes many experiments, one of
the strangest being the introduction of rhymeless lines at regular
intervals. Of t