ury of imaginative creation, he has not modified the large
outlines of his art in the smallest degree. To early readers of his
poems, before the full meaning of them became evident, his voice sounded
inharmonious, because it did not fit in with the exquisite melodies of
the later Victorian age. But Mr. Hardy, with characteristic pertinacity,
did not attempt to alter his utterance in the least, and now we can all
perceive, if we take the trouble to do so, that what seemed harsh in his
poetry was his peculiar and personal mode of interpreting his thoughts
to the world.

As in his novels so in his poems, Mr. Hardy has chosen to remain local,
to be the interpreter for present and future times of one rich and
neglected province of the British realm. From his standpoint there he
contemplates the wide aspect of life, but it seems huge and misty to
him, and he broods over the tiny incidents of Wessex idiosyncracy. His
irony is audacious and even sardonic, and few poets have been less
solicitous to please their weaker brethren. But no poet of modern times
has been more careful to avoid the abstract and to touch upon the real.

SOME SOLDIER POETS

The two years which preceded the outbreak of the war were marked in this
country by a revival of public interest in the art of poetry. To this
movement coherence was given and organisation introduced by Mr. Edward
Marsh's now-famous volume entitled _Georgian Poetry_. The effect of this
collection--for it is hardly correct to call it an anthology--of the
best poems written by the youngest poets since 1911 was two-fold; it
acquainted readers with work few had "the leisure or the zeal to
investigate," and it brought the writers themselves together in a
corporate and selected relation. I do not recollect that this had been
done--except prematurely and partially by _The Germ_ of 1850--since the
_England's Parnassus_ and _England's Helicon_ of 1600. In point of fact
the only real precursor of Mr. Marsh's venture in our whole literature
is the _Songs and Sonnettes_ of 1557, commonly known as _Tottel's
Miscellany_. Tottel brought together, for the first time, the lyrics of
Wyatt, Surrey, Churchyard, Vaux, and Bryan, exactly as Mr. Marsh called
public attention to Rupert Brooke, James Elroy Flecker and the rest of
the Georgians, and he thereby fixed the names of those poets, as Mr.
Marsh has fixed those of our youngest fledglings, on the roll of English
literature.

The general tone