of verse, _Time's Laughingstocks_ in 1909, _Satires of
Circumstance,_ 1914, and _Moments of Vision,_ 1917; and he is
a familiar and welcome guest in contemporary magazines.

Is it possible that when, at the close of the nineteenth century,
Thomas Hardy formally abandoned prose for verse, he was either
consciously or subconsciously aware of the coming renaissance of
poetry? Certainly his change in expression had more significance than
an individual caprice. It is a notable fact that the present poetic
revival, wherein are enlisted so many enthusiastic youthful
volunteers, should have had as one of its prophets and leaders a
veteran of such power and fame. Perhaps Mr. Hardy would regard his own
personal choice as no factor; the Immanent and Unconscious Will had
been busy in his mind, for reasons unknown to him, unknown to man,
least of all known to Itself. Leslie Stephen once remarked, "The
deepest thinker is not really--though we often use the phrase--in
advance of his day so much as in the line along which advance takes
place."

Looking backward from the year 1918, we may see some new meaning in
the spectacle of two modern leaders in fiction, Hardy and Meredith,
each preferring as a means of expression poetry to prose, each
thinking his own verse better than his novels, and each writing verse
that in substance and manner belongs more to the twentieth than to the
nineteenth century. Meredith always said that fiction was his kitchen
wench; poetry was his Muse.

The publication of poems written when he was about twenty-five is
interesting to students of Mr. Hardy's temperament, for they show that
he was then as complete, though perhaps not so philosophical a