The Life of Thomas Hardy
his intimate acquaintance with its landmarks, and seemed to cry for expression in meter and rhyme.
He actually composed much verse during this period, but destroyed most of it subsequently. None of it has been offered to public inspection, and only one of these poems ever saw print. This was a set of verses called Domicilium, an expression of the powerful effect exerted by his natural environment over his childhood and early youth. It was composed and worked over between 1857 and 1860. Twenty-five copies of it were printed in the form of a seven-page booklet on April 5, 1916, by Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode for Clement Shorter, and were distributed privately. The piece has been guarded with intense (and somewhat ridiculous) jealousy. Some day, perhaps, it will be possible to compare it with that beautiful section of Wordsworth's Prelude which was originally entitled The Influence of Natural Objects in Calling Forth and Strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth.
Tentative sketches for essays and tales were also set down by the student at this time. But when news of these ventures into a precarious and questionable field came to the ears of Mr. Hicks and the elder Mr. Hardy, the youth was informed in no uncertain terms that he was to apply himself with stern exclusiveness to architecture, under pain of the instant withdrawal of his sustenance. One may be sure that his mother had little to do with this peremptory command.
Hardy was in those days, however, an obedient boy. Besides, the threat to throw him entirely upon his own resources was something of a deterrent to unremunera-
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