CHAPTER VIII
The Lyric Poet (1898-1922)
WHEN Hardy's first volume of poems, Wessex Poems, appeared in 1898, illustrated with sketches by the author, now approaching his sixtieth year, everyone was disposed to regard it as an interesting but not particularly valuable illustration of a great novelist's self-entertainment by means of incidental experiments with art and poetry. When, three years later, his next book proved to be Poems of the Past and the Present, readers began to suspect that his career as a novelist might have to be considered as definitely closed. The most current speculation as to the probable cause of this rather unexpected turn of affairs was that Hardy had been disgusted and disheartened by the adverse and hysterical criticism leveled against Jude. As it was humorously put in Max Beerbohm's burlesque Sequelula to The Dynasts:
. . . And lately, I believe,
Another parasite has had the impudence
To publish an elaborate account
Of our (for so we deemed it) private visit.
His name?
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