...'
which reaches forward to the love poems of 1912-13, was written in 1890.
Whether the development of Mr Hardy's poetry was concealed or visible
during the period of the novels, development there was into a maturity
so overwhelming that by its touchstone the poetical work of his famous
contemporaries appears singularly jejune and false. But, though by the
accident of social conditions--for that Mr Hardy waited till 1898 to
publish his first volume of poems is more a social than an artistic
fact--it is impossible to follow out the phases of his poetical progress
in the detail we would desire, it is impossible not to recognise that
the mature poet, Mr Hardy, is of the same poetical substance as the
young poet of the 'sixties. The attitude is unchanged; the modifications
of the theme of 'crass casualty' leave its central asseveration
unchanged. There are restatements, enlargements of perspective, a slow
and forceful expansion of the personal into the universal, but the truth
once recognised is never suffered for a moment to be hidden or
mollified.
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