Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/134

 of merit to material success, is an interesting, but not a particularly momentous question. What Springrove says of the writing of poetry is of more importance. Hardy, like Springrove, wrote many verses "on emotional subjects" in his twenty-sixth year. This was probably the most fruitful year of his "early period." It may also be true that this poetic activity "ruined him for a useful occupation." But he never passed completely through the stage of poetizing as did Springrove. The whole passage contains enough of the real truth of the matter to make it very interesting, but hardly enough, taken by itself, to form a sound basis for an estimate of the writer's real position.

Similar problems present themselves when we turn to the other novel in which architecture plays a dominating role. In following through the experiences of George Somerset in A Laodicean, from the time when he is at first encountered sketching Gothic ruins for restoration purposes, the reader is puzzled to know just where the personal recollections of the author leave off and where pure invention begins. Is the first chapter of the book to be considered as sincere criticism, autobiography, or mere fiction? It is undoubtedly all of these things, but to what proportionate degree cannot be determined. The hero is presented as a young man who takes "greater pleasure in floating in lonely currents of thought than with the general tide of opinion," who had grown enthusiastic over Palladian and Renaissance when the French-Gothic mania was at its height, who finally, quite bewildered on the question of style, concluded "that all styles were extinct, and with them all architecture as