Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/175

 its present form, largely determined by the characteristic expressions that run through its "Overworld" scenes.

The year 1870 marks Hardy's temporary abandonment of the poetic muse, and his turn to the writing of fiction, equipped with the training of an architect, the reading of an eclectic, and a full-grown philosophy of life. Already thirty years of age, he had not yet found his métier, but was still "feeling his way towards a method." In the period that followed he was destined to win fame as novelist, but kept up the practice of poetry just as he had done during his architectural training. When he finally, in the last twenty-five years of his life, devoted all his energies to his beloved poetic composition, he had behind him an experience and training of such breadth and depth as fall to the lot of but few men while their spirits and faculties are still at their height. His powers of observation and expression seem to have increased rather than diminished with the accumulation of years—and if his last poetry really represents the best that was ever in him, it is only another evidence of the truism that a man does best what he likes best to do.

Towards the end of Hardy’s residence at Weymouth, the economic pinch made itself felt more and more. His poems were unsalable. Yet he had to live—and if possible, by literature. It was really necessary that he make some sort of mark in the world. Emma Gifford expected it of him. Her family possessed at least academic and ecclesiastical distinction; Hardy's, so far as could be