Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/176

 seen, possessed none whatever. It was a case of the poor man and the lady, both extremely conscious of their relative positions.

In this emotional dilemma, the rising figure of George Meredith loomed up as a timely and useful inspiration. Meredith had also begun as a lyricist, but had as yet failed to awaken any large appreciative response. He had turned to fiction, had created Shagpat and Feverel, and was well on his way to distinction. Novel-writing, in those flat fiction days, seemed the easiest and surest route to success.

In 1869, therefore, Hardy set himself to the composition of a first novel. Into it he wrote his notions of the social structure of the times, a structure in which he personally felt himself to be rather hopelessly enmeshed. From it he rigorously excluded all lyric ecstasy.

It turned out to he a “purpose story,” full of that overheated, unripe revolutionary doctrine which one learns to expect from a powerful but slowly maturing mind. Its general tone was akin to that of Shelley's notes to Queen Mab, which Shelley himself later saw to possess more historical than intrinsic value. Hardy's idolatry of the pure-spirited young Romantic rebel thus showed itself in another aspect.

The story, when completed, was called The Poor Man and the Lady. Hardy himself piquantly described it as "a kind of incoherent manuscript, which fell into the hands of John Morley and George Meredith, who both counseled me strongly to write a novel." As a matter of fact, it was scarcely a real novel, being rather a crude, sentimental recounting of a complex plot of intrigue after