Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/192

 Wimborne. Here the Hardys resided, with frequent absences in London and in a Paris flat near the Quai Voltaire, until they moved into their present home, Max Gate.

Instead of immediately and whole-heartedly following up Far from the Madding Crowd with another effort in similar vein, the "coming" novelist felt at this time a strong iteration of the impulse to devote his entire energy to composition in verse. But he was persuaded by Leslie Stephen to continue with his novels, particularly with The Return of the Native, which he had had in hand for some years. From 1870 to 1874 he had produced an important book each year, but there followed an interval of four years before the actual completion and publication of his prose epic of Egdon Heath.

Meanwhile, in 1876, The Hand of Ethelberta, a "comedy in chapters . . . a somewhat frivolous narrative," as he called it, had appeared, and had added little to his reputation, although it is a unique work, and of considerable importance for the study of the development of his art. His preface to the edition of 1895 presented the book as an argument for social liberalism in comedy, defending the claims of the servants’ hall as a proper scene for artistic drama.

In these unhurried years of his career, Hardy continued to write poetry—verse remained throughout his favorite means of literary expression. His ambition to become a great poet was never submerged under a sense of his undoubted success, in spite of himself, as a novelist. It was hinted again and again that only the necessity for earning a livelihood kept him writing fiction.