Gods of Modern Grub Street: Impressions of Contemporary Authors

Thomas Hardy
GODS OF MODERN GRUB STREET
IMPRESSIONS OF CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS
BY A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK
WITH THIRTY-TWO PORTRAITS AFTER PHOTOGRAPHS BY
E. O. HOPPÉ
NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY MCMXXIII
Copyright, 1923, by Frederick A. Stokes Company
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Those who dissent from Byron’s dictum that Keats was “snuffed out by an article” usually add that no author was ever killed by criticism; yet there seems little doubt that the critics killed Thomas Hardy the novelist, and our only consolation is that from the ashes of the novelist, phœnix-like rose Thomas Hardy the Poet.
As a novelist, Hardy began and finished his career in the days of Victoria, but though he has only been asserting himself as a poet since then, his earliest verse was written in the sixties; his first collection of poetry, the “Wessex Poems,” appeared in 1898, and his second in the closing year of the Queen’s reign. These facts should give us pause when we are disposed to sneer again at Victorian literature. Even the youngest scribe among us is constrained to grant the greatness of this living Victorian, so if we insist that the Victorians are over-rated we imply some disparagement of their successors, who have admittedly produced no novelists that rank so high as Hardy and few poets, if any, that rank higher.