Three months after this essay was written the first volume of the long awaited definitive edition of Mr Hardy's works (the Mellstock Edition) appeared. It was with no common thrill that we read in the precious pages of introduction the following words confirming the theory upon which the first part of the essay is largely based. 'Turning now to my verse--to myself the more individual part of my literary fruitage--I would say that, unlike some of the fiction, nothing interfered with the writer's freedom in respect of its form or content. Several of the poems--indeed many--were produced before novel-writing had been thought of as a pursuit; but few saw the light till all the novels had been published.... 'The few volumes filled by the verse cover a producing period of some eighteen years first and last, while the seventeen or more volumes of novels represent correspondingly about four-and-twenty years. One is reminded by this disproportion in time and result how much more concise and quintessential expression becomes when given in rhythmic form than when shaped in the language of prose.' _Present Condition of English Poetry_ Shall we, or shall we not, be serious? To be serious nowadays is to be ill-mannered, and what, murmurs the cynic, does it matter? We have our opinion; we know that there is a good deal of good poetry in the Georgian book, a little in _Wheels_.[13] We know that there is much bad poetry in the Georgian book, and less in _Wheels_. We know that there is one poem in _Wheels_ beside the intense and sombre imagination of which even the good poetry of the Georgian book pales for a moment. We think we know more than this. What does it matter? Pick out the good things, and let the rest go. [Footnote 13: _Georgian Poetry_, 1918-1919. Edited by E.M. (The Poetry Bookshop.) _Wheels_. Fourth Cycle. (Oxford: B.H. Blackwell.)] And yet, somehow, this question of modern English poetry has become important for us, as important as the war, important in the same way as the war. We can even analogise. _Georgian Poetry_ is like the Coalition Government; _Wheels_ is like the Radical opposition. Out of the one there issues an indefinable odour of complacent sanctity, an unctuous redolence of _union sacrée_; out of the other, some acidulation of perversity. In the coalition poets we find the larger number of good men, and the larger number of bad ones; in the opposition poets we find no bad ones with the coalition badness, no good ones with the coalition goodness, but in a single case a touch of the apocalyptic, intransigent, passionate honesty that is the mark of the martyr of art or life.