Thomas Hardy _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE Hilaire Belloc 12 Arnold Bennett 22 John Davys Beresford 32 John Buchan 42 Donn Byrne 52 William Henry Davies 62 Walter de la Mare 72 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 82 John Drinkwater 92 Jeffery Farnol 102 John Galsworthy 112 Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins 122 Arthur Stuart Menteth Hutchinson 132 Sheila Kaye-Smith 142 Rudyard Kipling 152 William John Locke 162 Stephen McKenna 172 Compton Mackenzie 182 John Masefield 192 Alfred Edward Woodley Mason 202 William Somerset Maugham 212 William Babington Maxwell 222 Leonard Merrick 232 Alan Alexander Milne 242 Alfred Noyes 252 E. Phillips Oppenheim 262 May Sinclair 272 Frank Swinnerton 282 Hugh Walpole 292 Herbert George Wells 302 Israel Zangwill 312 THOMAS HARDY 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.