Hardy, is, and will remain, a great and lonely figure in our literature. It is possible to trace the descent of almost every other writer, to name the artistic influences that went to his making, but Hardy is without literary ancestry; Dickens and Thackeray, Tennyson and Browning, had forerunners, and have left successors. We know, as a matter of fact, what porridge John Keats had, but we do not know that of Hardy. Like every master, he unwittingly founded a school, but none of his imitators could imitate him except superficially, and already the scholars are going home and the master will presently be alone in his place apart. His style is peculiarly his own; as novelist and poet he has worked always within his own conception of the universe as consistently as he has worked within the scope and bounds of his own kingdom of Wessex, and “within that circle none durst walk but he.” HILAIRE BELLOC [Illustration: HILAIRE BELLOC] So long and persistently has Hilaire Belloc been associated in the public mind with G. K. Chesterton--one ingenious jester has even linked and locked them together in an easy combination as the Chesterbelloc--that quite a number of people now have a vague idea that they are inseparables, collaborators, a sort of literary Siamese twins like Beaumont and Fletcher or Erckmann-Chatrian; and the fact that one appears in this volume without the other may occasion some surprise. Let it be confessed at once that Chesterton’s omission from this gallery is significant only of his failure--not in modern letters, but to keep any appointments to sit for his photograph.