Quite apart from its grimly ironic philosophy, the topography, the earthy quality--'take of English earth as much as either hand may rightly clutch'--of the Wessex master's work makes it indigestible reading for an exile of more than thirty or forty; unless, of course, he is of the fine and robust type, whose minds and constitutions function with the steadiness of a good chronometer, warranted for all climes and circumstances. But this mention of Hardy reminds me of a curious literary coincidence which I stumbled upon a few months ago. For me, at all events, it was a discovery. I was reading, quite idly, the story which should long since have been dramatised for the stage, _The Trumpet Major_, written, if I mistake not, in the early 'nineties. I came to chapter xxiii., which opens in this wise: _Christmas had passed. Dreary winter with dark evenings had given place to more dreary winter with light evenings. Rapid thaws had ended in rain, rain in wind, wind in dust. Showery days had come--the season of pink dawns and white sunsets...._ This reading was part of my Hardy debauch. A week or two earlier I had been reading what I think was his first book, written a quarter of a century before _The Trumpet Major_. I refer to _Desperate Remedies_; with all its faults, an extraordinarily full and finished production for a first book. Now, with curiosity in my very finger-tips, I turned over the pages of this volume, reread no more than a week previously. I came presently upon chapter xii., and, following upon its first sentence, read these words: _Christmas had passed; dreary winter with dark evenings had given place to more dreary winter with light evenings. Thaws had ended in rain, rain in wind, wind in dust. Showery days had come--the period of pink dawns and white sunsets...._ That (with a quarter of a century, the writing of many books, and the building up of a justly great and world-wide reputation between the two writings) strikes me as a singular, and, in a way, pleasing literary coincidence; singular, as a freak of subconscious memory for words, pleasing, as a verification in mature life of the writer's comparatively youthful observations of natural phenomena. I wonder if the author, or any others among his almost innumerable readers, have chanced to light upon this particular coincidence!