The name of Hardy is very frequently encountered in Dorset, but the novelist's family is commonly said to be of the same blood as Nelson's Hardy. That Hardy's family possessed the sprightliness and resource of the Dorset people there can be little doubt, and this fact is accentuated by an anecdote concerning Hardy's grandfather, told by Mr Alfred Pope, a member of the Dorset Field Club, at a meeting of the society. About a century ago Mr Hardy's grandfather was crossing a lonely heath one midnight in June when he discovered he was being followed by two footpads. He rolled a furze faggot on to the path, sat down on it, took off his hat, stuck two fern fronds behind his ears to represent horns, and then pretended to read a letter, which he took from his pocket, by the light of the glow-worms he had picked up and placed round the brim of his hat. The men took fright and bolted on seeing him, and a rumour soon got abroad in the neighbourhood that the devil had been seen at midnight near Greenhill Pond. At the age of seventeen Hardy was articled to an ecclesiastical architect of Dorchester named Hicks, and it was in pursuance of this calling that he enjoyed many opportunities of studying not only architecture, but also the country folk, whose types he has been so successful in delineating. Architecture has deeply coloured all his work, from _Desperate Remedies_ to _Jude the Obscure_. The former of these stories (in which, as it will be remembered, three of the characters are architects practising the miscellaneous vocations of stewards, land surveyors and the like, familiar to architects in country towns) appeared in 1871, signed only with initials. It was followed in the next year by _Under the Greenwood Tree_, and at this date Hardy departed from architecture (in which he had distinguished himself so far as to be a prize-winner at a Royal Society's competition). In 1873 _A Pair of Blue Eyes_ appeared, and in 1874 _Far from the Madding Crowd_ ran through the _Cornhill_. It was the first of his books to be published in yellow-backed form, which was then a sign that the novel had reached the highest point of popularity. His first novel, _The Poor Man and the Lady_, was never published, and probably never will be, having been suppressed at Hardy's own request, although accepted for publication on the advice of George Meredith. But it was not long before he had finished a second story, _Desperate Remedies_, which first saw the light through the agency of Tinsley Brothers in 1871.