my Xu Zhimo

Much that Mr Hardy has amused himself by collecting is quite trifling, conceived in the crude ferments of youth, and expressed with woodenness of rhythm and a needlessly inflated diction.

We do not conceal our opinion that Mr Hardy's success in poetry is of a very narrow range. He is entirely dependent for his inspiration upon this curiously intense and somewhat dismal vision of life, which is upon him almost as an obsession. Where he is not carried along by this, his movement is faltering, and his touch prosaic.

Review in The Athenaeum (14 January 1899)