my Xu Zhimo

Mr Hardy is too selfconscious, too deliberately rhetorical, too monotonously disenchanted, for the word poet to spring naturally to our lips at all in connection with this book. There is more of sheer poetry in his novels. Mr Hardy has his lyrical moments...although we fell that he has had difficulty in urging his vocabulary to keep pace with him...

Unsigned review in The Academy (23 November 1901)