ABSTRACT
Hardy, Sir James said, was too shy even to be at home in heaven, were it not that he might meet there Shelley, the young poet of a past age whom he had ever loved.
‘Would you care’, he asked, ‘to have a few words of reminiscence about our illustrious pair, Meredith and Hardy? One of them has told me how he used to rush around Hyde Park three times on end, flying from his misery, and I know the gate on which the other sat and wished he had never been born.1 I don’t know which was the greater.
