HARDY THE NOVELIST BY DAVID CECIL THIS study was composed as a course of lectures. I fear that, transferred to the printed page, its mode of expression may seem at once too colloquial and too declamatory, too loose in structure and too emphatic in phrase, not to jar on a fastidious taste. If so, I hope my critics will remember that it was designed to be heard by an audience, not perused by a solitary reader and will grant me their indulgence. May I also take this occasion to thank the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, first for doing me the honour of inviting me to deliver the Clark Lectures, and secondly for the warmth of their welcome to me during my sojourn in their stately courts. D.C. CERTAINLY it is gratifying to be asked to deliver the Clark Lectures. Yet, when I first sat down seriouslyto consider the task before me, gratification changed to despondency. For these lectures meant literary criticism and, somehow, I found myself disinclined to add to the already...