Deryk Barker correctly attributed:

>It (Egdon Heath) is inspired by Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native
>(or one particular passage).

Imogen Holst is quoted on the liner notes to Sir Adrian Boult's 1962
recording with the London Philharmonic:

   "The mood of Egdon Heath had grown out of a sentence in the opening
   chapter of The Return of the Native, where the heath is described as
   a 'a place perfectly accordant with man's nature -- neither ghastly,
   hateful, nor ugly; neither common-place, unmeaning, nor tame; but
   like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and
   mysterious in its swarthy monotony.'

   "This is the sentence that Holst quotes on his title page.  There
   is another quotation which seems particularly appropriate (to the
   1960s).  'Haggard Egdon,' wrote Hardy, 'appeals to a subtler and
   scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt emotion, than that which
   responds to the sort of beauty called charming and fair.  The time
   seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when the chastened
   sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain will be all of nature that
   is absolutely in keeping with the moods of the more thinking among
   mankind'."

John Dalmas
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