THOMAS HARDY.
Genius proves itself as much by the tenacity of its taste for one handicraft as by anything else; it evidences itself not so much in versatility as in volume. It is rather a mark of mediocre mentality when a man must needs lay his hand to the doing of this and that. Genius, as a rule, has no such itch; generally speaking, he is content to fulfill himself in one given direction—to maintain his being in a single sphere with a passion superior to that of his fellows. Thus it is we seldom find after leaving the regions of facile talent writers whose inspiration expresses itself in prose and poetical form with equal seriousness; one is the vehicle of the divine voice, the other a mere diversion. Goethe, it is true, has given us “Wilhelm Meister,” Victor Hugo was a great poet as well as a great romancer, George Meredith, as we have endeavored to show, is a singer of peculiar force as well as a master novelist, and among the later literary figures of especial power we have Kipling, whose prose and poetry about balance the scale of worth; but the exceptions are few, and the logic of letters tends to show oneness of aim in the case of genius.
Thomas Hardy undoubtedly belongs to the ranks of great novelists; his series of romances has been laid on the firm basis of beauty and knowledge; he has hallowed a part of England peculiarly rich in unique personality and natural charm; it belongs to him and the heirship of his memory as validly as though it had been granted him by the Crown. So well has he filled the office of fictionist that there seems no need of an attempt on his part to enforce his fame by appearing as a poet. The publication of “Wessex Poems” (New York: Harper & Bros.) is indeed no positive declaration of such ambition; it is perhaps put forth hesitatingly rather in response to public demand than because of a conviction of its intrinsic merit. It represents the fruit of odd moments punctuating a long literary career. The character of the volume is what one might have anticipated, although had it been of a wholly different sort it could scarcely have created surprise. There are two Hardys—the man on whose heart weighs the melancholy facts of human existence and the happier artist in close and peaceful communion with the sweet infinite spirit of nature. It is the former Hardy that figures in the volume singularly unsoftened by any intimation of the other phase of the writer.
The character of Hardy himself as existing behind the art-self is one that inspires a peculiar interest. One would know it not simply to gratify a curiosity that, indeed, is too much indulged of late in lines of gross private revelation, but to weigh the justice of the charge of wilful pessimism so generally made against him. The gloomy brow of Hardy’s art seems far from being of that impersonal sort which makes much of the modern melancholy of literature inexcusable as a mere degenerate seeking.
One feels inclined to say that Hardy’s prose is poetry and his poetry prose. The present volume reveals little of the genuine lyric gift, but the singing while labored is not without force and individual color. Some of the ballads possess considerable spirit, and where character is outlined it cuts the consciousness with Hardy’s well-known skill of vivid portraiture; as for instance, “The Dance at the Phœnix,” describing the passion of an aged dame for the pleasures of her youth how she steals forth from the bed of her good man to foot it gaily at the inn and how on her return at morn she dies from over-exertion; “Her Death and After” where the lover of a dead woman sacrifices her fair fame for the sake of rescuing her child from the cruelties of a stepmother; and “The Burghers,” a tale of guilty lovers, and a husband’s unique conduct. In these, as in other poems of the kind, one can not but feel that Hardy would have put the matter so much better in prose; which, indeed, is what in some cases he has done. Some of the contemplative verse has a quaintness of expression which suggests the sonnets of Shakespeare; the lines are frequently lame, but every now and then there is a really virile phrase. In true old English style are some of the lyrics, of which “The Stranger’s Song” is perhaps the most successful:
O! my trade, it is the rarest one,
Simple shepherds all—
My trade is a sight to see;
For my customers I tie, and take ’em up on high,
And waft ’em to a far countree!
My tools are but common ones,
Simple shepherds all—
My tools are no sight to see;
A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing,
Are implements enough for me!
To-morrow is my working day,
Simple shepherds all—
For the farmer’s sheep is slain, and the lad who did it ta’en,
And on his soul may God ha’ mercy!
That love proves itself at best a pathetic compromise is plainly gleaned from the pages of the poems. There is sounded no joyous though momentary content in heart-possession: nothing there we find but a record of youth, its dreams darkened and blighted by the false promises of time; bitter retrospect of age beholding a heavy philosophy scrawling on all fair things of life and faith the epitaph of fragility and decay. The earth-bound character of the poet’s thought is well illustrated in the following lines:
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstacy,
That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”
Then would I bear, and clench myself and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased, too, that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.
But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan....
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
And again, in “Nature’s Questionings,” we find him conceiving the “field, flock and lonely tree” as asking:
“Has some Vast Imbecility,
Mighty to build and blend,
But impotent to tend,
Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?
“Or come we of an Automaton
Unconscious of our pains....
Or are we live remains
Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone?”
“Or is it that some high Plan Betides,
As yet not understood,
Of Evil stormed by Good;
We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?”
And having no conclusion for his own heart—
“No answerer I....
Meanwhile, the winds, and rains,
And Earth’s old glooms and pains,
Are still the same, and gladdest Life Death
Neighbors nigh.”
One instinctively compares this with Tennyson’s spirit of noble meditation in “In Memoriam;” and it must be confessed that Hardy suffers by comparison as lacking the essential attributes of Anglo-Saxon courageousness. One regrets the publication of “Wessex Poems,” for it reveals the character of a great writer in an unfortunate and belittling light; to reconstruct one’s impression of his power and personality one feels the need of reopening one of his most delightful books, such as “The Woodlanders,” to breathe its good smells of Mother Earth, and under its domination as an exquisite pastoral production find there, and not in “Wessex Poems,” Thomas Hardy, the poet.
—Edward A. Uffington Valentine.