5. The Celtic Revival. The revival of Irish literature is of much interest. It began in the effort of a group of writers to preserve and reanimate Irish sentiment and (to a certain extent) the Irish language. It has affected all branches of literature: it has affected poetry, producing poems such as those of Mr. Yeats; it has created a type of drama, and a theater in which to act it; its dramatists include Mr. Synge, Lady Gregory, and (partly) Mr. Shaw; it has added a novelist of importance in George Moore; and it has a worthy example of a man of letters in George Russell, whose nom de plume is “A. E.”
THOMAS HARDY
We shall deal with three outstanding novelists, each of whom is representative of a different class. We shall have space sufficient for a small number only of the other novelists.
1. His Life. Thomas Hardy was born (1840) in Dorsetshire, and after being educated locally finished his studies at King’s College, London. He adopted the profession of an architect, being specially interested in the architecture of early churches. Ambitious to achieve fame as an author, he began, as so many other literary aspirants have done, with poetry. In this branch of literature he met with scant recognition; so, when he was over thirty years old, he took to the writing of novels. These too had no popular success, though they did not go unpraised by discerning critics. Nevertheless, Hardy continued uninterruptedly to issue works of fiction, which gradually but surely brought him fame. He was enabled to abandon his profession as an architect and retire to his native Dorchester, where he lived the life of a literary recluse. Popular applause, which he had never courted, in the end came in full measure. On the occasion of his eightieth birthday the greatest literary figures of the day united to do him homage, and the King, with characteristic felicity, sent a message of gracious compliment. Some years previously (1910) he had received the Order of Merit, no inappropriate distinction.
2. His Poetry. As early as 1865, and thence onward, Mr. Hardy issued fugitive pieces of poetry, which were at length collected and published as Wessex Poems (1898). Many of the poems, none of which is very long, are of the dramatic monologue type. The typical Hardy note is apparent in nearly all of them; a careful and measured utterance, a stern eye for the tragedy of common things, and a somber submission to the dictates of an unkind fate. One or two of them are brighter, with a wry kind of humor, like the well-known Valenciennes. A second collection, Poems of the Past and Present (1901), has a deeper and more sardonic note, but the feeling of pitiful regret is still predominant. This is particularly so in the poems on the South African War. The Dead Drummer, a poem of this group, three brief stanzas in length, tells of Drummer Hodge slain and buried in the veld. The Hardy attitude is almost perfectly revealed in the last stanza:
Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely northern breast and brain
Grow up a southern tree;
And strange-eyed constellations reign