a compassion that extends from man to the earth-worn, and the
diseased leaves of the tree. Such a conception gave his novels a
high seriousness which few ofhis contemporaries possessed.
No theory can in itself make a novelist, and Hardy’s novels,
whether they are great or not have appealed to successive gen
erations o f readers.
In 1874 he married and in 1885 built a remote country home in
Dorset. From 1877 on he spent three to four months a year in a
fashionable society, while the rest ofthe time he lived in the country.
In 1895 his “Jude the Obscure” was so bitterly criticized, that
Hardy decided to stop writing novels altogether and returned to
an earlier dream. In 1898 he published his first volume of poetry.
Over the next 1 wenty-nine years Hardy completed over 900 lyrics.
His verse was utterly independent o f the taste of his day. He
used to say: ”My poetry was revolutionary in the sense that I
meant to avoid the jewelled line....” Instead, he strove for a rough,
natural voice, with rustic diction and irregular meters expressing
concrete, particularized impressions o f life.
Thomas Hardy has been called the last o f the great Victori
ans. He died in 1928. His ashes are buried in Westminster Abbey,
but, because ofhis lasting relationship with his home district, his
heart is buried in Wessex. His position as a novelist is difficult to
asses with any certainty. At first he was condemned as a “sec
ond-rate romantic”, and in the year ofhis death he was elevated
into one o f tbe greatest figures of English literature. The first
view is ill-informed and the second may well be excessive, but
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