's puppets to draw away attention from
the fact that he himself is doing all the talking. His people have
individuality, power of speech, power of motion. He does not tell you
that such a one is clever or witty; the character which he has created
does that for himself by doing clever things and making witty remarks.
In an excellent story by a celebrated modern master there is a young
lady who is declared to be clever and brilliant. Out of forty or fifty
observations which she makes, the most extraordinary concerns her
father; she says, 'Isn't dear papa delightful?' At another time she
inquires whether another gentleman is not also delightful. Hardy's
resources are not so meagre as this. When his people talk we
listen,--we do not endure.

He knows other things besides men and women. He knows the soil, the
trees, the sky, the sunsets, the infinite variations of the landscape
under cloud and sunshine. He knows horses, sheep, cows, dogs, cats. He
understands the interpretation of sounds,--a detail which few
novelists comprehend or treat with accuracy; the pages of his books
ring with the noises of house, street, and country. Moreover there is
nothing conventional in his transcript of facts. There is no evidence
that he has been in the least degree influenced by other men's minds.
He takes the raw stuff of which novels are made and moulds it as he
will. He has an absolutely fresh eye, as painters sometimes say. He
looks on life as if he were the first literary man, 'and none had ever
lived before him.' Paraphrasing Ruskin, one may say of Hardy that in
place of studying the old masters he has studied what the old masters
studied. But his point of view is his own. His pages are not
reminiscent of other pages. He never makes you think of something you
have read, but invariably of something you have seen or would like to
see. He is an original writer, which means that he takes his material
at first hand and eschews documents. There is considerable evidence
that he has read books, but there is no reason for supposing that
books have damaged him.

Dr. Farmer proved that Shakespeare had no 'learning.' One might
perhaps demonstrate that Thomas Hardy is equally fortunate. In that
case he and Shakespeare may felicitate one another. Though when we
remember that in our day it is hardly possible to avoid a tincture of
scholarship, we may be doing the fairer thing by these two men if we
say that the one had small Greek and the other has