verstept; it is not a truly proportioned view of life, one
feels; if life were really so bad as that, no one would be
willing to live it, much less exhibit the cheerfulness which is
characteristic of the majority of human beings. It is a fair
guess that in the end it will be called the artistic mistake of
a novelist of genius. Its harsh reception by critics in England
and America was referred to by the author privately as an
example of the "crass Philistinism" of criticism in those lands:
Mr. Hardy felt that on the continent alone was the book
understood, appreciated. I imagine, however, that whatever the
limitations of the Anglo-Saxon view, it comes close to the
ultimate decision to be passed upon this work.

One of the striking things about these Novels is the sense that
they convey of the largeness of life. The action moves on a
narrow stage set with the austere simplicity of the
Elizabethans; the personages are extremely commonplace, the
incidents in the main small and unexciting. Yet the
tremendousness of human fate is constantly implied and brought
home in the most impressive way. This is because all have
spiritual value; if the survey be not wide, it sinks deep to the
psychic center; and what matters vision that circles the globe,
if it lacks grasp, penetration, uplift? These, Hardy has. When
one calls his peasants Shaksperian, one is trying to express the
strength and savor, the rich earthy quality like fresh loam that
pertains to these quaint figures, so evidently observed on the
ground, and lovingly lifted over into literature. Their speech
bewrays them and is an index of their slow, shrewd minds.

Nor is his serious characterization less fine and representative
than his humorous; especially his women. It is puzzling to say
whether Hardy's comic men, or his subtly drawn, sympathetically
visualized women are to be named first in his praise: for power
in both, and for the handling of nature, he will be long
remembered. Bathsheba, Eustacia, Tess and the rest, they take
hold on the very heart-strings and are known as we know our very
own. It is not that they are good or bad,--generally they are
both; it is that they are beautifully, terribly human. They
mostly lack the pettiness that so often fatally limits their sex
and quite as much, they lack the veneer that obscures the broad
lines of character. And it is natural to add, while thinking of
Hardy's women, that, unlike almost all the Victorian novelists,
he