her. But however natural this may be in an age
like ours, the art of the literary product is, as a rule,
injured by the habit of using fiction as a jumping-board for
theory. In some instances, dullness has resulted. Eliot has not
escaped scot-free. With Hardy, he is, to my taste, never dull.
Repellent as "Jude" may be, it is never that. But a hardness of
manner and an unpleasant bias are more than likely to follow
this aim, to the fiction's detriment.

It is a great temptation to deflect from the purpose of this
work in order to discuss Hardy's short stories, for a master in
this kind he is. A sketch like "The Three Strangers" is as truly
a masterpiece as Stevenson's "A Lodging for The Night." It must
suffice to say of his work in the tale that it enables the
author to give further assurance of his power of atmospheric
handling, his stippling in of a character by a few strokes, his
skill in dramatic scene, his knowledge of Wessex types, and
especially, his subdued but permeating pessimism. There is
nothing in his writings more quietly, deeply hopeless than most
of the tales in the collection "Life's Little Ironies." One
shrinks away from the truth and terror of them while lured by
their charm. The short stories increase one's admiration for the
artist, but the full, more virile message conies from the
Novels. It is matter for regret that "Jude the Obscure," unless
the signs fail, is to be his last testament in fiction. For such
a man to cease from fiction at scarce sixty can but be deplored.
The remark takes on added pertinency because the novelist has
essayed in lieu of fiction the poetic drama, a form in which he
has less ease and authority.

Coming when he did and feeling in its full measure the tidal
wave from France, Hardy was compelled both by inward and outward
pressure to see life un-romantically, so far as the human fate
is concerned: but always a poet at heart (he began with verse),
he found a vent for that side of his being in Nature, in great
cosmic realities, in the stormy, passionate heart of humanity,
so infinite in its aspirations, so doughty in its heroisms, so
pathetic in its doom. There is something noble always in the
tragic largeness of Hardy's best fiction. His grim determinism
is softened by lyric airs; and even when man is most lonesome,
he is consoled by contact with "the pure, eternal course of
things"; whose august flow comforts Arnold. Because of his art,
the representative character of