Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/128

 lyrics almost invariably assume what is felt to be their inevitable metrical forms. The novels also, despite their Shakespearean management of events in time and space, always were molded within a singularly closely knit unity of action. Their structure has frequently enough been called "architectonic." Irrelevancy in the matter of design is one fault that can never be charged against Hardy by the most hostile stretch of a critic's imagination. His early studies of architecture may not be entirely responsible for his impeccability in this most important sphere, but they undoubtedly made of him a more conscious artist in the field of literary craftsmanship than he would have been without them. From first to last his work showed an instinctive and highly developed feeling both of proportion and of decorative beauty. Beauty, that is to say, in the earlier Greek sense—a sense in which the two notions of "beauty" and "order" were conceived as identical, and in which the same word, , was employed to express both.

The architectural atmosphere naturally served to add a large amount of its distinctive color to Hardy’s work. In Desperate Remedies, for instance, the three principal characters are all architects. The rather colorless Owen Graye's apprenticeship at Creston may possibly have been suggested by the author's own experiences under Mr. Hicks. Æneas Manston, the architect-steward, is the first example of a rather rare type in Hardy: the almost undiluted villain. The character and the experiences of the hero, Edward Springrove, on the other hand, seem to reflect not only Hardy’s earlier experiences, but even his permanent artistic opinions. There are so many