Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/132

 school of verse—knows Shakespeare to the very dregs of the footnotes. Indeed he's a poet himself in a small way."

Of more interest than the rather idle question of the partial survival of the real Hardy in Springrove are the latter's opinions on architecture, art, and life, which sound remarkably like what we should expect from Hardy:

"He says that your true lover breathlessly finds himself engaged to a sweetheart, like a man who has caught something in the dark. He doesn't know whether it is a bat or a bird, and takes it to the light when he is cool to learn what it is. He looks to see if she is the right age, hut right age or wrong age, he must consider her a prize. Some time later he ponders whether she is the right kind of prize for him. Right kind or wrong kind, he has called her his, and must abide by it. After a time he asks himself, ‘Has she the temper, hair, and eyes I meant to have, and was firmly resolved not to do without?' He finds it all wrong, and then comes the tussle—"

"Do they marry and live happily?"

"Who? Oh, the supposed pair. I think he said—well, I really forget what he said."

"That is stupid of you," said the young lady with dismay.

"Yes."

"But he's a satirist—I don't think I care about him now."

"There you are just wrong. He is not. He is, as I believe, an impulsive fellow who has been made to pay the penalty of his rashness in some love-affair."

The sentiments here ascribed to Springrove might have been Hardy's own in his early years, but hardly the experiences with which the youthful architect-philosopher is credited. But when we recall Hardy's subsequent abandonment of architecture for verse, and of verse for