Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/174

 mediately followed his first period of poetic activity. One must then be very careful in applying the term "evolution" to the development of Hardy’s ideas and expressions from the beginning of his career as a writer to its close. His experiences throughout his life seem never to have modified to any considerable degree the underlying ideas with which he began to write. Many of the conceptions upon which the philosophy of The Dynasts was built can be found to exist in embryo in his first writings, however much they became enriched and mellowed through the intellectual and real experiences of the writer throughout the thirty-five years of his development as a writer and thinker. The greatest landmark of "Hardyism" in all his work is The Dynasts, the really complete and entirely mature expression of all the aspects of his art and thought. In this crowning work of his career can best be studied the apparent inconsistencies as well as the things that make for unity in all his writings. It is not of very great importance to get the poems subsequent to 1870 dated to any degree of accuracy, inasmuch as foreshadowings of The Dynasts can be found nearly everywhere in Hardy. However, by following the chronological line wherever feasible in an analysis of both his prose and his poetry, it is possible to observe how modifying influences asserted themselves at various times, becoming assimilated into, and enriching, his great and ever-increasing body of ideas, and how they kept supplying new technical and artistic aids to the poet. It is quite safe to add that if Hardy had not in his later years come in contact with the work of Schopenhauer, The Dynasts could never have assumed