Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/204

 ment: the stories of Adam, Abraham, Joseph and Pharaoh, Samuel and Elijah, are alluded to, and the reader is already made aware of his fondness for the Psalms. In A Pair of Blue Eyes, one comes across Judges, Kings, Ruth, Isaiah, and many other books, of both the Old and the New Testament, and the rhymed Psalter figures again. One might continue to gather such references throughout Hardy's writings. That his language, and, to some extent, his very mode of thought, is saturated with Scriptural flavor, few who read his books can deny. It is perhaps in The Book of Job that he finds most food for his enthusiasm—at any rate the immortal words that he puts into the mouth of the dying Jude, punctuated by the "hurrah's" of the gay crowd outside the house, stir the soul of the reader as nothing else could. The words of King Lemuel in the Proverbs, beginning, "Who can find a virtuous woman?" are used with a remarkable ironical effect in Tess, and in The Mayor of Casterbridge, Henchard's compulsion of the village choir to play the tune of the savage 109th Psalm represents the author's belief in the truth to life of Old Testament doctrines, and his criticism of them, on moral grounds. This seems to indicate that although he probably had no knowledge of Hebrew, he was acquainted with the general trend of Biblical criticism.

With the New Testament Hardy is even more familiar than with the Law and the Prophets. The title of one of his novels was taken from the Revelation. Certain passages in Jude the Obscure and in A Tragedy of Two Ambitions seem to show that he had some acquaintance with