Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/234

 invariably old English words, or, less frequently, direct descendants of Greek or Latin originals.

This Teutonic, as distinguished from the Celtic or Romance viewpoint with regard to the history and future development of English is not without some significance for the study of Hardy's larger "Weltanschauung." Again we discover his spirit to be en rapport with the ancient inhabitants of Wessex, the genius of whose country has always exercised such a firm hold upon him.

Among critics it was fashionable, until a very short time ago, to point the finger of scorn at Hardy's efforts in versification. His technique as a prose-novelist has always evoked admiration for its purity and sureness of touch, but these qualities do not seem to have been so easily discoverable in his poetry. Even so acute an appraiser of contemporary literature as Richard Le Gallienne, while admitting Hardy's claim to greatness, dismissed his verse by calling it "poetry-in-travail rather than poetry delivered." Lawrence Binyon probed the matter somewhat more deeply, when he observed that the mechanism of a Hardy-stanza "creaks and, groans with the pressure of its working," and that "there is something incongruous between the prosaic plainness of speech and the tight structure of the rather elaborate lyric form to which it is trimmed." The recognition of Hardy's merits and demerits as a versifier will, perhaps fortunately, depend ultimately on the examples of his art that he has himself produced, rather than on the hastily formed opinions of his first readers.

No one will ever claim for Hardy's poetry the golden melody of a Shelley or a Burns, nor the symphonic splen-