Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/93



The humorous poems of Barnes contain no exuberance of spirits, nor violent or riotous fun, but maintain merely a fair level of geniality, as in the pleasant eclogue, the Sly Bit o' Coorten of John and Fanny. Hardy's humor, as we find it in the more whimsical anecdotes in A Few Crusted Characters, calls forth the reader's smile much more readily; occasionally it is downright uproarious.

Popular beliefs and folklore such as Hardy delighted to weave into his stories can be found in A Witch and in the eclogue The Vearries.

Blaake's House in Blackmwore is a piece that must have excited the interest of Hardy, as it presents a very palpable poetic analogy to his own first published piece of prose, How I Built Myself a House. It tells the story of the building of a countryman's house and of his first housewarming, in very effective, high-spirited verse, decked out with many ingenious internal rhymes.

Human nature was pictured by Barnes as being essentially good—and usually as sturdy and unflinching under the buffetings of the external world. Even in False Friends-Like, wherein the rustic singer announces his possession of wisdom by experience, in his distrust of the