I
'The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people
that can write know anything.' So said a man who, during a busy
career, found time to add several fine volumes to the scanty number of
good books. And in a vivacious paragraph which follows this initial
sentence he humorously anathematizes the literary life. He shows
convincingly that 'secluded habits do not tend to eloquence.' He says
that the 'indifferent apathy' so common among studious persons is by
no means favorable to liveliness of narration. He proves that men who
will not live cannot write; that people who shut themselves up in
libraries have dry brains. He avows his confidence in the 'original
way of writing books,' the way of the first author, who must have
looked at things for himself, 'since there were no books for him to
copy from;' and he challenges the reader to prove that this original
way is not the best way. 'Where,' he asks, 'are the amusing books from
voracious students and habitual writers?'
This startling arraignment of authors has been made by other men than
Walter Bagehot. Hazlitt in his essay on the 'Ignorance of the Learned'
teaches much the same doctrine. Its general truth is indisputable,
though Bagehot himself makes exception in favor of Sir Walter Scott.
But the two famous critics are united in their conviction that learned
people are generally dull, and that books which are the work of
habitual writers are not amusing.
There are as a matter of course more exceptions than one. Thomas Hardy
is a distinguished exception. Thomas Hardy is an 'habitual writer,'
but he is always amusing. The following paragraphs are intended to
emphasize certain causes of this quality in his work, the quality by
virtue of which he chains the attention and proves himself the most
readable novelist now living. That he does attract and hold is clear
to any one who has tried no more than a half-dozen pages from one of
his best stories. He has the fatal habit of being interesting,--fatal
because it robs you who read him of time which you might else have
devoted to 'improving' literature, such as history, political economy,
or light science. He destroys your peace of mind by compelling your
sympathies in behalf of people who never existed. He undermines your
will power and makes you his slave. You declare that you will read but
one more chapter and you weakly consent to make it two chapters. As a
special indulgence you spoil a working day in order to learn about the
_Return of the Native_, perhaps agreeing with a supposititious 'better
self' that you will waste no more time on novels for the next six
months. But you are of ascetic fibre indeed if you do not follow up
the book with a reading of _The Woodlanders_ and _The Mayor of
Casterbridge_.
There is a reason for this. If the practiced writer often fails to
make a good book because he knows nothing, Mr. Hardy must succeed in
large part because he knows so much. The more one reads him the more
is one impressed with the extent of his knowledge. He has an intimate
acquaintance with an immense number of interesting things.
He knows men and women--if not all sorts and all conditions, at least
a great many varieties of the human animal. Moreover, his men are men
and his women are women. He does not use them as figures to accentuate
a landscape, or as ventriloquist's puppets to draw away attention from
the fact that he himself is doing all the talking. His people have
individuality, power of speech, power of motion. He does not tell you
that such a one is clever or witty; the character which he has created
does that for himself by doing clever things and making witty remarks.
In an excellent story by a celebrated modern master there is a young
lady who is declared to be clever and brilliant. Out of forty or fifty
observations which she makes, the most extraordinary concerns her
father; she says, 'Isn't dear papa delightful?' At another time she
inquires whether another gentleman is not also delightful. Hardy's
resources are not so meagre as this. When his people talk we
listen,--we do not endure.
He knows other things besides men and women. He knows the soil, the
trees, the sky, the sunsets, the infinite variations of the landscape
under cloud and sunshine. He knows horses, sheep, cows, dogs, cats. He
understands the interpretation of sounds,--a detail which few
novelists comprehend or treat with accuracy; the pages of his books
ring with the noises of house, street, and country. Moreover there is
nothing conventional in his transcript of facts. There is no evidence
that he has been in the least degree influenced by other men's minds.
He takes the raw stuff of which novels are made and moulds it as he
will. He has an absolutely fresh eye, as painters sometimes say. He
looks on life as if he were the first literary man, 'and none had ever
lived before him.' Paraphrasing Ruskin, one may say of Hardy that in
place of studying the old masters he has studied what the old masters
studied. But his point of view is his own. His pages are not
reminiscent of other pages. He never makes you think of something you
have read, but invariably of something you have seen or would like to
see. He is an original writer, which means that he takes his material
at first hand and eschews documents. There is considerable evidence
that he has read books, but there is no reason for supposing that
books have damaged him.
Dr. Farmer proved that Shakespeare had no 'learning.' One might
perhaps demonstrate that Thomas Hardy is equally fortunate. In that
case he and Shakespeare may felicitate one another. Though when we
remember that in our day it is hardly possible to avoid a tincture of
scholarship, we may be doing the fairer thing by these two men if we
say that the one had small Greek and the other has adroitly concealed
the measure of Greek, whether great or small, which is in his
possession. To put the matter in another form, though Hardy may have
drunk in large quantity 'the spirit breathed from dead men to their
kind,' he has not allowed his potations to intoxicate him.
This paragraph is not likely to be misinterpreted unless by some
honest soul who has yet to learn that 'literature is not sworn
testimony.' Therefore it may be well to add that Mr. Hardy undoubtedly
owns a collection of books, and has upon his shelves dictionaries and
encyclopedias, together with a decent representation of those works
which people call 'standard.' But it is of importance to remember
this: That while he may be a well-read man, as the phrase goes, he is
not and never has been of that class which Emerson describes with pale
sarcasm as 'meek young men in libraries.' It is clear that Hardy has
not 'weakened his eyesight over books,' and it is equally clear that
he has 'sharpened his eyesight on men and women.' Let us consider a
few of his virtues.