The Architect (1856-1863)
tive literary endeavors. He acquiesced, abandoned literature temporarily, and applied himself with more or less strictness to his official work until the end of his indentures. The discipline did him no harm, as later events amply proved. Hardy, one suspects, was never too proud of his Domicilium.
His tastes for learning, however, began to emerge as his unsuccessful schooldays faded into the past. With some avidity he resumed the study of Latin and began to puzzle over the Greek. The influence of the ancient Hellenic language and literature was from this time on to manifest itself in overweening measure over his work. Fortunately, he soon found in one of the young pupils of Mr. Hicks another ambitious amateur classical scholar. Together the two youths pored over their texts, assisting each other with the vocabulary, constructions and renderings. These studies, started in 1857, ceased in 1860.
Hardy had now passed his twenty-first birthday, and was rapidly learning to appreciate the value of some of the permanent artistic compensations in life: classical literature, Gothic architecture, nature reflected in English poetry.
There are hints of several important friendships formed by Hardy as he approached manhood: with a London man of letters, a temporary sojourner in Dorset, who possibly instilled in the youth his first ambition to create original literature, a person perhaps reflected in the character of Henry Knight of A Pair of Blue Eyes; and with a number of young men who had designs of entering the Non-Conformist clergy, and with whom Hardy
[97]
