The Life of Thomas Hardy
studied the New Testament in Greek while he argued with them in behalf of the Anglican doctrines and ritual. Possible reflections of this episode might be discovered in the student Somerset’s delicious technical defence of Infant Baptism as recorded in A Laodicean, or in Jude's attempted study of H KAINH ΔIAθHKH. As biographical data, however, most of this material lies too patently in the realm of pure conjecture. For the present it must remain there, inasmuch as Hardy has evidently never seen fit to supply inquirers with a detailed and authoritative account of any such personal influences.
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In 1862 Hardy was at last released from his bondage to Hicks. He left the Dorchester office and set out for London. As a nine-year-old, he had already had a few glimpses of the city in a rare visit there with his parents, but he had seen little of it since. He now carried with him an introduction to Arthur Blomfield, who held the reputation of being a "good restorer," and a master of the Revived Gothic. This Blomfield was at the time a man of thirty-two, and had just achieved the dignity of the position of President of the Architectural Association. Later he became the official architect to the Bank of England and the designer of the law courts branch in Fleet Street. He was knighted in 1889.
Hardy became Blomfield's assistant, receiving instruction from him in London and traveling all over the country to see that restoration work was carried out with as little vandalism as possible.
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