Ferment (1863-1870)
importance to note that Hardy treated the language as an essentially flexible medium, and as an instrument that had not yet become rigid and fixed. He did not recognize any established use of words and expressions which would make for a stereotyped literary product. In dealing with the general questions of language and usage in his poetical works, we are fortunate enough to possess a clear expression of his own opinion, as delivered to William Archer:
I have no sympathy with the criticism that would treat English as a dead language—a thing crystallized at an arbitrarily selected stage of its existence, and hidden to forget that it has a past and deny that it has a future. Purism, whether in grammar or vocabulary, always means ignorance. Language was made before grammar, not grammar before language. And as for the English vocabulary, purists seem to ignore the lessons of history and common sense.
In Hardy's natural style, his colloquialism, and in his occasional use of the dramatic monologue, we can find many points of contact with the system of poetical expression adopted and developed by Browning. But with regard to situations selected for presentation, and underlying ideas and ideals, the two poets show an antipodean dissimilarity that makes any comparison an absolute impossibility.
The sonnet-form predominated in this early verse, and great skill was exhibited in its employment, both in the Italian and Shakespearean types of structure. The texture of these admirably compact examples usually carries one backwards rather than forwards in time, and reminds one strongly of the atmosphere evoked by the cycles of the greater sonneteers of the later Sixteenth
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