The Life of Thomas Hardy
of the Roman readers by the main consideration of Æneas's fulfilment of Rome's destiny. In like manner when reading The Dynasts one is conscious of the chilling effect which the dominant conception of the Immanent Will has upon the purely human motives introduced into the play. This combination of a typically classical viewpoint with an occasional modern exploitation of sentiment forms indeed one of the outstanding excellences of the work, although the superficial reader may feel it as a dilemma. While Hardy expresses his view of life consciously, definitely, and frankly, Æschylus works more unconsciously and does not force his intellectual convictions to the surface, leaving them rather to be naturally reflected or implied in his work. In this respect the ancient writer is the greater poet.
Hardy and Æschylus are strikingly alike in the way they regard and treat the language they use—and this in spite of the fact that they use widely different languages. Both apply with the greatest freedom the principle of the essential flexibility and fluidity of language. The opinion of the conservative contemporaries of Æschylus as to the language he employed is very amusingly presented in the famous scene of the contest of words between the shades of Euripides and of Æschylus in Aristophanes' Frogs. The method of weighing in a balance single lines of the rival authors is employed in order to determine which of the two writes the weightier verse. Æschylus, of course, is the easy winner—his resounding phrases never fail to send the carefully wrought lines of his younger rival soaring upward. It would be interesting to apply the same comparative test,
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