The Soil (. . . 1850)
themselves as in a chemical process. The typical and unvarying Hodge ceases to exist. He has been disintegrated into a number of varied fellow-creatures—beings of many minds, beings infinite in difference; some happy, many serene, a few depressed, one here and there bright even to genius, some stupid, others wanton, others austere; some mutely Miltonic, some potentially Cromwellian; into men who have private views of each other, as the observer has of his friends; who can applaud or condemn each other, amuse or sadden themselves by the contemplation of each other's foibles or vices; men everyone of whom walks in his own individual way the road to dusty death."
These people of Hardy's, one may be reasonably sure, composed the actual Wessex "backbone," at least until about 1860. Additional illumination of a brilliant quality is thrown over this picture by Hardy's remarks on the country clergy. The fact that he delivered them to a "quondam parson" may have colored them somewhat charitably, but still he sounded the note of sincerity when he said:
"Great credit is due to the parson, who, in my opinion, does much to keep up the interest in these quiet villages. It would be a thousand pities that such men, educated, sympathetic, original-minded as many of them are, should be banished by looming difficulties of dogma, and the villages given over to the narrow-mindedness and the lack of charity of some lower class of teacher."
"How, then," asked his interlocutor, "do you explain the great dislike that exists in the rural breast for the parson?" To which Hardy replied:
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