The Life of Thomas Hardy
motives of over-friendly men (remembering a trick played upon him years ago by an older boy who invited him to ride in a barrow and then overturned him into a puddle), he retains his good humor throughout, only remarking cunningly, when offered unearned favors:
An' thank en, I do veel a little shy.
Even fundamentally unattractive characters like "Old Gruffmoody Grim" are regarded in a humorous and roughly tolerant manner.
These kindly Barnes-personages were not without their softening effect upon Hardy's work. William Dewy, in Under the Greenwood Tree, for instance, is a typical Barnes-peasant. "His was a humorous and kindly nature, not unmixed with a frequent melancholy; and he had a firm religious faith." In his poetic treatment of such themes as the love-child, however, Hardy showed himself as colder and more dispassionate than Barnes, as more calculating and as less spontaneous, although he undoubtedly felt the tragedy of the situation far more deeply. This distinction between the two poets is clearly reflected in Hardy's verse-patterns, which, in comparison with the regularity of Barnes's, strike one at first as curiously ungainly and outlandish in their rhythmic flavor. What the older poet did teach was the employment of the greatest care and the exercise of the closest attention to detail in versification. So carefully was Hardy's earliest verse worked out and perfected that he selected much of it for inclusion in his Twentieth Century volumes. Above all, it was the attitude of both
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