[In the following essay, published during a period of decline in Hardy criticism, Weber urges a reconsideration of Hardy's literary contributions.]

Thomas Hardy's first novel appeared in 1871, and those few persons who bought it had to pay only ＄7.50 for a set of three volumes. In 1926 when George Barr McCutcheon's copy of the same novel was sold at auction in New York it brought ＄2,100. Only three years later when Jerome Kern's copy of this same work was auctioned off its purchaser paid ＄4,800. But when Paul Lemperly's copy was sold at auction in 1940 the novel brought only ＄27.50.

These figures are quoted, not with the misguided idea that a revaluation of Hardy's books is a matter of dollars and cents, but because the figures tell more than a commercial story. For the rise from ＄7.50 up to ＄4,800 and the fall from that giddy height to ＄27.50 are indicative of something more than the fluctuations in the market for rare books. Public interest in Hardy has experienced a similar rise and fall, and since his death in 1928 his reputation has in some quarters suffered a marked decline.

Throughout the first quarter of the present century many critics voiced the opinion that Hardy's most nearly perfect work of art was The Return of the Native and that in this novel his most profound study of human nature was to be seen. But in a new edition published last year its editor spoke of the “manifest and manifold crudities” of this novel and found it full of “gross faults.” This shift in opinion illustrates the marked change in the literary climate in which Hardy's works now live. Since there is not time here to let everyone talk we may nominate two spokesmen. Let Professor Samuel C. Chew of Bryn Mawr speak for the older generation of critics, and let Professor A. J. Guerard of Harvard speak for the younger men. Twenty-five years ago Professor Chew declared that “the famous prelude-like opening” of The Return of the Native—the chapter about Egdon Heath—“is one of the most magnificent pieces of modern prose,” but Professor Guerard now remarks that “the pages of Egdon Heath are not as good as earlier critics thought.” Chew believed that “in Hardy's greater works he has realized his own ideal of imparting to masterpieces of story a beauty of shape” and that in the “large matters of structure and design Hardy's art … is almost impeccable.” Guerard confesses that The Return of the Native holds him “with no fascinated curiosity” and that its “mechanically constructed and obvious plot” proves that Hardy is no “master of the novel form.” Instead of finding a “profound study of human nature” in The Return of the Native Guerard maintains that “Hardy did not understand Clym dramatically.” In fact—“did he even understand Clym rationally?”

Well, I for one would answer: Yes, he did. I think Chew right and Guerard wrong; but in a comparison of critical opinions there is little profit in a mere statement of preference. Instead of merely adding one more critical rock to the mountain of personal opinion about Hardy I should prefer to try to find out why we find ourselves differing so. Many considerations are involved here—normal changes in taste, boredom with the old and the familiar, postwar “sophistication” of moral outlook—considerations which demand more time and space than are now available. But one inviting question can be asked: Is it possible that we have to a large degree disqualified ourselves as critics of a rural writer like Hardy by our modern urbanization? We are city bred. Our outlook on life is no longer that of the superstitious agricultural workers among whom Hardy grew up, and what seemed natural and real to him is likely to seem formed and unconvincing to us. This makes all the difference in the world in one's judgment of Hardy's work. To illustrate:

“Far from the Madding Crowd is a great novel,” declared James M. Barrie, whose vivid memories of an unurbanized life fitted him for reading Hardy's novel sympathetically. But when Henry James, of New York, Boston, Paris, and London, came to review this same book (as he did anonymously in The Nation), he was unable to conceal his basic lack of sympathy with Hardy's country point of view. “Hardy describes nature with a great deal of felicity,” so James grudgingly admitted, “and is evidently very much at home among rural phenomena. The most genuine thing in this book is a certain aroma of the meadows and lanes.” If Henry James had, like Hardy, walked those lanes as a boy, he might have found Gabriel Oak just as “genuine” as anything else in Hardy's book.

Curiously enough, at the very time that there has been a growing tendency to depreciate Hardy's novels, there has been an increasing readiness to appreciate Hardy's poetry. This is curious, because the novelist and the poet have the same thoughts, interests, tastes, and outlook on life. Fortunately this Wessex literary seesaw has a fixed pivot, solidly based in Hardy's genius and personality; and the rise in the repute of the poetry, accompanying the fall in the esteem in which the novels are held, has only served to bring into clearer focus the stature of the man himself.

The quickened interest in Hardy's poetry has had at least one easily marked result. During the last thirty years of his life, when he wrote nothing but verse, he was often called a pessimist. He undoubtedly had his gloomy moments. But he also had moments of joy and happiness, and readers of the poems have gradually come to appreciate this fact. They have found it easier to single out an individual poem than to spot a cheerful page in a gloomy novel. In one of the most significant of his personal lyrics, one of his “Country Songs,” Hardy exclaims:

Let me enjoy the earth no less
          Because the all-enacting might
That fashioned forth its loveliness
          Had other aims than my delight.

In any New Year's revaluation of Hardy's work, whether in verse or in prose, his enthusiastic appreciation of earth's loveliness must receive emphasis.

About one other aspect of Hardy's work there can also be no doubt. Critics may come and critics may go, but the verdict of Henry W. Nevinson will not soon be reversed. He declared: “No Englishman since Wordsworth has heard the still, sad music of humanity with so fine an ear, and none has regarded … men and women … with a compassion so profound and yet so stern, as they pass with tears and laughter between the grave and the stars.” Even the harshest of Hardy's modern critics agrees with this view—that Hardy's judgment of mankind is charitable and compassionate and that, however drab and beclouded he found our world, Hardy believed every man deserves more sunshine and happiness than he gets.

Hardy's experience of life was not a short one: he was almost eighty-eight when he died. An author who after so long a life can convince readers that the earth is lovely and mankind basically good and deserving has certainly earned the place he occupies in Westminster Abbey among England's literary giants.