The Final Years of Thomas Hardy 1912-1928 (review)

174 of the Exodus from Houndsditch" stem from the Scottish tradition. Although D is remembered today for "prettypretty anthology pieces like 'London,'" it is his poetry of ideas which makes him an important poet. His "Thirty Bob a Week," "as good as anything Browning ever did," is still vital today. Young, Filson. "The New Poetry," FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW, ns LXXXV (Jan 1909), 136-52. The philosophical and prophetic direction of D's later poetry is a logical development of his early work and life. Presbyterian Scotland, with its mastery of metaphysical argument, reared D as it did Burns and Carlyle and like them D revolts against the world and Christianity. His insistence on making the world anew is essentially a religious task. A less perfect poet than Burns, less tremendous an intellectual power than Carlyle, there is rarely a page of D's work which does not offer examples of a "peerless mastery in the use and combination of words, as well as of powerful, stimulating, original thought." ........ "The Truth About John Davidson," SATURDAY REVIEW (Lond), CII (15 May 1909), 623-25. [A personal account of D's struggle and despair with poverty and neglect in the last years in Penzance by a close friend.] "The truth about John Davidson is that he was hounded out of life . . . by the indifference of his own fellows." "The Younger Poets," CHURCH QUARTERLY REVIEW (Lond), XXXIX (Jan 1895), 467-71. Although D's work is individual, vigorous and enjoyable, his ideas lack originality and depth. Despite the notable descriptions of nature and the human character in Fleet Street Eclogues, he is not the poet of the future. [A review of Fleet Street Eclogues and Ballads and Songs.] Zangwill, Israel. "The Laureate of London," COSMOPOLITAN (NY), XVII (July 1894), 378-79· At present, D is the major poet among London literary men. He "has sounded a new note in English literature." His somewhat riotous but certain genius has turned to the contemporary world of "mean streets and everyday figures" producing poetry for the modern world. REVIEW Harold Orel. The Final Years of Thomas Hardy 1912-1928 (Lond; Macmillan P; Lawrence; The University Press of Kansas, 1976). $14.00. Professor Orel brings to this study of Hardy's final years the experience of more than twenty-five years of far-ranging scholarship in nineteenth and early twentieth-century literature. Apart from the substantial contributions he has made since I951 by a steady_output of writings on Hardy, Professor Orel has written and edited books on topics so diverse as Victorian humor, Yeats' poetry, author-audience relationships, and the poets of the Romantic Movement. The Final Years of Thomas Hardy shows everywhere the solid command of the subject which one would expect from a scholar with such a broad background as Orel's. 175 Yet, the title of the book may be misleading; it invites comparison with such recent works as Robert Gittings' Young Thomas Hardy, but in fact the two works are strikingly different in both aim and execution. Gittings" study is notable for its exploitation of new or little-known sources of information about people and events surrounding Hardy, and without question he succeeded in creating a fuller and more substantial biographical picture of Hardy's youth than had ever been achieved before; but, at the same time, Gittings exhibited a tendency to advance farfetched and weakly based speculations which often intruded into his more substantial and credibly documented narrative. Orel's book has almost precisely the opposite qualities! it provides practically nothing by way of new biographical information and, in fact, is scarcely concerned with biography as such at all; rather, biographical details are subordinated to the study of Hardy's poetry after 1912. And, although Professor Orel writes in a foresquare way that sometimes verges on the pedestrian, he avoids the wayward speculativeness that mars Gittings' book; The Final Years of Thomas Hardy is throughout a cautiously stated and carefully judicious study. The subject of The Final Years of Thomas Hardy is primarily the last volumes of his poetry - those published from Satires of Circumstance (1914) onward, and including The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall. Professor Orel's decision to arrange his...