Mr. Hardy’s depression steadily grows as he gets older. There is, it is true, much bitterness in his more youthful poems. But it is the sort of bitterness that goes with clever youth. A somewhat more buoyant note distinguishes the work of his early manhood; but with middle age the shadows deepen, and a deep and almost unrelieved sadness broods over all. It would be untrue to say that Mr. Hardy has no humour; is there no humour in that question of the rustic, in defending the ways of Providence, “D’ye think the man’s a fool?” But it is scarcely untrue to say that Mr. Hardy’s humour is commonly as depressing as his gloom; it has much the same mournful effect as those infrequent flashes of the comic spirit which emphasise the determined dismalness of Mr. Galsworthy. Mr. Hardy’s humour has nothing sunny in it; it is rather like the arc-light which, on a frosty night, makes us see the cold as well as feel it. One can hardly recall another great English novelist who has no hearty, genial, enjoying laugh in him. But one can find many foreign counterparts to Mr. Hardy, ancient and modern; if he seems colder than they, it is only a question of climate. It is often chilly round the Mediterranean, but one can do without a fire; in England one wants, if not the grateful open blaze, at least some efficient system of central heating. Reading much Hardy has the effect of sitting in a beautifully furnished room on a February day without a fire; but the simile is not quite exact—there should be all the elements of the fire, except the heat.
Possibly it is in the very gentleness of Mr. Hardy that we may look for the secret of this pessimism. His detestation of any form of cruelty may have embittered his indictment of the cruelty of Fate. In one of his books he dwells for a moment on the pain of a wounded pheasant, and turns away with an imprecation against its wounders. But there would be no pheasants without shooters, and most pheasants live happily and die painlessly. Equally are Tess and Jude the exceptions. It is the defect—and even the artistic defect—of Mr. Hardy that he manages to convey the impression that they are the rule.
In a famous passage Lord Morley of Blackburn referred to a meeting during the early Nineties in the famous library at Althorp: