THOMAS. HARDY AND LITERATURE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1497, 20 July 1912, Page 9

THOMAS. HARDY AND LITERATURE.

■ Mr.. Thomas Hardy? O.Mv, received many congratulations at ilas Gate, Dorchester : cnty-secontl birthdayV* "He : ,' is' v in : 'godil : health, and is, engaged'upon tho completion, of tlio final edition ol his works. Oh that day ho .received th-e gold medal'of tho lioyal {society otVLiterature,: which was :pre=?i].tcd .privately4b him by a deputation "from ths 'society, consisting of Mr. Henry "Xewbold, and Hγ. W B Yeats. .■■■'."■ '■ They:reminded him, in- making.the presentation, that among tho principal duties eiijoihed.upon the society by tlie'charter of lS'l'i, and now entrusted to the Academic Committee, was the' encouragement and recognition of literature by public awards, and that the gold medal, the highest of these awards, has only been bestowed upon some fifteen recipients in all, among them being Walter Scott, Robert Southey, Washington- Irving, and (jcorge Meredith.', Mr.'Hardy, in reply, said: "I have been thinking whether prizes of some kind could not alsq.be offered by the society to makers of literature earlier to urgo them to further efforts. "There is no doubt that any sort of incentive to the cultivation arid production of pure literature is of immense value in these latter days, and awards by ■the Royal Society of Literature should bo among the strongest. An appreciation of what is real, literature, and'efforts to keep real literature alive, have, in truth, become imperative, if the.taste for it is not to be entirely lost, v and, with the loss' of that taste, its longer life in the English language. While millions have' lately been learning to read, few' of them have been learning to discriminate, and the result is an appalling , increase every day in slipshod writing that would not have been tolerated for - one moment a hundred years ago. "I don't quite like (o say so, but' I fear that the vast increase of' hurried descriptive reporting in the newspapers' is largely responsible for this in 'England; writing done by men. and still moro by womo-ii, who are utterly incapable of. and unconscious of, that''grin of delight , which. William Morris assured us, comes over the rt'al artist cither in letter* or in other forms of art at a close approximation to, if not an exact achievement of. Ins ideal. Then th» incmasirij influx of American journal?, fearfully and wonderfully worded, helm on lh» indifference to hterarv form. Their influence has been stronely apparent of late years in our English newspapers, where one often nowii'oots with headlines in staring .camtah that are phrases" of no language'whatever, and'often incomprehensible at a casual glance. Every kind of reward, prize, or grant, therefore, which urges omnivorous readers and incipient writers towards appreciating Hip splendours of English undefilpd; and the de-ire of producing such for themselves, is of immense value. "For my, own part, I think—though all writers may not ag-ree with me-that the shortest way to proid preso is by the route, of gowl versp. The'tipuaront "paradox— I cannot remember who first expressed it— that the best poetry is the best jtoso cea-ws on examination (o be a paradox ami bcoraes a truism. Anybody may test il for himwlf by ta-kin. , .' any'fine lines in verse and casting off the fetters of metre nn.:l rhyme Hint seemed to bind Hie p-opt. tryinsr to exprc.-s thn same ideas more- freely and accurately in nrosc. 110 will find that it cannot be tho fronl-s of tli" vers?—fsttw->d ns he tliouiht them—are the only words that will convoy the ideas that were intended to bo convoyed. ' "I know that it i? wd in Plpet Street that jiootry is dead. But this only menus tint it U dead in Fhet Street. Poetry, indeed, cannot <lic, as Goorjre Sand once eloqiisntlv wrote in her novel called ('Andre.'" ' In its comment tlio "Maiwhcstpr Guar.lian" frsiid:—Me. TliomaT ITn-rdy's speech iiroronls, we think, a too gloomy new of English letters. Ho soys that "efforts to keep rral literature alivo are "impe-M----tive" (is this quite Hie right wcml?) if the tn=to for it is not to be entirely destroyed; that millions arc. learning to read but few to (lifcrimiralß; that "thc.ra is a.n appalling inorr-ise every day in slipshod writinpr, for which he holds fargoly responsible, the "vast increare of hurried descriptive reporting in- newspapers"; aiul thitt men ami particularly women who write nre too often "utterly incannblo of and unconscious of" Mr. Hardy!) the artist's eoiife of delight in accomplishment- Wo disbelieve about half of it. The fin? pa?sago from Gcorgo Sand that Mr. Hardy fpiotcd in sunport of his assertion that poetry cinnot dio is equally applicable to .ill real literature; the taste for it cinnot bo de.--tro.ved s-o lons as mm have an'eye for l:on'uty of form, an car for melody and cadfMir-e. h s?n=e of tho difference- belwcsn deftness and bntchiuir, and. abnve nil. a passionate curiosity about life and it* reactions on'other minds than their own, Tho more.

waiting there is tlio mere discrimination there will he, mid , though most of it at any tune will bo imperfect, discrimination is a plant that always tends to grow towards the light. Wo are sorry that so peat-a writer as Mr. Hardy should nave lalleii into the common misapprehension of the conditions under which writing is done for newspapers. The work (it tho docriptivo reporter is probably less "hurried"- than that of tho successtill professional novelist, and the belief that ho writes at an incomparable sliced probably accounts for much g [ib and qmto unmerited disparagement of tlis journalists work. Wo believe that there js far more good wrilin** to-day in En-'-lish newspapers and books than any former generation can show, that tho standard of high distinction to which Mr. Hardy himself lias attained tends steadily to be raised, and that if at tho bottom ot tho scale wo have an unprecedented welter of slipshod writers wo have alto well below the (op an amazing .number whoso footwear is irreproachable. To havo something /worth writing is become', in our time, a far rarer'qualification than to write impeccably.