‘Afterwards'

hardy's eighty-first birthday 'was remembered by the newspapers' and was made especially memorable for him by his receipt of 'an address . .. signed by 106 younger writers'. ¹ The address (probably the work of St. John Ervine who had originated the idea of presenting it to Hardy) is particularly eloauent as a demonstration of the 'grateful homage' now paid by a younger generation of Englishmen and as a graceful and noble definition of the position Hardy had come to hold in their eyes. It read, in part:

We, who are your younger comrades in the craft of letters, wish on this your eighty-first birthday to do honour to ourselves by praising your work, and to thank you for the example of high endeavour and achievement which you have set before us. In your novels and poems you have given us a tragic vision of life which is informed by your knowledge of character and relieved by the charity of your humour and sweetened by your sympathy with human suffering and endurance. We have learned from you that the proud heart can subdue the hardest fate, even in submitting to it. . . . In all that you have written you have shown the spirit of man, nourished by tradition and sustained by pride, persisting through defeat. You have inspired us both by your work and by the manner in which it was done. The craftsman in you calls for our admiration as surely as the artist. . . . From your first book to your last, you have written in the 'high style' . . . and you have crowned a great prose with a noble poetry. We thank you ... for all that you have written . . . but most of all, perhaps, for The Dynasts. We beg that you will accept . . . our grateful homage. ²

It was natural that fellow-writers, 'comrades in the craft of letters', should express admiration for Hardy's work and for 'the manner in which it was done', but in the eyes of other people as well, men and women not primarily interested in craftsmanship, Hardy had come to symbolize an admirable stoicism which lifted him, as a man, above his position as a novelist and as a poet. They had learned, not only from his books but also from his life, 'that the proud heart can subdue the hardest fate, even in submitting to it'.