ABSTRACT

‘I have no philosophy’, Hardy noted in a letter written towards the end of his career, merely ‘a confused heap of impressions, like those of a bewildered child at a conjuring show’. 1 For Michael Millgate this form of ‘Laodiceanism’ – a quality that enabled him ‘to see virtue in all sides of a question’ – is indicative of a mind ‘not naturally equipped to move easily in realms of philosophical discourse’. 2