New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1913-11-15


a cH1pFER AND OTHER TALES. CON
SIi-DTNG WITH THE ROMANTIC
CE6VFNTURES OF A MILKMAID.
az az THOMAS Hardy. Svo, PIP. 4o6. Har-
per & Bros.
In n brief PREDATORY note to this
.o,ume Mr.. Hardy explains that he
sos collected the twelve minor novels"
g contains from the various maya
,,,es in which they originally ap-
reared. in order to render them "ac-
.sssIble TO readers who desire to have
,hen In the complete edition" OF his
uorks issued by the Messrs. Harper.
There can, therefore, be no question
now. or hereafter, of the status of
these contributions to TIE fugitive
nages of periodical literature in their
authors own estimation. And, indeed,
they are pure Hardy in the average
NJ his quality as an artist and a stu
idsnt of life, with whose little ironies,"
whose seemingly utter lack of design
or purpose most of them are more or
less directly concerned. This irony of
life far oftener tending, in Mr.. Hardy's
PHILOSOPHY, toward bewilderment,
illustration, failure and tragedy than
toward comedy and a happy ending,
Is the characteristic of his work, the
kernel of most of its content. One
might call it the Hardy formula, with.
IN the criticism Of life that fiction in
its most serious aspect always is, more
of constancy, Of purposefulness in the
irony of the artist than is found in
that Of life itself. To deduce a pessi-
mistic formula from life is one thing;
TO reconstruct thereafter all human
life according to this one destructive
formula is another matter altogether,
especially in the foreshortening that
fiction prescribes, short fiction most Of
all
These stories date from the early
eighties of the last century down to
] its close. The time of composition Of
two or three Of them is not indicated,
but they, too, Enthusiastically belong TO
this period, in which Mr.. Hardy en-
tered upon the fulness of his fame as,
with Meredith, the foremost Of our
contemporary novelists. We are on
familiar SOIL in the WesseX country,
and among it's people, high and low.
The times. too, are familiar to us, the
years stretching between the Napole-
onic wars and the early sixties. Inc
author takes us back TO the sixteenth
century in one story, which has gene
illogical and historic interest, and may
well be based on fact; in another ne
reverts to Monmouth's rebellion and
his reported escape, but, on the whoie'
the interest centres in the closing era
Of Wessex's isolation from the wider
world Of England. Time and again
Mr.. Hardy reverts TO that favorite sub
ject of his, lfes game OF apparently
simless cross purposes with love and
happiness. Blind chance sacrifices the
individual without calculable compen-
sation elsewhere. Thus, in Enter
nragoon," we read Of the way with a
nalC OF an dDStul-liIIiiuCN S~So
went TO the Crimean war, and returned
TO upset what the girl was about 10
make of her life; and Of life's way with
him. and of the futility Of the muddie
that ensued. In THE Waiting Sup
per- a woman is kept through many
years from marrying the man she loves
bv evacuation of the return or her
vanished husband of whose death there
is no proof; and all the while his oody
lies AZ the bottom Of the river on whose
bank these two meet. In "Alicla
Diary" two sisters love the same man,
and the wrong woman is sacrificed. all
TO no perceptible purpose. But IN All
Interlude" Il is a woman VINO WINS III
this game of purposes by the
sheer strength of her insensibility. she
Is on her way TO marry the elderly
man she does not love, but whose sun
stance means comfort and safety 10
her. Delayed for day or two on the
road, she meets an old lover, weds him.
and sees him drown in the SURF on IHe
following morning. Whereupon she
continues on her journey and secret
widow of a day. carries out the orlgihai
programme. This extraordinary story