he has helped the ordinary man to realize pessimism as a theory of life. He has massed it, brought it before us in a solid block.
Moore: But pessimism as a theory is as old as the world. To go no further back than Ecclesiastes, we find not a few admirable phrases depicting the worthlessness of life; and in Shakespeare we find phrases even more beautiful. If you had said that Mr Hardy popularized pessimism and coaxed his readers into drinking from an old tin pot a beverage that had hitherto been offered to them only in golden and jewelled goblets, I should have agreed with you. You were speaking just now of Mr Hardy's stories in verse. I have read one of these, and as an example of how to make pessimism seem trivial I think it would be difficult to find a better story than the one telling of a dead woman's dog that cannot be persuaded to leave her grave, and how disappointed all the family are when they discover that he is not trying to scratch up his dead mistress, but a bone that he has buried.
Freeman: You have not chosen a happy example of Mr Hardy's art. I could show you some poems that I think even you would find some merit in. I remember that in speaking of a certain Irish writer you say he is sufficiently a poet to become a great prose writer.
Moore: The best prose is usually written by poets—Shakespeare wrote the best seventeenth century and Shelley the best nineteenth; and I do not think I am going too far when I say that Mr Hardy has written the worst, I will hear your protest afterwards. Allow me to read:
"The persistent torrent from the gurgoyle's jaws directed all its vengeance into the grave. The rich tawny mould was stirred into motion, and boiled like chocolate. The water accumulated and washed deeper down, and the roar of the pool thus formed spread into the night as the head and chief among other noises of the kind created by the deluging rain. The flowers so carefully planted by Fanny's repentant lover began to move and writhe in their beds. The winter violets turned slowly upside down and became a mere mat of mud. Soon the snowdrop and other bulbs danced in the boiling mass like ingredients in a cauldron. Plants of the tufted species were loosened, rose to the surface, and floated off.
