the finest of its author's achievements. A
devoted admirer of Mr. Hardy's genius, I decline altogether to
consent. To my mind, among recent developments of the English novel
nothing is more lamentable than the manner in which this
distinguished writer has allowed himself of late to fancy that the
riddles of life are solved by pulling mouths at Providence (or
whatever men choose to call the Supreme Power) and depicting it as a
savage and omnipotent bully, directing human affairs after the fashion
of a practical joker fresh from a village ale-house. For to this
teaching his more recent writings plainly tend; and alike in _Tess_
and _Life's Little Ironies_ the part played by the "President of the
Immortals" is no sublimer--save in the amount of force exerted--than
that of a lout who pulls a chair suddenly from under an old woman.
Now, by wedding Necessity with uncouth Jocularity, Mr. Hardy may have
found an hypothesis that solves for him all the difficulties of life.
I am not concerned in this place to deny that it may be the true
explanation. I have merely to point out that art and criticism must
take some time in getting accustomed to it, and that meanwhile the
traditions of both are so far agreed in allowing a certain amount of
free will to direct the actions of men and women that a tale which
should be all necessity and no free will would, in effect, be
necessity's own contrary--a merely wanton freak.

For, in effect, it comes to this:--The story of Tess, in which
attention is so urgently directed to the hand of Destiny, is not felt
to be inevitable, but freakish. The story of Esther Waters, in which a
poor servant-girl is allowed to grapple with her destiny and, after a
fashion, to defeat it, is felt (or has been felt by one reader, at any
rate) to be absolutely inevitable. To reconcile us to the black flag
above Wintoncester prison as to the appointed end of Tess's career, a
curse at least as deep as that of Pelops should have been laid on the
D'Urberville family. Tess's curse does not lie by nature on all women;
nor on all Dorset women; nor on all Dorset women who have illegitimate
children; for a very few even of these are hanged. We feel that we are
not concerned with a type, but with an individual case deliberately
chosen by the author; and no amount of talk about the "President of
the Immortals" and his "Sport" can persuade us to the contrary. With
Esther Waters, on the other hand, we feel we are assisting in t