or,
further, wherein is it so masterly, the curious reader may inquire? "Is
it not full of digressions? Granted that the first half of the 'novel'
is beautiful in style, does not Jefferies suddenly break his method,
introduce his own personality, intersperse abrupt disquisitions on food,
illness, and Fleet Street? Is not that description of Iden's dinner a
little--well, a little unusual? In short, is not the book a disquisition
on life from the standpoint of Jefferies' personal experiences? And if
this is so, how can the book be so fine an achievement?" Oh, candid
reader, with the voice of authority sounding in your ears (and have we
not Mr. Henley and Mr. Saintsbury bound in critical amity against us), a
book may break the formal rules, and yet it may yield to us just that
salt of life which we may seek for vainly in the works of more faultless
writers. The strength of "Amaryllis at the Fair" is that its beauty
springs naturally from the prosaic earthly facts of life it narrates,
and that, in the natural atmosphere breathed by its people, the prose
and the poetry of their life are one. In the respect of the artistic
naturalness of its homely picture, the book is very superior to, say
"The Mayor of Casterbridge," where we are conscious that the author has
been at work arranging and rearranging his charming studies and
impressions of the old-world people of Casterbridge into the pattern of
an exciting plot. Now it is precisely in the artificed dramatic story of
"The Mayor of Casterbridge"--and we cite this novel as characteristic,
both in its strength and weakness, of its distinguished author,--that we
are brought to feel that we have not been shown the characters of
Casterbridge going their way in life naturally, but that they have been
moved about, kaleidoscopically, to suit the exigencies of the plot, and
that the more this is so the less significance for us have their
thoughts and actions. Watching the quick whirling changes of Farfrae and
Lucetta, Henchard and Newson in the matrimonial mazes of the story, and
listening to the chorus of the rustics in the wings, we perceive indeed
whence comes that atmosphere of stage crisis and stage effect which
suddenly introduces a disillusioning sense of unreality, and mars the
artistic unity of this charming picture, so truthful in other respects
to English rural life. Plot is Mr. Hardy's weakness, and perfect indeed
and convincing would have been his pictures, if he could have t