riod of
readjustment, doubt and negation, of misery and despair, was the
natural issue. Man, being naturally religious, was sure sooner
or later to secure a new and more hopeful faith: it was a matter
of spiritual self-preservation. But realism in letters, for the
moment, before a new theory had been formulated, was a kind of
pis aller by which literature could be produced and attention
given to the tangible things of this earth, many of them not
before thoroughly exploited; the things of the mind, of the
Spirit, were certain to be exploited later, when a broader creed
should come. The new romanticism and idealism of our day marks
this return. Zola's theory is now seen to be wrong, and there
has followed a violent reaction from the realistic tenets, even
in Paris, its citadel. But for some years, it held tyrannous
sway and its leader was a man of genius, his work distinctive,
remarkable; at its best, great,--in spite of, rather than
because of, his principles. It was in the later Trilogy of the
cities that, using a broader formula, he came into full
expression of what was in him; during the last years of his life
he was moving, both as man and artist, in the right direction.
Yet naturally it was novels like "Nana" and "L'Assomoir" that
gave him his vogue; and their obsession with the fleshly gave
them for the moment a strange distinction: for years their
author was regarded as the founder of a school and its most
formidable exponent. He wielded an influence that rarely falls
to a maker of stories. And although realism in its extreme
manifestations no longer holds exclusive sway, Zola's impulse is
still at work in the modern Novel. Historically, his name will
always be of interest.

I

Thomas Hardy is a realist in a sense true of no English novelist
of anything like equal rank preceding him: his literary
genealogy is French, for his "Jude The Obscure" has no English
prototype, except the earlier work of George Moore, whose
inspiration is even more definitely Paris. To study Hardy's
development for a period of about twenty-five years from "Under
the Greenwood Tree" to "Jude," is to review, as they are
expressed in the work of one great English novelist, the
literary ideals before and after Zola. Few will cavil at the
inclusion in our study of a living author like Hardy. His work
ranks with the most influential of our time; so much may be seen
already. His writing of fiction, moreover, or at least of
Novels, seems