It was largely a question of intonation I
believe--but there it was.

He had the wild, inspired look of a savage. He again could neither
read nor write, though he must have been at school within the last
ten or twelve years; but, as I think I have said elsewhere, it is not
uncommon for boys to go through the school course and fail to pass
the standards. There are here two families in particular, admirable
workmen, who for two generations have left school without having
acquired either writing or reading. One wonders deeply what kind of
processes go on in the minds of these fine young men, steady workmen,
as they are, good husbands, kind fathers, useful citizens oftener
than not. What is their conception of God, of human destiny? How does
Religion get at them? Or does it? Shall we ever know? Not if Mr. Hardy
cannot tell us. No other poet of peasant origin has done so--neither
Clare, nor Blomfield, nor even Burns. Mr. Hardy has told us something,
and might have told us a good deal more if by the time he had learned
his craft, he had not learned to be chiefly interested in himself.
That is the way of poets.

Then there's _The Shropshire Lad_, a fake perhaps, since its author
was not a peasant, but a divine little book. _The Shropshire Lad_ is
morbid, unless lads are so in Shropshire--in which case they, too, are
morbid; but it is a golden book of whose beauty and felicity I never
tire. Technically it is by far the most considerable thing since _In
Memoriam_: "Loveliest of trees, the Cherry," makes me cry for sheer
pleasure. But it is haunted by the fear of death and old age; it is
afraid of love; it is sometimes cynical--none of which things are true
of youth in Salop or Salonika. The young peasant is a fatalist to the
core; but fatalists are not afraid of death. Youth is ephemeral and so
is the young peasant. He is always happy when the sun is out.

As for love, it is truly the hot-and-cold disease with him. He is
himself his "own fever and pain," like the rest of us; but I think
love is a physical passion, until marriage. After marriage it may grow
into something very beautiful indeed, and the more beautiful for being
incapable of bodily utterance. I have a pair often under my eye down
here who are, I know, all in all to each other; yet their conversation
is that of two old gossips. But at fortunate moments I may induce one
of them to tell of the other, and then you find out. My _Village Wife_
was no imagination of mi