The Technique of Thomas Hardy

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ... III. SETTING An architect, an editor, a Lord, and the literary daughter of a vicar--Mr. Hardy was never to play his best tunes on such instruments. Much more promising were the characters chosen to carry the leading r&les in his next novel--a shepherd, a rich farmer, a sergeant, and a woman manager of her own farm. And for the thin-bodied minor figures of A Pair of Blue Eyes, we have, in the richly furnished background of Far from the Madding Crowd, no less engaging a company than that of Joseph Poorgrass, Liddy Smallbury, and Warren the maltster, not to speak of ill-starred Fanny Robin. The story is closely bound up with the normal incidents of country life. The leading man and woman make acquaintance while he is tending his sheep and she is doctoring her aunt's cows. The shepherd helps the milkmaid to recover her hat blown away by the wind, and she reciprocates by saving him from suffocation in his unventilated shepherd's hut. Their first extended conversation--upon the shepherd's proposal of marriage--is introduced by his offer of a lamb for a pet. His proposal was not made without a certain encouragement from the ingenuous milkmaid. And / while she cannot find it in her heart to accept, we are prepared for the lifelong service of Gabriel Oak and for the eventual capitulation of Bathsheba Everdene. It is true he swears he will never ask her again to be his wife; but that, we feel, will prove no bar to their union. Bathsheba very shortly leaves her aunt's place to become mistress of a fine farm in the neighborhood of Weatherbury. And a great pastoral tragedy reduces Gabriel Oak from an independent sheep farmer to a mere shepherd open to hire. The loss of his sheep sends him on the road to seek for employment; and he happens to arrive in...