The Life of Thomas Hardy
with sums and compositions, dusted off her old Latin grammar and began to give him regular training when he was twelve years old. Although his interests in books were somewhat quickened by this experiment, his regular school-work failed to show improvement; it remained poor, even when judged by the not too rigorous standards of mid-century Dorchester.
Instead of poring over his paradigms, the boy showed marked preference to listen to the excommunicated speech of the servants and villagers, and to those beloved reminiscences of his grandmother. In 1854 he left the school. It had given him nothing. Then Mrs. Hardy sniffed danger; she was determined, in spite of all, to civilize and to polish her son. After two years more of tutoring in the Roman writers, leavened with the reading of their more difficult passages in English verse-translations, the Hardys employed a French governess. From her the boy gathered a smattering of her tongue—perhaps also just a snatch of l'esprit Gaulois. For only a year, however, did this sporadic training in the accomplishments of a gentleman continue; then what has sanguinely been called the "formal education" of Hardy came to an end. It was remarkable only for its meagreness and ineffectiveness.
Jude the Obscure, that hapless boy, is thought by many to be a passionate projection of this educational phase of Hardy's early life. But even if we did not have Hardy's own word against it, this not too attractive supposition could never be held logically. Jude was depicted as eager for learning; Hardy was not. Jude perplexed and tortured himself with extremely naïve preconcep-
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