Boyhood (1840-1856)
tions as to the nature of the foreign languages; such things never really bothered Hardy. Poor predestinate Jude smarted under the cruel frustrations of his desires for academic and university attainments; there is nothing to show that Hardy ever overweeningly craved scholarly distinction.
Learning, wide and deep, was in time absorbed by the young poet; hut it was absorbed in his own way and at his own sweet will, free from discipline and even from guidance. And, as might be expected, his learning proved to be of the vivid and thoroughgoing kind that is characteristic of the man who gathers his information and pursues his inquiries outside the walls of a university. Browning was a contemporary example of the possessor of this ample and colorful variety of erudition, skilfully applied to and permeating his artistic output, just as in the case of Hardy.
If Dorchester failed to school Hardy into respect for a supervised education, it did however present him with a unique and deeper education of an entirely different kind. He was, after all, able to write; the adolescent youths and maidens of the town were not. Consequently they fell into the habit of waylaying the young student (reputed to be so terribly erudite that he even read hooks in Latin and French), and of begging him to set down on paper their correspondence. Hardy complied willingly. He became the village amanuensis. The letters he wrote out from dictation in this way were undoubtedly amatory for the most part, and the authors were chiefly the girls. It was a rare opportunity for him to study the surface of human nature under the stress of
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