The Life of Thomas Hardy
differences between their fundamental ideas. The sympathy between the two, therefore, in those matters where sympathy really existed, must have been very strong indeed.
With regard to the most obvious bond that connected the two, namely, their attachment to and employment of the dialect, a cursory investigation reveals the fact that, superficially at least, their use of the native tongue differed. The Barnes poems require a glossary, such as that supplied by Hardy, for the reader unacquainted with the dialect, while the dialogue of Hardy's rustics can be readily followed by anyone who can read standard English. Barnes aimed at much closer and more exact reproduction, orthographically, of the pure dialect: he consistently printed "z" for the voiced "s"-sound (the effect of which was not intended to be humorous), and "v" for the voiced "f"; and he used many more words found only in Dorset and not in London English.
Except for the early Wessex ballad, The Bride-Night Fire, or, as it was first called, The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's, in which he came closest to a real reproduction of the Barnes matter and expression, Hardy used the dialect in far freer fashion. For this further corruption of what was considered by many only a corruption of the accepted language, he was severely criticised. He answered his critics in his letter to the Athenæum of November 30, 1878, in which he protested that his aim was primarily to depict men and women and their natures rather than their dialect forms, and that an accurate phonetic transcription of their actual speech would only emphasize a grotesqueness really nonexistent. Thus he
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