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One has only to recall the extraordinary charm of the Elizabethans to understand why so many pages in The Dynasts arouse only an intellectual interest. But no one can read the whole drama without an immense respect for the range and the grasp of the author's mind. Furthermore, every one of its former admirers ought to reread it in 1918.
They were mostly, no doubt, obtained over subordinate individuals, but even one of the most high-placed and most hated adherents of the dynasts, the consular Gabinius, was overthrown in this way.
In "The Dynasts" I find all of Hardy. The Immanent Will is God, as Hardy conceives Him, neither rational nor entirely conscious, frustrating His own seeming ends, without irony and without compassion, and yet perhaps evolving like His world, clearing like men's visions, moving towards consistency. The Sinister Angel and the Ironic Angel are moods well known to Hardy, but not loved by him.
"Whether The Dynasts will finally take a place among the world's masterpieces of literature or not, must of course be left to future generations to decide. Two things are clear. The publication of the second and third parts distinctly raised public opinion of the work as a whole, and now that it is ten years old, we know that no man on earth except Mr. Hardy could have written it."
It made no distinction between wholly mythical, semi-fabulous, and fully historical dynasts, so that the Arabs and Persians who drew upon it never suspected that e.g., Hoshang and Rustam are not such historical persons as Shahpur I and Bahram Chobin. But in the material itself we notice a conspicuous difference.
The northern portion of Asia Minor and most of the islands belonging to it were in the king's power; except some petty Paphlagonian dynasts, there was hardly a district which still adhered to Rome; the whole Aegean Sea was commanded by his fleets. The south- west alone, the city-leagues of Caria and Lycia and the city of Rhodes, resisted him.
Hawthorne, who did not accept the theology of Puritanism, was yet strangely troubled by the problem of sin. Hardy, accepting the implacability of evolution without its easy optimism, was intensely moved to pity. This is his open secret. The clearest statement is in his poetry, where again and again, in our conversation that day, he seemed to be placing it most of all, I think, in "The Dynasts."
At last an understanding was arrived at to the following effect. All the Greek cities, which were free and had joined the Romans on the day of the battle of Magnesia, had their liberties confirmed, and all of them, excepting those previously tributary to Eumenes, were relieved from the payment of tribute to the different dynasts for the future.
As a matter of course, the new holders of power did not neglect withal to keep the multitude in good humour by games and amusements of all sorts, and they embraced every opportunity of filling their exchequer; in the case of the king of Egypt, for instance, the decree of the people, which recognized him as legitimate ruler, was sold to him by the coalition at a high price, and in like manner other dynasts and communities acquired charters and privileges on this occasion.
Now that the fighting is over is a good time to read Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts. I don't want to sell it, because it is one of the greatest treasures I own. But if any one will guarantee to read all three volumes, and let them sink into his mind, I'm willing to lend them. If enough thoughtful Germans had read The Dynasts before July, 1914, there would have been no war.
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