Thomas Hardy was born in 1840, in a tiny village called Higher Bockhampton, in the parish of Stinsford, Dorset, England. It is a country of woods and heaths, lonely and silent. Old customs and manners were maintained in this place in the heart of England, long after they had disappeared in more populous centres. Hardy's novels tell us of the quaint customs, and of the interesting and picturesque characters that he knew in his youth. Three of his early novels, _Under the Greenwood Tree_, _The Return of the Native_, and _The Trumpet-Major_ seem to hold under a magic spell, for our enjoyment, old England and the people of old England, not at a time as long ago as when the fairies were supposed to live, but near the beginning of the nineteenth century, when people were looking for Napoleon Bonaparte to invade England from France across the Channel. Hardy himself, his father and his grandfather were all fond of music, and we read much of people singing and dancing in Hardy's early novels, {152} of the members of the church choir, of glee and carol singers. Thomas Hardy, when he was a lad, used to play the fiddle at dances in the farm houses nearby where he lived. His mother did not allow him to take any money for his playing, but once he broke the rule and with the few shillings he had been given bought a copy of the _Boys' Own Book_. This book was kept in Hardy's library all his life. He played at weddings too. No doubt, the boy learned much of his neighbours in this way of which afterwards his genius made use in his novels. Some of the most charming scenes that Hardy ever wrote you will find in the first five chapters of _Under the Greenwood Tree_. Read these chapters, and you will see the English landscape long ago on a Christmas Eve. You will breathe the pure, chill air, and sing Christmas carols with the other carollers. The story begins: "To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature." To the end of his life, Hardy was fascinated by the story of Napoleon. In the country where he lived, there lived also older men who had fought against Napoleon, and many who remembered the dread with which people looked for his invasion of England. One of Hardy's early novels, _The Trumpet-Major_, is a fine tale of country folk, of soldiers and sailors who fought against Napoleon, and of the press-gang that carried away men to serve in the Navy. But, proudest recollection of all for the novelist, the Hardy who held the great Nelson in his arms when he lay dying victorious in the cockpit of his ship, _The Victory_, after {153} Trafalgar, belonged to the same family as his own. You remember, Nelson whispered, "Kiss me, Hardy." Little wonder that Thomas Hardy, who also was a poet besides being a novelist, wrote what is perhaps his greatest work in a poetical drama called _The Dynasts_, a drama of the Napoleonic wars.