It is inconceivable that any nation on the continent of Europe could, through its critics or through any considerable number of readers, so dishonor a masterpiece. For "Jude" is a masterpiece; if it is not Hardy's greatest novel, it is one of his three or four greatest, and that means one of a score of supreme works of prose fiction in the language. If profundity of substance and skill in narrative are both considered, Hardy is without rival among British novelists. His is the crowning achievement in the century of fiction that began with Jane Austen and, happily, has not yet terminated with Joseph Conrad. In his hands the English novel assumed a form which, perhaps without good critical reason, one thinks of as French. Despite the racy localism of scene and character, Hardy's work seems alien to the Anglo-Saxon temperament; it has less in common with the spacious days of great Victoria than with a younger time, whose living masters, Mr. Conrad and Mr. Galsworthy, for example, have taken lessons in art across the channel. In a prefatory note to "Desperate Remedies," dated February, 1896, Hardy lets fall a casual phrase which indicates that he and others had noted his kinship to the French, but that he was not disposed to acknowledge it fully. He seems to say, with that kind of modest pride which distinguishes him, that he found his method for himself, played the game alone. "As it happened," runs the note, "that certain characteristics which provoked most discussion in my latest story ['Jude'?] were present in this my first--published in 1871, when there was no French name for them--it has seemed best to let them stand unaltered." What characteristics does he intend? And was there no French name for them in 1871? Or had not the British critics begun to use the French name? Are these characteristics his candor, his logic, his classic finish of phrase, a certain cool stateliness of manner, an impersonal, distant way of treating most tender and poignant subjects, a lucid, ironic view of life, perfect proportion, large intellectual pity and freedom from cant, from sentimentality? These are some of his virtues and they are the virtues of several modern French novelists and some of the Russian pupils of the French.