Supplement

Abstract

The lottery of birth weighed heavily on Hardy’s mind during his early years in London; more than anything else it conspired to create his literary poor-man-and-the-lady complex. The hereditary ‘hap of birth’ in general gave him food for deeper thought in ‘Discouragement’, a poem which engaged his intermittent attention from 1865 to 1867, if not earlier. It may have been stimulated originally by lines in Hamlet (i.iv, 23–6), and cannot be excluded from the larger incidence of ‘Crass Casualty’ in ‘Hap’ (1866). Where was the Providence of his Christian faith, he must have asked himself.