Do you agree that Hardy's poetry is 'history that records less formally'? Hardy himself stated that '..the mission of poetry is to record impressions, not convictions' . This mission would mean the communicating and recording of information of 'the tenor of the age' (Haslam & Turton) rather than recording specific facts; Hardy's poetry detailed how time was experienced or felt by those who lived through it. Eliot's phrase of 'un-historic acts' would seem to …showed first 75 words of 618 total…

…showed last 75 words of 618 total…whether the future is determined by the individual or a larger force at work. The 'tenor of the age' was one confused by Darwin's work - the concept of 'the death of God' plagued Hardy and the people of the time. By providing identifiable characters and situations, Hardy was able to communicate the emotions of the people of his time. He had devised a methodology which could truly be said to 'record history less formally'.