“Not to Mend . . . Not to Know”: Baxter's “Call to the Unconverted” and Hardy's “God-Forgotten”

Abstract

Abstract Discusses a possible echo of Richard Baxter's (pamphlet) “Call to the Unconverted” in Thomas Hardy's poem “God-Forgotten.” A reading is offered wherein Hardy is implicitly countering Baxter's request that his parishioners not mend this physical reality but turn away from it. Such a turn is, through a reading of some of Hardy's poetic engagements with Judeo-Christian theology, understood to be antithetical to his vision of ameliorative human existence: whatever divine principle is available to humanity is on offer in the physical world, and thus the possible echo in “God-Forgotten” of Baxter's phrasing would serve as a rejection of the exhortatory terms of his popular Puritan pamphlet.