A.N. WILSON

God's Funeral

The Decline of Faith in Western Civilization

 1. 'God's Funeral', Hardy, Collected Poems, 307.

 2. Exodus xx.3.

 3. Lubbock, 259.

 4. Hardy, The Early Life, 132.

 5. Ibid., 76.

 * They would not necessarily share Gosse's bizarre view that Jude the Obscure was 'the most indecent novel ever written'. Presumably the works of Cleland, Diderot and the marquis de Sade were not on the shelves at the House of Lords, where Gosse worked as the librarian.

 6. Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

 7. Quoted in William James, Pragmatism, 20—21.

 8. Ibid., 22.

 9. Annan, 70.

10. Ibid., 39.

11. Ibid., 43.

12. Ibid., 44.

13. Marcel Hébert, quoted in Vidler, Variety, 67.

14. Dostoevsky, Diary, 542.

15. Goethe, quoted in Vidler, op. cit., 52.

16. Ridler, 46.