3 JANUARY 1941, Page 26

Under the Greenwood Tree. By Thomas Hardy. With wood engravings

by Clare Leighton. (Macmillan. 14. 6d.) THE stiff stoney style of Thomas Hardy, with his characters like country tombstones, is here matched with Miss Clare Leighton's woodcuts. Like Hardy, she is at her best in her backgrounds- the sense of cold fading light behind the Dorset downs, of sadness in wait across the pebbles and the flat leaden water of Budmouth, of the night drowning Mellstock Church. Her people, on the other hand, are unreal: their pointed hands and angular attitudes frozen in conscious " stills " are too romantic. They seem to smack of Hollywood.