ame animals. She does not study man (as Dostoevsky does) in his wild state before he h

pounds. "People get so horridly poor and economical in this part of the world," she writes on one occasion, "that I have no patience with them. Kent is the only place for happiness; everybody is rich there." Her novels do not introduce us to the most exalted levels of the aristocracy. They provide us, however, with a

ght, "bordered too much on inelegance of mind." Mr. Darcy, again, even when he melts so far as to become an avowed lover, neither forgets his social position, nor omits to talk about it. "His sense of her inferiority, of its being a degradation ... was dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit." On discovering, to his amazemen

it play about the egoism of social caste. She is quite merciless in deriding, it when it becomes overbearing, as in Lady Catherine de Bourgh, or when it produces flunkeyish reactions, as in Mr. Collins. But I

Her father, like the clergy in her novels, was a man of leisure-of so much leisure, as Mr. Cornish reminds us, that he was able to read out Cowper to his family in the mornings.

gan to write First Impressions, the perfect book which was not published till seventeen years later with the title altered to Pride and Prejudice. She wrote secretly for many years. Her family knew of it, but the world did not-not even the servants or the visitors to the house. She used to hi

two years. It was not accepted by a publisher, however, till 1803; and he, having paid ten pounds for it, refused to publish it. One of Miss Austen's brothers boug

le-page merely said that it was written "By a Lady." The author never put her name to any of her books. For an anonymous first novel, it must be admitted, Sense and Sensibility was not unsuccessful. It brought Miss Austen ￡150-"a prodig

he history of the august House of Coburg, would just now be very interesting." Mr. Collins, had he been able to wean himself from Fordyce's Sermons so far as to allow himself to take an interest in fiction, could hardly have made a proposal more exquisitely grotesque. One is glad the proposal was made, however, not only for its own sake, but because it drew an

served with malice. It is tolerably certain that Miss Mitford was wrong in accepting the description of her in private life as "perpendicular, precise, taciturn, a poker of whom every one is afraid." Miss Austen, one is sure, was a lady of good-humour, as well as a novelist of good-humour; but the

o a fright. I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband." It is possible that Miss Austen's sense of the comic ran away with her at times as Emma Woodhouse's did. I do not know of any similar instance of cruelty in conversation on the part of a likeable person so unpardonable as Emma Woodhouse's witticism at the expense of Miss Bates at the Box Hill picnic. Miss Austen makes Emma ashamed of her witticism, however, after Mr. Knightley has lectured her for it. She sets a limit to the rights of wit, again, in

eople who reveal themselves almost exclusively in talk. She wastes no time in telling us what people and places looked like. She will dismiss a man or a house or a view or a dinner with an adjective such as "handsome." There is more description of persons and places in Mr. Shaw's stage-directions than in all Miss Austen's novels. She cuts the 'osses and

r and arson do in an ordinary novel. Her people do not even seem, for the most part, to be interested in anything but their opinions of each other. They have few passions beyond match-making. They are unconcerned about any of the great events of their time. Almost the only reference in the novels to the Napoleonic Wars is a mention of the prize-money of naval officers. "Many a noble fortune," says Mr. Shepherd in Persuasion, "

rsons of obscure birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honours which their fathers and grandfathers never dream

in Admiral Baldwin, the most deplorable-looking personage you can imagine: his face the colour of mahogany, rough and

xty-two." "Forty," replied Sir Basil, "forty, and no more." Picture to yourselves my amazement; I shall not easily forget Admiral Baldwin. I never saw quite so wretched an example of what a sea-faring life can do; but to a degree, I know

eve to make middling men and women talk first-rate prose. She did more than this, however. She was the first English novelist before Meredith to portray charming women with free personaliti

ires in English fiction. They are so perfect in the delicacy of their raillery as to be charming. One is conscious in them, indeed, of the presence of a sparkling spirit. Miss Austen comes as near being a star as it is possible to come