No other English woman of letters ever lived a life so entirely uneventful…. Born on the 16th of December, 1775. In the year 1796 and ’97, before she was twenty-three years old, she wrote the novel “Pride and Prejuduce;” in 1797 and ’98, “Sense and Sensibility,” and “Northanger Abbey.” These works, however, waited fifteen years for a publisher; and Jane, who wrote merely for her own amusement, seems to have possessed her soul in patience. In 1801 the family removed to Bath; in 1805 the Rev. George Austen died, and they again removed to Southampton. In 1809 they settled at Chawton, Hampshire; and in 1811 Jane was at length enabled to publish “Sense and Sensibility.” It was followed in 1813 by “Pride and Prejudice.” “Mansfield Park” appeared in 1814, and “Emma” in 1816. Jane Austen died on the 18th of July, 1817. After her death her early novel “Northanger Abbey,” and “Persuasion,” a mature work which has the same mellower quality as “Emma,” together with a pathos peculiarly its own, were published.

Personal

  There were twenty dances, and I danced them all, and without fatigue. I was glad to find myself capable of dancing so much and with so much satisfaction as I did; from my slender enjoyment of the Ashford balls, I had not thought myself equal to it, but in cold weather and with few couples I fancy I could just as well dance for a week together as for half an hour.

  A friend of mine, who visits her now, says that she has stiffened into the most perpendicular, precise, taciturn piece of “single blessedness” that ever existed, and that, till “Pride and Prejudice” showed what a precious gem was hidden in that unbending case, she was no more regarded in society than a poker or a fire-screen, or any other thin upright piece of wood or iron that fills its corner in peace and quietness. The case is very different now; she is still a poker, but a poker of whom every one is afraid. It must be confessed that this silent observation from such an observer is rather formidable…. After all, I do not know that I can quite vouch for this account, though the friend from whom I received it is truth itself; but her family connections must render her disagreeable to Miss Austen, since she is the sister-in-law of a gentleman who is at law with Miss A.’s brother for the greater part of his fortune.

  I remember Jane Austen, the novelist, a little child…. When I knew Jane Austen, I never suspected that she was an authoress; but my eyes told me she was fair and handsome, slight and elegant, but with cheeks a little too full. The last time I think that I saw her was at Ramsgate in 1803: perhaps she was then about twenty-seven years old. Even then I did not know she was addicted to literary composition.

  In person she was very attractive; her figure was rather tall and slender, her step light and firm, and her whole appearance expressive of health and animation. In complexion she was a clear brunette with a rich colour; she had full round cheeks, with mouth and nose small and well formed, bright hazel eyes, and brown hair forming natural curls close round her face. If not so regularly handsome as her sister, yet her countenance had a peculiar charm of its own to the eyes of most beholders…. She was not highly accomplished according to the present standard,… was fond of music, and had a sweet voice, both in singing and in conversation; in her youth she had received some instruction of the pianoforte; and at Chawton she practised daily, chiefly before breakfast…. She read French with facility, and knew something of Italian. In those days German was no more thought of than Hindostanee, as part of a Lady’s education…. She was well acquainted with the old periodicals from the “Spectator” downwards. Her knowledge of Richardson’s works was such as no one is likely again to acquire, now that the multitude and the merits of our light literature have called off the attention of readers from that great master.

  During her whole life she remained to a great extent engrossed by the interests of her family and their limited circle of old and intimate friends. This was as it should be—so far, but there may be too much of a good thing. The tendency of strictly restricted family parties and sets—when their members are above small bickerings and squabblings—when they are really superior people in every sense, is to form “mutual admiration” societies, and neither does this more respectable and amiable weakness act beneficially upon its victims…. Fondly loved and remembered as Jane Austen has been, with much reason, among her own people, in their considerable ramifications, I cannot imagine her as greatly liked, or even regarded with anything save some amount of prejudice, out of the immediate circle of her friends, and in general society…. What I mean is, that she allowed her interests and sympathies to become narrow, even for her day, and that her tender charity not only began, but ended, in a large measure, at home.

  Jane is described as tall, slender, and remarkably graceful; she was a clear brunette with a rich colour, hazel eyes, fine features, and curling brown hair. Her domestic relations were delightful, and she was specially attractive to children. A vague record is preserved of an attachment for a gentleman whom she met at the seaside, and who soon afterwards died suddenly. But there is no indication of any serious disturbance of her habitual serenity.

  The precise locality of the gravestone is in the pavement of the fifth bay of the north aisle, counting from the west. It is a slab of black marble with the following inscription:—“In memory of JANE AUSTEN, youngest daughter of the late Revd. George Austen, formerly Rector of Steventon in this County. She departed this life on July 18, 1817, aged 41, after a long illness, supported with the patience and hope of a Christian. The benevolence of her heart, the sweetness of her temper, and the extraordinary endowments of her mind, obtained the regard of all who knew her, and the warmest love of her immediate connexions. Their grief is in proportion to their affection; they know their loss to be irreparable, but in their deepest affliction they are consoled by a firm, though humble, hope that her charity, devotion, faith, and purity have rendered her soul acceptable in the sight of her Redeemer.”

  All the time that she was writing her three best novels she had no private study: she wrote in the general sitting-room at her little mahogany desk, and when visitors interrupted, a handkerchief or a newspaper was thrown over the tell-tale MSS. Very often her nephews and nieces rushed in, and she was always ready to break off from her writing to tell them long delightful fairy stories…. She was essentially a womanly woman. Everything that she did with her fingers was well done. She wrote a clear, firm hand, as easy to read as print.

  May we not be well content with Jane Austen as we have her, the central figure of a little loving family group, the dearest of daughters and sisters, the gayest and brightest of aunts, the most charming and incomparable of old maids?

  No book published in Jane Austen’s lifetime bore her name on the title-page; she was never lionized by society; she was never two hundred miles from home; she died when forty-two years of age, and it was sixty years before a biography was attempted or asked for. She sleeps in the cathedral at Winchester, and not so very long ago a visitor, on asking the verger to see her grave, was conducted thither, and the verger asked, “Was she anybody in particular? so many folks ask where she’s buried, you know!” But this is changed now, for when the verger took me to her grave and we stood by that plain black marble slab, he spoke intelligently of her life and work. And many visitors now go to the cathedral only because it is the resting-place of Jane Austen, who lived a beautiful, helpful life and produced great art, yet knew it not.

Pride and Prejudice, 1796–1813

  Read again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen’s very finely written novel of “Pride and Prejudice.” That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements, and feelings, and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I every met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early!

  Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point. What induced you to say that you would rather have written “Pride and Prejudice,” or “Tom Jones,” than any of the Waverly Novels? I had not seen “Pride and Prejudice” till I read that sentence of yours—then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, high-cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses…. She (George Sand) is sagacious and profound—Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant…. You say I must familiarize my mind with the fact that “Miss Austen is not a poetess, has no ‘Sentiment,’ no eloquence, none of the ravishing enthusiasm of poetry,”—and then you add, I must “learn to acknowledge her as one of the greatest artists, of the greatest painters of human character, and one of the writers with the nicest sense of means to an end that ever lived.” The last point only will I ever acknowledge. Can there be a great artist without poetry?

  She was only about twenty in her sheltered and happy life at home in the end of the old century, when she wrote what might have been the outcome of the profoundest prolonged observation and study of mankind—what is, we think, the most perfect of all her works—“Pride and Prejudice.”

  To say nothing of the supreme excellence of the dialogue, there is scarcely a page but has its little gem of exact and polished phrasing; scarcely a chapter which is not adroitly opened or artistically ended; while the whole book abounds in sentences over which the writer, it is plain, must have lingered with patient and loving craftsmanship…. Criticism has found little to condemn in the details of this capital novel.

  Never was there a book written which has given more harmless pleasure to those who have come under its spell. As we open its pages, we bid adieu to a world of sordid cares and troublesome interests, and though we do not wander into fairy-land, for Miss Austen’s world is always matter-of-fact, we do catch a breath of an air less severe than that which we habitually draw, and find, if not fairy-land, at least a touch of the lightness of fairy-land brought down to us.

  “Pride and Prejudice” is realistic in its narrowness of scope, in its lack of complicated plot, and in that it sets forth clearly and fully a limited section of life. It attempts to hold up no ideals; it deals for the most part with middle-class people; it has in it no literary atmosphere suggested either by the characters or by the author’s allusions. And yet one forgets that he is reading a book; he feels as if he were making a visit among people in whom he had a human interest. He finds himself scheming with the fond mother in her matchmaking interests for her daughters five.

  Perhaps “Pride and Prejudice” is the only one where the general design can be almost unreservedly praised, but even in this, which is undoubtedly the finest of her novels, there is one serious defect that is absent in none of them, namely, an inadequate sense of dramatic climax. It may be ungenerous to find fault with the author for the perfunctory manner in which she disposes of the minor figures in her story after the main interest has been exhausted…. It was entirely inexcusable that she should invariably fail to realise the opportunity of making emotional capital out of the supreme psychological moment of her dénoûment.

  It is a dated society, and it is a dated woman, not the woman of all time, that we have portrayed; but it is a society and a woman portrayed with marvellous perfection…. Moreover, if we had a complete novel-form, we have an equally complete method. One can use the style of Jane Austen as a model for study in the schoolroom. There is repression in every detail; the plot is made simple; the adjective is cut out of the sentences; every detail of finish is subordinated to a requirement of sincerity, to a limited and selected variety. The humor is cultivated, genial; it is the humor of an observer—of a refined, satisfied observer—rather than the humor of a reformer; it is the humor of one who sees the incongruities, but never dreams of questioning the general excellence of the system as a whole. All this is the method of a completed ideal; a method of manifest limits, but within its limits absolutely true. Still further we may claim that this novel is not only an expression of a complete novel form; it is not only an expression of a complete literary method; it is also an embodiment of completed ideals.

  May lay claim to being the most enjoyable book any woman ever wrote.

Sense and Sensibility, 1797–1811

  I think the title of the book is misleading to modern ears. Sensibility in Jane Austen’s day meant warm, quick feeling, not exaggerated or over keen, as it really does now; and the object of the book, in my belief, is not to contrast the sensibility of Marianne with the sense of Elinor, but to show how with equally warm, tender feelings the one sister could control her sensibility by means of her sense when the other would not attempt it. These qualities come still more prominently forward when Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters have found a home at Barton Cottage…. There can be little doubt that in “Sense and Sensibility” we have the first of Jane Austen’s revised and finished works, and in several respects it reveals an inexperienced author. The action is too rapid, and there is a want of dexterity in getting the characters out of their difficulties. Mrs. Jennings is too vulgar, and in her, as in several of the minor characters, we see that Jane Austen had not quite shaken off the turn for caricature, which in early youth she had possessed strongly.

  To contend, however, for a moment that the present volume is Miss Austen’s greatest, as it was her first published, novel, would be a mere exercise in paradox. There are, who swear by “Persuasion;” there are, who prefer “Emma” and “Mansfield Park;” there is a large contingent for “Pride and Prejudice;” and there is even a section which advocates the pre-eminence of “Northanger Abbey.” But no one, as far as we can remember, has ever put “Sense and Sensibility” first, nor can I believe that its author did so herself. And yet it is she herself who has furnished the standard by which we judge it, and it is by comparison with “Pride and Prejudice,” in which the leading characters are also two sisters, that we assess and depress its merit. The Elinor and Marianne of “Sense an Sensibility” are only inferior when they are contrasted with the Elizabeth and Jane of “Pride and Prejudice;” and even then, it is probably because we personally like the handsome and amiable Jane Bennet rather better than the obsolete survival of the sentimental novel represented by Marianne Dashwood. Darcy and Bingley again are much more “likeable” (to use Lady Queensberry’s word) than the colourless Edward Ferrars and the stiff-jointed Colonel Brandon.

Northanger Abbey, 1797–1818

  The behaviour of the General in “Northanger Abbey,” packing off the young lady without a servant or the common civilities which any bear of a man, not to say gentleman, would have shown, is quite outrageously out of drawing and out of nature.

  I read Dickens’ “Hard Times.” One excessively touching, heart-breaking passage and the rest sullen socialism. The evils which he attacks he caricatures grossly, and with little humor. Another book of Pliny’s letters. Read “Northanger Abbey; worth all Dickens and Pliny together. Yet it was the work of a girl. She was certainly not more than twenty-six. Wonderful creature!

  Her style deserves the highest commendation. It has all the form and finish of the eighteenth century, without being in the least degree stilted or unnatural. It has all the tone of good society without being in the least degree insipid. For a specimen of crisp, rich English, combining all the vigour of the masculine with all the delicacy of the feminine style, we suggest the opening chapter of “Northanger Abbey” as a model for any young lady writer of the present age.

Mansfield Park, 1814

  It is certainly not incumbent on you to dedicate your work now in the press to His Royal Highness; but if you wish to do the Regent that honour either now or at any future period I am happy to send you that permission, which need not require any more trouble or solicitation on your part. Your late works, Madam, and in particular “Mansfield Park,” reflect the highest honour on your genius and your principles. In every new work your mind seems to increase its energy and power of discrimination. The Regent has read and admired all your publications.

  Finished “Mansfield Park,” which hurries with a very inartificial and disagreeable rapidity to its conclusions, leaving some opportunities for most interesting and beautiful scenes, particularly the detailed expression of the “how and the when” Edward’s love was turned from Miss Crawford to Fanny Price. The great merit of Miss Austen is in the finishing of her characters; the action and conduct of her stories I think frequently defective.

  The longest, and, we think, least valuable of her books.

  How well I recall the greatest literary pleasure of my life, its time and place! A dreary winter’s day without, within a generous heat and glow from the flaming grate, and I reclining at my ease on the library lounge, “Mansfield Park” in hand. Then succeed four solid hours of literary bliss, and an absorption so great that when I mechanically close the book at the last page it is only by the severest effort that I come back to the real world of pleasant indoors and bleak outdoors. I was amazed that I, a hardened fiction reader, should be so transported by this gentle tale of Miss Austen’s, and yet I enjoyed to the full the after-taste of her perfect realistic art. This first enthusiasm, however, soon abated, and I began to see flaws, to note the prolixity and unevenness of the work, and to feel that it was almost school-girlish in tone and sentiment. While the verisimilitude is, indeed, fascinating, the realization is far from profound. And the characters are too one-sided for full human beings—are only puppets, each pulled by a single string. Edmund Bertram is, perhaps, the most woodeny of these marionettes. Lady Bertram, the languid beauty, seems often overdrawn. Mrs. Norris is a perfect busybody, but a pettiness so absolutely consistent at length rouses our suspicions and irritates us. We feel that human nature, outside of the madhouse, does not fulfill the single types so completely. But in Fanny Price we find no flaw or artistic presentment. Here comes before our eyes a real, a free, a complex human being…. I am acquainted with no more charming figure in fiction than Fanny; she is so completely, perfectly, deliciously feminine in instinct, feeling, manner and intelligence.

Emma, 1816

  We, therefore, bestow no mean compliment upon the author of “Emma,” when we say that, keeping close to common incidents, and to such characters as occupy the ordinary walks of life, she has produced sketches of such spirit and originality, that we never miss the excitation which depends upon a narrative of uncommon events, arising from the consideration of minds, manners and sentiments, greatly above our own. In this class she stands almost alone; for the scenes of Miss Edgeworth are laid in higher life, varied by more romantic incident, and by her remarkable power of embodying and illustrating national character. But the author of “Emma” confines herself chiefly to the middling classes of society; her most distinguished characters do not rise greatly above well-bred country gentlemen and ladies; and those which are sketched with most originality and precision, belong to a class rather below that standard.

  Finished Miss Austen’s “Emma,” which amused me very much, impressing me with a high opinion of her powers of drawing and sustaining character, though not satisfying me always with the end and aim of her labours. She is successful in painting the ridiculous to the life, and while she makes demands on our patience for the almost intolerable absurdities and tediousness of her well-meaning gossips, she does not recompense us for what we suffer from her conceited and arrogant nuisances by making their vices their punishments. We are not much better, but perhaps a little more prudent for her writings. She does not probe the vices, but lays bare the weaknesses of character; the blemish on the skin, and not the corruption at the heart, is what she examines. Mrs. Brunton’s books have a far higher aim; they try to make us better, and it is an addition to previous faults if they do not. The necessity, the comfort, and the elevating influence of piety is continually inculcated throughout her works—which never appears in Miss Austen’s.

  I have likewise read one of Miss Austen’s works—“Emma”—read it with interest and with just the degree of admiration which Miss Austen herself would have thought sensible and suitable. Anything like warmth or enthusiasm—anything energetic, poignant, heart-felt is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstration the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outré and extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lines of genteel English people curiously well. There is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy in the painting. She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound. The passions are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood. Even to the feelings she vouchsafes no more than an occasional graceful but distant recognition—too frequent converse with them would ruffle the smooth elegance of her progress. Her business is not half so much with the human heart as with the human eyes, mouth, hands, and feet. What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study; but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushed through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death—this Miss Austen ignores. She no more, with her mind’s eye, beholds the heart of her race than each man, with bodily vision, sees the heart in his heaving breast. Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless) woman. If this is heresy, I cannot help it.

  “Emma,” perhaps, is the work upon which most suffrages would meet as the most perfect of all her performances.

  I have a great liking, witnessed by a periodical re-reading, for the pleasant scampishness and easy, go as you please narrative of “Gil Blas;” and I humbly claim to share in the learned’s appreciation of Miss Austen, taking “Emma” as my first choice among the fruits of a genius so great and yet so ladylike, so almost young ladylike.

Persuasion, 1818

  “Persuasion”—excepting the tangled, useless histories of the family in the first fifty pages—appears to me, especially in all that relates to poor Anne and her lover, to be exceedingly interesting and natural. The love and the lover admirably well drawn: don’t you see Captain Wentworth, or rather don’t you in her place feel him taking the boisterous child off her back as she kneels by the sick boy on the sofa? And is not the first meeting after their long separation admirably well done?

  The book shows broader sympathies, deeper observation, and perhaps more perfect symmetry, balance, poise, than the others. The always flexible, unobtrusive style, in which reduction of emphasis is carried sometimes to the verge of equivocation, concealing the author, yet instinct with her presence, in none of her books approximates more nearly to Cardinal Newman’s definition—“a thinking out into language.” In general, the qualities that appear in the others are in “Persuasion” perhaps more successfully fused than before.

  “Persuasion” represents the ripest development of Jane Austen’s powers, that latest phase of her thoughts and feelings. It is a novel which, while not wanting in the several excellences of those which preceded it, has a mellower tone and a more finished grace of style than any of the others. It was written at a time when bodily strength had given place to weakness; and although her mind was more active than ever, her physical condition insensibly influenced her thought, giving this latest of her books that deeper note of feeling, that finer touch of sympathy and tenderness, which make “Persuasion” the greatest of all her works.

  It was Miss Austen’s last story, and has more depth of feeling and pathos than most of hers…. The delicate miniature painting of the characters in these tales is apt not to be appreciated by the young, and the tone of county society of that day disgusts them; but as they grow older they perceive how much ability and insight is displayed in the work, and esteem the forbearance, sweetness, and self-restraint of such a heroine as Anne.

  Of Anne Elliot, the heroine of “Persuasion,” she wrote to a friend, “You may perhaps like her, as she is almost too good for me.” She is too good for most of us, but not the less charming, and even the brilliancy of Elizabeth Bennet pales a little before the refined womanliness of this delightful English lady. Whether the future of Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney was wholly ideal may be doubted; we may even have secret reservations as to the absolute bliss of Emma and her Knightley; but there can be no sort of question as to the ultimate and unalloyed happiness of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, who is another of those pleasant manly naval officers whom Miss Austen, drawing no doubt from material in her own family circles, depicts so sympathetically.

General

  Miss Austin’s works may be safely recommended, not only as among the most unexceptionable of their class, but as combining, in an eminent degree, instruction with amusement, though without the direct effort at the former, of which we have complained as sometimes defeating its object. For those who cannot or will not learn anything from productions of this kind, she has provided entertainment which entitles her to thanks; for mere innocent amusement is in itself a good, when it interferes with no greater; especially as it may occupy the place of some other that may not be innocent. The Eastern monarch who proclaimed a reward to him who should deserve a new pleasure, would have deserved well of mankind had he stipulated that it should be blameless. Those, again, who delight in the study of human nature, may improve in the knowledge of it, and in the profitable application of that knowledge by the perusal of such fictions as those before us.

  By the way, did you know Miss Austen, authoress of some novels which have a great deal of nature in them?—nature in ordinary and middle life, to be sure, but valuable from its strong resemblance and correct drawing. I wonder which way she carried her pail.

  Our dinner-party this evening was like nothing but a chapter out of one of Miss Austen’s novels. What wonderful books those are! She must have written down the very conversations she heard verbatim, to have made them so like, which is Irish.

  My idol.

  The delicate mirth, the gently hinted satire, the feminine, decorous humor of Jane Austen, who, if not the greatest, is surely the most faultless of female novelists. My Uncle Southey and my father had an equally high opinion of her merits, but Mr. Wordsworth used to say that though he admitted that her novels were an admirable copy of life, he could not be interested in productions of that kind; unless the truth of nature were presented to him clarified, as it were, by the pervading light of imagination, it had scarce any attractions in his eyes.

  It is the constant manner of Shakspeare to represent the human mind as lying, not under the absolute dominion of one domestic propensity, but under a mixed government, in which a hundred powers balance each other. Admirable as he was in all parts of his art, we most admire him for this, that, while he has left us a greater number of striking portraits than all other dramatists put together, he has scarcely left us a single caricature. Shakspeare has had neither equal nor second. But among the writers who, in the point which we have noticed, have approached nearest to the manner of the great master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, a woman of whom England is justly proud. She has given us a multitude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace, all such as we meet every day. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings.

  We should say that Fielding and Miss Austen are the greatest novelists in our language…. Miss Austen has been called a prose Shakspeare;—and, among others, by Macaulay. In spite of the sense of incongruity which besets us in the words prose Shakspeare, we confess the greatness of Miss Austen, her marvelous dramatic power, seems more than anything in Scott, akin to the greatest quality in Shakspeare.

  Home, and finished “Persuasion.” I have now read over again all Miss Austen’s novels. Charming they are, but I found a little more to criticise than formerly. Yet there are in the world no compositions which approach nearer to perfection.

  She [Miss Mitford] never taught me anything but a very limited admiration of Miss Austen, whose people struck me as wanting souls, even more than is necessary for men and women of the world. The novels are perfect as far as they go—that’s certain. Only they don’t go far, I think. It may be my fault.

  All in all, as far as my information goes, the best judges unanimously prefer Miss Austen to any of her contemporaries of the same order. They reckon her “Sense and Sensibility,” her “Pride and Prejudice,” her “Mansfield Park” and her “Emma” (which novels were published in her lifetime), and also her “Northanger Abbey” and her “Persuasion” (which were published posthumously) as not only better than anything else of the kind written in her day, but also among the most perfect and charming fictions in the language. I have known the most hard-headed men in ecstasies with them; and the only objection I have heard of as brought against them by ladies is, that they reveal too many of their secrets.

  Miss Austen is, of all his successors, the one who most nearly resembles Richardson in the power of impressing reality upon her characters. There is a perfection in the exhibition of Miss Austen’s characters which no one else has approached; and truth is never for an instant sacrificed in that delicate atmosphere of satire which pervades her works…. She has been accused of writing dull stories about ordinary people. But her supposed ordinary people are really not such very ordinary people. Let any one who is inclined to criticize on this score, endeavour to construct one character from among the ordinary people of his own acquaintance that shall be capable of interesting any reader for ten minutes. It will then be found how great has been the discrimination of Miss Austen in the selection of her characters and how skillful is her treatment in the management of them.

  By those who have studied character distinct from its outward manifestations, as expressed in conformity to uses and customs, there will be found in Miss Austen’s novels an expression of firm and original courage as clear as if she had braved society, whether theoretically or practically. The boldness which will vindicate for persons of mediocre intellect souls to be saved and feelings to be tortured, and which by such vindication can interest and compel a jaded, hurrying public, eager for changing excitements, to pause and to listen—is surely no common quality; but it has within itself a promise and an assurance of enduring reputation.

  Jane Austen was the flower of a stock, full, apparently, through all its branches, of shrewd sense and caustic humour, which in her were combined with the creative imagination…. She possessed a real and rare gift, and she rendered a good account of it. If the censer which she held among the priests of art was not of the costliest, the incense was of the purest. If she cannot be ranked with the very greatest masters of fiction, she has delighted many, and none can draw from her any but innocent delight.

  She was always very careful not to meddle with matters which she did not thoroughly understand. She never touched upon politics, law, or medicine; but with ships and sailors she felt herself at home, or at least could always trust to a brotherly critic to keep her right. It is said that no flaw has ever been found in her seamanship either in “Mansfield Park” or in “Persuasion.”

  I am equally sure that Miss Austen cannot be third, any more than first or second: I think you were rather drawn away by a fashion when you put her there: and really old Spedding seems to me to have been the Stag whom so many followed in that fashion. She is capital as far as she goes: but she never goes out of the Parlour; if but Magnus Troil, or Jack Bunce, or even one of Fielding’s Brutes, would but dash in upon the Gentility and swear a round Oath or two! I must think the “Woman in White,” with her Count Fosco, far beyond all that. Cowell constantly reads Miss Austen at night after his Sanskrit Philology is done: it composes him, like Gruel: or like Paisiello’s Music, which Napoleon liked above all other, because he said it didn’t interrupt his Thoughts.

  Miss Austen is without a rival in the field she occupied…. It was a mere fragment of human life that Miss Austen saw with a clearness and an intelligence and a reproductive power that defy panegyric.

  The extraordinary skill which Miss Austen displayed in describing what Scott called “the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life,” places her as a novelist above her predecessor, Miss Burney. But it is more doubtful whether she is entitled to rank above her contemporary Miss Edgeworth. In Macaulay’s opinion Madame de Staël was certainly the first woman of her age; Miss Edgeworth the second; and Miss Austen the third. Yet Miss Austen has one advantage over Miss Edgeworth which is very important. In reading Miss Austen no one ever thinks of the moral of the story, everyone becomes insensibly the better person for perusing it.

  A distinguished English scholar said to a lecturer who had extolled the tales of Charlotte Brontë, “I am afraid you do not know that Miss Austen is the better novelist.” If the scholar had explained doubtless he would have said, in comparing Miss Brontë or George Eliot with Miss Austen,—and the three are the chief of their sex in this form of English literature—that her distinction and superiority lie in her more absolute artistic instinct. She writes wholly as an artist, while George Eliot advocates views, and Miss Brontë’s fiery page is often a personal protest. In Miss Austen, on the other hand, there is in kind, but infinitely less in degree, the same clear atmosphere of pure art which we perceive in Shakespeare and Goethe. It is a thread of exceeding fineness with which she draws us, but it is spun of pure gold. There are no great characters, no sweep of passion, no quickening of soul and exaltation of purpose and sympathy, upon her page, but there is the pure pleasure of a Watteau…. Miss Austen’s art is not less in the choice than in the treatment. She does not, indeed, carve the Moses with Michael Angelo, but she moulds the delicate cup, she cuts the gem.

  Like Wordsworth, she sought to show the charm that lies under the common things about us, and with a fine feminine humour, under sentences clear, simple, and exactly fitted to expression of a shrewd good sense, she came nearer to Fielding than any novelist who wrote before the reign of Queen Victoria.

  Her humour flows gentle and spontaneous; it is no elaborate mechanism nor artificial fountain, but a bright natural stream, rippling and trickling over every stone and sparkling in the sunshine…. Her picnics are models for all future and past picnics…. Her machinery is simple but complete; events group themselves so vividly and naturally in her mind that, in describing imaginary scenes, we seem not only to read them, but to live them, to see the people coming and going: the gentlemen courteous and in top-boots, the ladies demure and piquant; we almost hear them talking to one another.

  To-day, more than seventy long years have rolled away since the greater part of them [“Letters”] were written; no one now living can, I think, have any possible just cause of annoyance at their publication, whilst, if I judge rightly, the public never took a deeper or more lively interest in all that concerns Jane Austen than at the present moment. Her works, slow in their progress towards popularity, have achieved it with the greater certainty, and have made an impression the more permanent from its gradual advance. The popularity continues, although the customs and manners which Jane Austen describes have changed and varied so much as to belong in a great measure to another age.

  She never exhausts a scene by what is called word-painting. She indicates its main features, and describes the general effect it produces upon the spectator, rather than recapitulates the size, weight, and colour of its various component elements. To say that she has a strong insight into female character is almost superfluous. George Eliot does not enter more deeply into the workings of the female mind and heart than she does. Add to all these claims that our author’s novels are perfectly unexceptionable from every point of view, and that they combine rational amusement with no small degree of instruction, and we have advanced tolerably sufficient grounds for the continuous favour with which they have been and are still regarded. The critic who said that these novels added a new pleasure to existence was not wide of the mark. In Miss Austen’s later books, the most exacting may discover a maturity of thought and a felicity of expression seldom attained by members of her craft; and these augured still greater achievements in the future had her life been spared.

  Even Jane Austen’s novels, which strangely retain their hold on the public taste, are tedious to those who dare to think for themselves and forget Macaulay’s verdict.

  As to your own works (immortal, as I believe), I have but little that is wholly cheering to tell one who, among women of letters, was almost alone in her freedom from a lettered vanity. You are not a very popular author: your volumes are not found in gaudy covers on every bookstall; or, if found, are not perused with avidity by the Emmas and Catherines of our generation…. Your admirers, if not very numerous, include all persons of taste…. Your volumes neither excite nor satisfy the curiosities provoked by that modern and scientific fiction, which is greatly admired, I learn, in the United States as well as in France and at home.

  The great literary artist to whom we are indebted, among other things, for a gallery of those clerical portraits, destined to last as long as the English language…. I am one of the regular Austen vassals, and consider her as without a rival among English writers, in her own line and within her own limits. I should not say, as Macaulay says, that she ranks next to Shakspeare, any more than I should put a first-rate miniature painter on the same level with Raphael or Titian. It is enough for me that she stands alone as a first-rate miniature painter in her own particular school of design.

  It is a curious fact that Paris, to which the works of Jane Austen were lately as unknown as if she were an English painter, has just discovered her existence. Moreover, it has announced that she, and she only, is the founder of that realistic school which is construed to include authors so remote from each other as the French Zola and the American Howells. The most decorous of maiden ladies is thus made to originate the extreme of indecorum; and the good loyal Englishwoman, devoted to Church and King, is made sponsor for the most democratic recognition of persons whom she would have loathed as vulgar. There is something extremely grotesque in the situation; and yet there is much truth in the theory. It certainly looked at one time as if Miss Austen had thoroughly established the claim of her sex to the minute delineation of character and manners, leaving to men the bolder school of narrative romance…. But the curious thing is that of the leading novelists in the English tongues to-day it is the men, not the women, who have taken up Miss Austen’s work, while the women show more inclination, if not to the “big bow-wow style” of Scott, at least to the novel of plot and narrative. Anthony Trollope among the lately dead, James and Howells among the living, are the lineal successors of Miss Austen. Perhaps it is an old-fashioned taste which leads me to think that neither of these does his work quite so well as she.

  I very early enjoyed Jane Austen’s novels. I can sustain a competitive examination upon them now, having probably read each of the more important ones at least fifty times in my life.

  Miss Austen is likely to remind the average reader more of Cowper than of Shakspeare. Her books seem redolent of the aroma of tea mixed in just the right proportion. They are comfortable—steeped in comfort. If there is no word in them that can bring a blush to the cheek of a young girl, there is likewise no word in them to “catch us by the throat” and to force us to acknowledge there are better things in the world than a comfortable income, a bright grate, and pleasant acquaintances. Nevertheless she was an artist of the highest type.

  Her work displays creative imagination, wonderful power of observing, fine feeling for dramatic situation, and perfect command of her literary vehicle; but we cannot help feeling conscious of a certain lack of weight which comes of her steady avoidance of the heights and the depths of human nature. We are charmed always, but seldom, if ever, deeply moved. Though in various respects Jane Austen may be compared favourably with George Sand, George Eliot, and Charlotte Brontë, we feel that these writers have spells of which she knew not the secret. It is in virtue of their combination of veracious and uncompromising realism with unfailing vivacity and ever-present grace that the novels of Jane Austen are unique in literature.

  Criticism is becoming the art of saying fine things, and there are really no fine things to be said about Jane Austen.

  Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material, and Jane Austen was the first and the last of the English novelists to treat material with entire truthfulness. Because she did this, she remains the most artistic of the English novelists, and alone worthy to be matched with the great Scandinavian and Slavic and Latin artists.

  Nobody can read any of Miss Austen’s works without admiring her wonderful closeness and keenness of humorous observation, the skill with which she displays every turn in the motives of commonplace character, and the exquisite quality of the ridicule with which her fancy dances round and round them as she holds them up to our inspection. If you once make the acquaintance of the Bennet family in “Pride and Prejudice,” you can never forget them, so distinctly is each individual marked, and so keen and exquisite is the revelation of their foibles. In mere art of humorous portraiture, in a quieter and less farcical style than Miss Burney’s, Miss Austen is an expert of classical finish. But somehow, speaking for myself, I must confess to a certain want of interest in the characters themselves. Unless one is really interested in the subjects of such an elaborate art of portraiture, the gradual revelation of them, touch after touch, is apt to become tedious, however much one may enjoy for a time the quick and delicate play of the writer’s gently malicious humor. But this want of interest in the characters of English middle-class provincial life is of course a personal defect.

  The perfection of Miss Austen’s workmanship has been seized upon by unfavourable critics and used as a weapon of offence. She is perfect, they allege, only as some are virtuous, because she has no temptation; she lives in an abject world, dead to poetry, visited by no breath of romance, and is placidly contented with her ant-hill, which she describes with great accuracy and insight. It would be unjust to this type of criticism to interpret it merely as a complaint that one who was of unsurpassed power in comedy and satire did not forego her gifts and take up with romance and tragedy. If it has a meaning worth considering, it means that even the comedy of life has in it shades of pathos and passion to which she is constitutionally blind. And this is to mistake her art. The world of pathos and passion is present in her work by implication; her delicious quiet mirth, so quiet as to be inaudible to gross ears, is stirred by the incongruity between the realities of the world, as she conceives them, and these realities as they are conceived by the puppets. The kingdom of Lilliput has its meaning only when it is seen through the eyes of Gulliver. A rabbit fondling its own harmless face affords no matter of amusement to another rabbit, and Miss Austen has had many readers who have perused her works without a smile. Sympathy with her characters she frequently has, identity never. Not in the high-spirited Elizabeth Bennet, not in that sturdy young patrician Emma, not even in Anne Elliot of “Persuasion,” is the real Jane Austen to be found. She stands forever aloof. Those who wish to enjoy her art must stand aloof too, and must not ask to be hurried through her novels on a personally conducted tour, with their admirations and dislikes prepared for them.

  She makes you slip into easy acquaintance with the people of her books as if they lived next door, and would be pulling at your bell to-morrow, or to-night. And you never confound them; by the mere sound of their voices you know which is Ellinor, and which is Marianne; and as for the disagreeable people in her stories, they are just as honestly and naturally disagreeable as any neighbor you could name—whether by talking too much, or making puns, or prying into your private affairs.

  One indeed of the most wonderful things about her is her earliness…. Irony is by no means a frequent feminine gift; and as women do not often possess it in any great degree, so they do not as a rule enjoy it. Miss Austen is only inferior among English writers to Swift, to Fielding, and to Thackeray—even if it be not improper to use the term inferiority at all for what is after all not much more than difference—in the use of this potent but most double-edged weapon. Her irony indeed is so subtle that it requires a certain dose of subtlety to appreciate it, and it is not uncommon to find those who consider such personages as Mr. Collins in “Pride and Prejudice” to be merely farcical, instead of, as they are in fact, preachers of the highest and most Shakespearian comedy…. the important thing for the purposes of this history is to observe again that she “set the clock,” so to speak, of pure novel writing to the time which was to be nineteenth century time to this present hour. She discarded violent and romantic adventure. She did not rely in the very least degree on describing popular or passing fashions, amusements, politics; but confined herself to the most strictly ordinary life. Yet she managed in some fashion so to extract the characteristics of that life which are perennial and human, there can never be any doubt of fit readers in any age finding themselves at home with her, just as they find themselves at home with all the greatest writers of bygone ages. And lastly, by some analogous process she hit upon a style which, though again true to the ordinary speech of her own day, and therefore now reviled as “stilted” and formal by those who have not the gift of literary detachment, again possesses the universal quality, and, save in the merest externals, is neither ancient nor modern.

  The one prose-writer of this period whose genius has proved absolutely perdurable, who holds no lower a place in her own class than is held in theirs by Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Scott—for that impeccable Jane Austen, whose fame becomes every day more inaccessible to the devastating forces of time and shifting fashion. It has long been seen, it was noted even by Macaulay, that the only writer with whom Jane Austen can fairly be compared is Shakespeare. It is obvious that she has nothing of his width of range or sublimity of imagination; she keeps herself to that two-inch square of ivory of which she spoke in her proud and simple way. But there is no other English writer who possesses so much of Shakespeare’s inevitability, or who produces such evidence of a like omniscience. Like Balzac, like Tourgenieff at his best, Jane Austen gives the reader an impression of knowing everything there was to know about her creations, of being incapable of error as to their acts, thoughts, or emotions. She presents an absolute illusion of reality; she exhibits an art consummate that we mistake it for nature. She never mixes her own temperament with those of her characters, she is never swayed by them, she never loses for a moment her perfect, serene control of them. Among the creators of the world, Jane Austen takes a place that is with the highest and that is purely her own.

  Her conditions and temperament conspired to impose limitations which make her art perhaps more enduring than that of her great successors, since from very scarcity of material she was forced to individualize after much our present manner. But on account of these very limitations, her work has slight value as social evidence to the wider phases of contemporary life.

  The style of Jane Austen cannot be separated from herself or her method. It is the natural easy flowing garment of her mind, delighting in inconsistencies and infinite detail. It is so peculiarly her own that one cannot trace in it with any degree of certainty the course of her reading…. The matter of observation, in passing through Jane Austen’s imagination, was never violently disturbed; the particular bias it received was from a delicate and delightful irony; there was precisely that selection and recombination and heightening of incident and character that distinguish the comedy of manners from real life.

  No doubt the quibs and cranks and trickeries of literary fashion will go on and on so long as printing is not one of the lost arts; but there will always be many, among whom I count myself one, to believe that Jane Austen’s genius will assert itself triumphantly, however many these vacillations and counterchanges in literary taste, and however long they may last.

  After considering the short, feverish, genius-filled lives of such people as Marie Bashkirtseff or Aubrey Beardsley, what a rest it is to go back to the contemplation of a peaceful, homely, healthy existence like that of Jane Austen! It is, indeed, this peaceful, homely element in her writings that gives them the place they are rightfully reclaiming in English literature.

  It has sometimes occurred to me that it would be a very delightful thing if a magazine could be started which should be devoted entirely to Miss Austen, and to which only her sincere admirers should be allowed to contribute. We are never tired of talking about her; should we ever grow weary of reading or writing about her? For my own part I read every book or article that relates to her with the utmost eagerness, provided that the author displays a due sense of worship; but any criticism which is not of the most loving character is irritating, and, like other follies, it should be avoided…. The great men in literature have always appreciated her. The praise given her by Scott and Macaulay has been often quoted, and I recollect my mother telling me of a conversation with Lord Beaconsfield, who certainly expressed his admiration of the authoress, and who, I think, said that “Emma” was his favourite among the novels. But since I was young, Miss Austen’s popularity with the general public has increased in a quite remarkable manner. Some thirty years ago I was starting on a journey with two companions, one of them about my own age, the other an older man. My contemporary went to the book-stall and proposed to buy “Emma,” but his senior interposed and told him it was “awfully stupid.” I looked upwards, but no lightning struck the impious head, nor did we even encounter a railway smash. Fate may have been merciful because the intending purchaser proved himself worthy, and “Emma” was after all properly honoured. There are not now, one may hope, many who can read the novel and decide that it is “awfully stupid,” but my friend, though undoubtedly an extravagant sinner, was not altogether peculiar in his generation.