extravaganzas. Mr. Thackeray himself is not more sarcastic against snobbism, than is Miss Austen against whatever is affected or perverted, or merely sentimental, in the province of love.
Plot she has little or none. If you only enjoy a labyrinthine nexus of events, an imbroglio of accidents, an atmosphere of mystery, you will probably toss aside her volumes as "desperately slow." Yet, in the careful, artist-like management of her story, in the skilful evolution of its processes, in the tactics of a gradually-wrought dénouement, in the truthful and natural adaptation of means to ends, she is almost, if not quite, unrivalled. Nothing can be more judicious than her use of suggestions and intimations of what is to follow. And all is conducted with a quiet grace that is, or seems to be, inimitable.
Writing, as she invariably does, "with a purpose," she yet avoids with peculiar success the manner of a sententious teacher, which very frequently ruffles and disgusts those who are to be taught. She spares us the infliction of sage aphorisms and doctrinal appeals; compassing her end by the simple narration of her stories, and the natural intercourse of her characters. The variety of those characters is another remarkable point. But we become intimate with, and interested in, them all. It has been said that the effect of reading Richardson’s novels is, to acquire a vast accession of near relations. The same holds good of Miss Austen's. In the earliest of her works, "Northanger Abbey"—which, however, did not appear until after her death, in 1817[1]—we have a capital illustration of a girl who designs to be very romantic, and to find a Castle of Udolpho in every possible locality, but whose natural good-sense and excellent heart work a speedy and radical cure. Another lifelike figure is that of General Tilney, so painfully polite, so distressingly punctilious, so uncivilly attentive, so despotically selfish; and then there are the motley visitors at Bath, all hit off à merveille, especially the Thorpe family. "Persuasion," also published after the writer’s decease, teems with individuality: Sir Walter Elliott, whose one book is the "Baronetage," where he finds occupation for his idle hours, and consolation in his distressed ones; Mrs. Clay, clever, manœuvring, and unprincipled; Captain Wentworth, so intelligent, spirited, and generously high-minded; Anne Elliott, the self-sacrificing and noble-hearted victim of undue persuasion; her sister Mary, so prone to add to every other trouble that of fancying herself neglected and ill-used; Admiral and Mrs. Croft, a naval couple of the "first water," so frank, hearty, and constitutionally good-natured. Then again, in "Mansfield Park," what a bewitching "little body" is Fanny Price—what finish in the portraits of Crawford and his sister—what Dutch-school accuracy of detail in the home-pictures at Portsmouth, and what fine truth in the moral of the tale! In "Pride and Prejudice" we are introduced to five sisters, each possessing a marked idiosyncrasy: Jane, tender, confiding, and mildly contemplative; Lizzy,
- ↑ Miss Austen was born the same year as Charles Lamb (1775)—the daughter of a Hampshire rector. She resided chiefly at Southampton and the village of Chawton, where her tales were written. In the spring of 1817 she removed to Winchester, for the benefit of medical aid, and died there in the July of that year. In person, as well as mind, she was an object of real admiration.
