Chapter VI

The shadow of what proved a mortal illness was already hanging over Jane Austen while she was working at “Persuasion,” and this circumstance may help to account for a certain soft pensiveness in the book, in opposition to the author’s earlier unbroken, often hard, brilliance. But, as a proof that her high standard of literary excellence, and the pains which she did not grudge in order to attain it, had not abated, Mr. Austen Leigh tells us that, having ended her novel, “Persuasion,” she was dissatisfied with the close, and her dissatisfaction preyed on her mind to such a degree as to affect her usually cheerful spirits. She retired to bed one night quite depressed, but rose next morning with renewed energy and hope to make a fresh effort. She pulled down what she had done so far as to cancel the chapter containing the re-engagement of the hero and heroine, which she had pronounced flat and tame. She wrote two entirely new chapters--among the most delightful in the book--in its place. Instead of reconciling the couple at the Crofts’ lodgings, she brought the Musgroves and Captain Harville to Bath, and we know the result. Any one who has the least idea of the relief implied to a conscientious artist in the conclusion of a long thought out, long laboured at piece of work--the double relief when bodily health and spirits have failed under the task--will comprehend something of the devotion to her art and concern for her reputation which compelled the novelist thus to resume and re-construct her last scenes.

Struggling against illness as Jane Austen was from the earlier stages of the internal disease which ultimately proved fatal, in the January of 1817--the year in which she died--she began another tale, and wrote on--in spite of such bodily weakness that the last portions were first traced in pencil, though the quantity continued as great as twelve chapters in seven weeks--till the 17th of March, two months before she left Chawton not to return, and four months before her death. Mr. Austen Leigh mentions some family troubles in the spring of 1816, which his aunt took to heart, and which might have aggravated her complaint. I do not know whether these had anything to do with the persistent industry under adverse circumstances; whether she might be anxious to contribute her share still, as she had been doing within the last few years, to the family income; or whether she might be prompted feverishly to seek the distraction from other cares afforded by mental work.

Certainly, those of Jane Austen’s letters which belong to this date are as lively as ever, and wittier than in her younger days. She wrote to a nephew in reference to the weather that it was really too bad, and had been too bad for a long time, much worse than any body could bear, and she began to think it would never be fine again. This was a _finesse_ of hers, for she had often observed that if anybody wrote about the weather it was generally completely changed before the letter was read. She chaffed the Winchester boy on having first dated the letter from his father’s house at Steventon, and then given the superfluous information that he had returned home. She was glad that he had recollected to mention his being come home. Her heart had begun to sink within her when she had got so far through his letter without its being mentioned. She had been dreadfully afraid that he might have been detained at Winchester by some illness--confined to his bed, perhaps, and quite unable to hold a pen, and only dating from Steventon in order, with a mistaken sort of tenderness, to deceive her. But now she had no doubt of his being at home, she was sure he would not have said it so seriously unless it were so.

She changed the subject to describe countless post-chaises full of Winchester boys passing the cottage on their return home for their holidays--chaises full of future heroes, legislators, fools, and villains. Before he came to see his grandmother and aunts his mother must get well, he must go to Oxford, and _not_ be elected. After that, a little change of scene might be good for him, and his physicians, she hoped, would order him to the sea, or to a house by the side of a very considerable pond.

In another letter to the same correspondent, Jane Austen said that one reason of her writing was for the pleasure of directing to the young fellow as Esquire. She wished him joy on having left Winchester for good. Now he might own how miserable he had been there; now it would gradually all come out, his crimes and his miseries: how often he had gone up by the mail to London and thrown away fifty guineas at a tavern, and how often he had been on the point of hanging himself, restrained only, as some ill-natured person writing on poor Winton had it, by the want of a tree within some miles of the city.

This nephew, like one of the author’s nieces, appears to have been perpetrating a boyish attempt at a novel under the fascination of the favourite Aunt Jane’s vocation. There was some delightful banter from her on their common craft. After a brief allusion to his Uncle Henry’s very superior sermons, she proceeded to suggest that the budding novelist and herself ought to get hold of one or two and put them into their novels; it would be a fine help to a volume; they could make their heroines read them aloud on a Sunday evening, just as well as Isabella Wardlaw in the “Antiquary”[10] was made to read the history of the Hartz demon in the ruins of St. Ruth, though Jane believed on recollection Lovel was the reader. She was quite concerned for the loss the lad’s mother had mentioned in her letter. Two chapters and a half to be missing was monstrous. It was well that she had not been at Steventon lately, and therefore could not be suspected of purloining them; two strong twigs and a half towards a nest of her own would have been something. She did not think, however, that any theft of that sort would be really very useful to her. What could she have done with his strong, manly, vigorous sketches, full of variety and glow? How could she possibly have joined them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which she worked with so fine a brush as produced little effect after much labour?

Jane Austen’s disease increased gradually, while she was spared much suffering. Her friends were not aware how soon or how late she apprehended the serious nature of her complaint. Her unselfishness and her buoyant temper alike inclined her to make light of any illness. An instance is given of her constant consideration for those around her. In the usual sitting-room at Chawton Cottage there was only one sofa, frequently occupied by Mrs. Austen, then in her seventy-eighth year. Jane, who was forced to lie down often, would never use the sofa, even in her mother’s absence. She contrived a sort of couch for herself with two or three chairs, and alleged that the arrangement was much more comfortable to her than a real sofa; but the importunity of a little niece drew from the invalid the private explanation that she believed if she herself had shown any inclination to use the sofa, her mother might have scrupled being on it so much as was good for her.

In a long letter to a friend, in the beginning of 1817, Jane wrote happily about herself, as having certainly gained strength during the winter, and being then not far from well. She thought she understood her case better than she had done, and ascribed her symptoms to biliousness, which could be kept off by care. After various bits of family news she finished the letter, then added in a postscript that the real object of the epistle was to ask her friend for a recipe, but she had thought it genteel not to let it appear early.

By April Jane Austen was seriously ill, and a young niece who had walked over with an elder sister to inquire for her aunt, received the impression of her as quite like an invalid. She was in her dressing-gown, sitting in an arm-chair, though she could get up and kindly greet the visitors. She was very pale, her voice was weak and low, and there was about her a general appearance of debility and suffering. She was not equal to the exertion of talking, and the visit of the nieces to the sick room was a short one, their other aunt, Cassandra, soon taking them away.

In the following month, May, Jane Austen was induced to go to Winchester, to be near a skilful doctor, who spoke encouragingly to his patient, but who from the first entertained little expectation of a permanent cure. She was accompanied by her life-long friend and sister Cassandra. They could leave their aged mother behind them with the friend and family connection who made one of the household at Chawton Cottage. Besides, Mrs. Austen was near several of her children and grandchildren. In Winchester, where the sisters had lodgings in the corner house in College Street, at the entrance to Commoners, the Austens had old and valued friends among the residents in the Close. Still Jane wrote hopefully about herself to the nephew to whom she appears to have been so much attached. There was no better way of thanking him for his affectionate concern for her during her illness than by telling him herself, as soon as possible, that she continued to get better. She seems to have been aware of the change in her penmanship, which struck him also, and hastened to observe gaily that she would not boast of her handwriting: neither that nor her face had yet recovered their proper beauty, but in other respects she gained strength very fast. She was then out of bed from nine in the morning until ten at night--upon the sofa, it was true, but she ate her meals with Aunt Cassandra in a rational way, and could employ herself and walk from one room to another. Mr. Lyford (the surgeon) said he would cure her, and if he failed, she would draw up a memorial to the Dean and Chapter, and had no doubt of redress from that pious, learned, and disinterested body. The sisters’ lodgings were very comfortable. They had a neat little drawing-room with a bow window, overlooking Dr. Gabell’s garden. Thanks to the kindness of her correspondent’s father and mother in sending her their carriage, her journey to Winchester on Saturday had been performed with very little fatigue, and had it been a fine day, she thought she would have felt none; but it had distressed her much to see Uncle Henry and William Knight, who had kindly attended them on horseback, riding in the rain almost the whole way.

The cheerful letter ends solemnly: “God bless you, my dear E----. If ever you are ill, may you be as tenderly nursed as I have been. May the same blessed alleviations of anxious sympathising friends be yours; and may you possess, as I dare say you will, the greatest blessing of all, in the consciousness of not being unworthy of their love. _I_ could not feel this. Your very affectionate aunt, J. A.”

For amidst the sweet and jubilant sights and sounds of an English May and June in the old grey cathedral town, the great English novelist was fast passing away. Jane Austen had always been a sweet-tempered, contented woman, and all that was best and noblest in her nature and her faith came out in the patience, humility, and thankfulness with which she met her last enemy. “I will only say farther,” are her loving words, in one more letter, that “my dearest sister, my tender, watchful, indefatigable nurse, has not been made ill by her exertions. As to what I owe her, and the anxious affection of all my beloved family on this occasion, I can only cry over it, and pray God to bless them more and more.”

The sister who had lived together with Jane in their home--who had been with her waking and sleeping for forty-two years--who had served the little girl as a model--who had held the office of the young author’s sole confidante beforehand, as to her characters and plots--who had rejoiced and suffered with her, stood by and soothed Jane Austen’s death-bed; so did a sister-in-law, to whom the dying woman said, almost with her last breath, “You have always been a kind sister to me, Mary.”

Two of her brothers, whom she had so cherished in her faithful affection, both clergymen living near, were frequently with her, administering the consolations and services of their church, as well as testifying their constant regard. She was fully acquainted with her danger, though she continued hopeful. She had much to bind her to life. “We may well believe,” Mr. Austen Leigh writes, “that she would gladly have lived longer; but she was enabled, without dismay or complaint, to prepare for death. She was a humble, believing Christian.” And she was strengthened to rule her spirit to the last. Her sweetness of temper never failed. She was always considerate of, and grateful to, those who attended on her. At times, when she felt a little better, the ruling spirit of playfulness revived, and she amused her companions even in their sadness. She sank rapidly in the end. On being asked whether there was anything she wanted, her reply was, “Nothing but death.” These were her parting words. In quietness and peace, records Jane Austen’s nephew, she breathed her last, on the morning of July 18th, 1817, at the age of forty-two years. She was buried on the 24th of July, in Winchester Cathedral, near the centre of the north aisle, opposite the tomb of William of Wykeham. A slab of black marble marks the place.[11]

The words with which Mr. Austen Leigh concludes the memoir are full of simple pathos. “Her own family only attended the funeral. Her sister returned to her desolated home, there to devote herself to the care of her aged mother, and to live much on the memory of her lost sister, till called many years later to rejoin her. Her brothers went back sorrowing to their several homes. They were very fond and very proud of her. They were attached to her by her talents, her virtues, and her engaging manners; and each loved afterwards to fancy a resemblance in some niece or daughter of his own to the dear sister Jane, whose perfect equal they yet never expected to see.”

Surely to be thus prized and mourned by her nearest and dearest was beautiful and good--in one sense best--while it need not have interfered with wider interests and influences; and, doubtless, to be so cherished was the meet reward of Jane Austen’s faithful performance of the home duties from which no literary career, however arduous and distinguished, absolved her, and of her unswerving loyalty to the domestic affections which form the inner citadel of all true natures. For charity or love must always begin at home, and reign paramount there, wherever it may end, though the extremities of the earth may own its sway.

Jane Austen’s mother survived her ten years, dying at the great age of eighty-eight. Cassandra Austen lived nearly twenty years after her mother’s death, nearly thirty years after the death of Jane, dying at the age of seventy. On the death of Cassandra Austen, Chawton Cottage was suffered to fall far down in the social scale of houses: it was divided into tenements for labourers. The rooms continued to be so used while the walls were still standing, nine or ten years ago.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] My readers may remember the old church at Kellynch, which was mentioned by Charles Musgrove as an apology to Captain Benwick for visiting the village.

[2] We are reminded of the discussion on handwriting, and the praise of Emma Woodhouse’s handwriting in “Emma.”

[3] The members of the Austen and Leigh families seem to have been much given to changing their names--sometimes acquiring estates in the process. Thus we have Mr. Leigh Perrot, Mr. Knight (who was originally Edward Austen), and at last Mr. Austen Leigh.

[4] There was a wise and really dignified moderation about people’s ideas then. Is it to our honour to have departed so far from the contented minds and simple habits of our predecessors?

[5] At the same time many popular lady novelists, including Miss Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, the Miss Porters, and Mrs. Brunton, were already in the field, and it was not immediately recognised, except perhaps, by a few great men, that a queen of novelists had appeared among them.

[6] It appears, however, to have been to her new publisher, Mr. Murray, that Jane Austen was indebted for an early sight of the books of the season, including “Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk.”

[7] Mr. Clarke’s tall language recalls the phrases of Mr. Collins in “Pride and Prejudice.”

[8] We have a single hint of Jane Austen’s delight in “a good play.” She alludes with eager expectation, in one of her letters, to her brother’s strenuous efforts to get tickets to hear Kean.

[9] “Persuasion” was published, together with “Northanger Abbey,” by Mr. Murray, in 1818, the year after Jane Austen’s death. The proceeds of her books which had fallen to her share in her lifetime were seven hundred pounds, but how the sum was apportioned to each novel we are not told. If contemporary favour is rarely a test of a book’s merit, still less is the sum of money which it fetches to begin with. Among the lady novelists of her day--none of whom, not even Maria Edgeworth or Susan Ferrier, deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with Jane Austen--there were several whose pecuniary gains must have been double and treble hers.

[10] _The_ novel of the year.

[11] In addition, there is now a monument which was erected to Jane Austen’s memory by her nephew, the writer of the memoir.

JANE AUSTEN’S NOVELS.

The study of Jane Austen’s novels is in some respects a liberal education. The proper appreciation of these stories has been suggested as a gauge of intellect. But though the verdict of the best judges, including the earnest, well-nigh reverential approbation of Sir Walter Scott, and the boundless enthusiasm of Lord Macaulay, who has pronounced Jane Austen, in her more limited walk, next to Shakespeare, the test is unfair, so long as men and women’s minds, no less than the schools of fiction, are in two major, in addition to many minor divisions. Of course, where authors are concerned, in rare and great instances, as in that of Shakespeare, the divisions are united, and we have a comprehensive, many-sided genius. But these exceptions are few and far between, like stars of the first magnitude. There is a cast of inventive intellect, and a school of writing which deal exclusively with human nature in the mass, choosing to work with common materials, and to make them valuable by the penetrating fidelity, and nice perception and adaptation of the workmanship. There is another order of genius and of wit, which selects an extraordinary, sometimes an abnormal subject, whether man or woman, story or surroundings, and by the sheer power and the passionate insight which are shown in the treatment, compel our comprehension and sympathy for what would otherwise be strange, perhaps repugnant to us.

These minds and schools are, and always must be, in natural antagonism to each other. The disciples of the one have rarely such breadth of faculty and taste as to be the disciples of the other. Among women, Jane Austen may be taken as the representative of the first class, Charlotte Brontë of the second. The fervent, faithful followers of the one genius are apt, more or less, to condemn and slight the other.

It is more than questionable whether the two women, had they been contemporaries, could have sympathised strongly. Of course, the opportunity was not granted to Jane Austen; but in the case of Charlotte Brontë, who stands here for what is, after all, the narrower school, though its inspiration may be deeper, she was perplexed and annoyed by the recommendation of a critic to whom she paid deference that she should read and re-read Miss Austen. Jane Austen’s work was “tame and domestic,” if not peddling, to Charlotte Brontë.

After dismissing the unfair insistence on a universal acknowledgment of the surpassing qualities, in her own line, of Jane Austen, it is still true that they are as nearly as possible perfect. Great variety of character, though in one class and amidst the same surroundings--which rendered the achievement of such variety the more remarkable--lively interest excited by the most legitimate means; the artistic cunning with which every-day events are handled; keen irony; delicate, exquisite humour, which never fails; the greatest capacity for selecting and grouping her materials--where shall we find these attractions in an equal degree to that in which they are to be met in Jane Austen’s novels? Above all, every story is as wholesome and sweet, without cloyness, as English wheat-fields repaying the cultivation of generations, and the roses, set in hardy prickles, of English gardens.

We hear much, with reason, of the great English humourists. Why has a secondary place among them not been assigned to Jane Austen? Making due allowance for sex and rank, and the double restrictions which they laid upon her, none can read her novels with intelligent appreciation and fail to see that she deserves to stand high in the rank of English humourists, unless, indeed, the root-word humour is understood to mean oddity and eccentricity, and the definition humourist is confined to the writer who illustrates oddities. For it is one of Miss Austen’s crowning distinctions, that just as she hardly ever exaggerated or caricatured, so she did not care to have to do with men and women riding their hobbies.

I have been amazed to read one criticism of Jane Austen, which denies her all humour, and only grants her a sense of the ridiculous and a power of expressing it, in addition to her life-like pictures of English country life in her own rank. The critic remarks that she only provokes a smile, never a laugh. No doubt standards are different, but I am inclined to suspect that the broad burlesque and screaming farce, which to this critic appears to sum up every display of humour, and which might draw shouts of laughter from him and his school, would not win so much as a smile from the admirers of Miss Austen.

Another accusation which has been brought against Jane Austen is, that she is deficient in strength and warmth. But violence is not strength, neither is demonstrativeness warmth. Unquestionably this novelist never tears her passion to tatters. For that matter she elected not to deal with fierce passions. But in her own field of art, if restrained power and marvellous flexibility be strength, then she is strong. Indeed, the idea of weakness associated with Jane Austen is superlatively absurd. Again, self-respectful, delicate reticence may be called cold, but if so the coldness is shared by some of the best writers of fiction in every generation, and it would be well for modern English literature and its readers if such coldness were more common.

I should like to say a word on the real limitations of Jane Austen’s genius in her novels. In the first place, while the talk and writing of our mothers and grandmothers were, with regard to many things, simpler and more plain-spoken than ours, there is another side on which they were strictly reserved. Deep feeling, religious opinions, personal testimony on the highest questions, were, unless in exceptional circles, withheld and kept hidden as too sacred for general discussion; above all, as unfit for the pages of a story. No one who knows much of the women and their books can doubt the vital religious principles of Jane Austen and Jane and Anna Maria Porter. But though Jane Porter always included fervent religious faith among the attributes of her idealised fantastic heroes of romance, Anna Maria, in the only tale in which she showed how well and pleasantly she could deal with contemporary life, apologised anxiously in the preface for the serious tone of the later volumes. Jane Austen, a stronger-minded woman, could entertain a still more decided view of her calling, and could restrain any impulse to overstep it. She is almost absolutely silent on every motive and principle out of what she held to be her province; nay, she frequently brings forward the lower motives of sound common sense and rational prudence, just as a sensitive person would prefer to urge them still, in mixed company, rather than bring in loftier obligations, when to do so might be casting pearls before swine. We have to study the conduct rather than the speeches of her characters, just as we have to look at the lives of some of the best men and women in every generation, to discern to our satisfaction that they are, with all their human frailties, thoroughly reverent and noble-minded.

There is nothing in the last observation to imply that the author shirked any duty of speech which she recognised. On the contrary, in carrying out her purpose of exhibiting the deplorable results of an entirely worldly education in the Crawfords and Bertrams in “Mansfield Park;” in indicating the little straws of former bad habits which are enough to expose a hypocrite to eyes willing to be enlightened in Mr. Elliot in “Persuasion,” she probably put force upon her natural reserve, that she might not fail in her fidelity to her moral. For one of the most gifted English novelists never wrote without a good moral, more or less conspicuous. So universally was the true morality of Jane Austen’s novels acknowledged, that at a time when novels were, with too much cause, largely tabooed in many households, there was a general exception made in favour of the tales in which the characters said little or nothing about religion, but lived it to some extent.

The absence of the most distant allusion to a higher life and its power is most conspicuous in the clergymen who figure largely in Miss Austen’s novels. Her biographer and nephew, Mr. Austen Leigh, himself a clergyman, and the son and grandson of clergymen, sees himself called upon to refer to this, when he says in her memoir that the standard of duty in the Church is much higher than formerly, and that the profession and practice even of Henry Tilney and Edmund Bertram would be different to-day.

It is to this marked restraint which Jane Austen put upon the expression of all sacred depths of feeling, whether they belonged to religion or not, quite as much as to her mental constitution, or to the formal conditions of her generation, that another result is due. While we have so much that may instruct, entertain, and delight us in her stories, we have nothing that will harrow, and not much that will move us to thoughts which lie too deep for tears. There is no end of enchanting humour; there is curiously little pathos.

With regard to that other criticism which may be made of defective taste and sentiment in some of the work which is otherwise so excellent, as in “Pride and Prejudice,” in the free discussion not only by a vulgar matchmaker like Mrs. Bennet, and by her silly, giddy younger daughters, but by modest and charming girls like Jane and Elizabeth Bennet, of the probability of Mr. Bingley’s falling in love with one of the girls among whom he has come, and marrying her--thus at the same time securing her happiness and providing her with an unexceptionable establishment--I believe it is an example at once of blunter candour than exists at present, and of the sole light in which a girl’s position was then regarded. It goes without saying that Jane and Elizabeth were incapable either of instituting unbecoming and unwomanly attempts to attract the hero of the hour, or of consenting to marry any other hero, whom they could neither respect nor love, simply as the means to secure an establishment in life. As it happened, Cassandra and Jane Austen, in whom some of their contemporaries saw the originals of Jane and Elizabeth Bennet, proved equally incapable of the last piece of unworthy time-serving. But Miss Austen was what all true artists and teachers must be,--in advance of the prevailing morality of her day. She argued and acted on the side of what was upright and unworldly; still she was so far affected by the tone of thought around her as to cause her best women in “Pride and Prejudice” to wait and watch for Bingley’s throwing the handkerchief, while they coolly debate Jane Bennet’s chances of attracting and fixing his regard. A hundred or eighty years ago there was but one career for a woman not possessed of an independent fortune--that of marriage. Jane Austen never concealed--on the contrary, she publicly proclaimed in “Emma,” that she looked upon the necessity of a gentlewoman’s working for her livelihood as a very hard and well-nigh degrading obligation, an ordeal which would expose her to much that was at once painful and injurious. We may hope that we have to some extent happily changed all that. Besides the prejudices, no doubt not ill-founded, on all the evidence which was then in the possession of even the wisest and most liberal-minded of our predecessors, we must not forget that Miss Austen has placed her five Miss Bennets in a specially trying and precarious position. Their father’s estate was entailed on male heirs, and on his death passed to a cousin, who was a stranger to the family. The interest of the mother’s small fortune of four thousand pounds was inadequate to maintain her daughters, save in a poor way, altogether beneath what they had been accustomed to. The circumstances were not enough to tempt the fine-spirited, true-hearted elder girls into any betrayal of their real dignity and independence in the matter of marriage. But Jane Austen did not mean--it would be ridiculous in taking the generation and its rooted restrictions into consideration, to suppose she could--that the precariousness of the Bennets’ prospects did not influence them, and their friends for them, in desiring that they should be speedily and well married.

There is an undeniable occasional hardness and sharpness of satire, most perceptible in the earlier of the novels, and softening as the author’s nature mellowed. As an instance of change in a familiar custom, there is hardly ever an abbreviation of a christian name in the family life of Miss Austen’s novels, any more than in the family life of her class in that day. With the exception of Lizzy Bennet in “Pride and Prejudice,” and Fanny Price in “Mansfield Park,” the abbreviations end with the period of childhood. No perpetual Charlies and Neds, Kates or Kittys, and Babs, meet us at every step. There may be less formality in the modern practice, but there is also a suspicion of less manliness and womanliness, with their earnestness and responsibility. What serious sense of duty can be expected from a Hal, or a Loo, not to say from a Dolly representing an Adolphus, or a Dot standing as a pet name for a stately Margaret or a grandly simple Mary?

Jane Austen had a high opinion of the merit of her work. When her characters were compared to living people, she maintained stoutly that she was too proud of her gentlemen to admit that they were only Mr. A. or Colonel B., although she qualified the assertion by allowing--for the credit of human nature, and for her own credit--to avoid the accusation of painting angels instead of men, that with regard to her favourites, Edmund Bertram and Mr. Knightley, they were very far from being what she knew English gentlemen often were.

In the long list--growing always longer with the years--of the distinguished admirers of Miss Austen’s books, Mr. Austen Leigh quotes formidable names--formidable to those who hold an opposite view of her claims as an author. Among widely different names of men are those of Southey, Coleridge, Sir James Mackintosh, Guizot, Lord Holland, Whewell, Sydney Smith, Archbishop Whately, Sir Walter Scott,[12] the American statesman Quincey, and Lord Macaulay. Only one woman’s name is given--that of Miss Mitford. We must hope, for the honour of intellectual and literary women, that many more names might have been added of women who have gladly and gratefully acknowledged Jane Austen as a queen of novelists. To the examples cited, large additions might be made from the names of modern thinkers and students of human nature, since among them the novelist’s fame is still increasing.

Let it never be said, for women’s own sakes, that it is among women--among bright, quick-witted girls such as she herself was when she wrote “Pride and Prejudice” and “Northanger Abbey,” far outstripping mature competitors--that Jane Austen begins to be no longer read and reverenced.

In her own day, Jane Austen kept a collection of such criticisms of her books as she could come across, including in the collection various contemptuous opinions as that “one lady could say nothing better of ‘Mansfield Park’ than that it was a ‘mere novel.’”

Another owned that “she thought ‘Sense and Sensibility’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice’ downright nonsense, but expected to like ‘Mansfield Park’ better, and, having finished the first volume, hoped that she had got through the worst.”

Another “did not like ‘Mansfield Park.’ Nothing interesting in the characters, language poor.”

“One gentleman read the first and last chapters of ‘Emma,’ but did not look at the rest, because he had been told that it was not interesting.”

“The opinions of another gentleman about ‘Emma’ were so bad that they could not be repeated to the author.”

Among the most remarkable of the criticisms worthy of the name of Jane Austen, are those of Sir Walter Scott and Macaulay. The generous entry in Sir Walter’s diary is as follows:--“Read again, for the third time at least, ‘Pride and Prejudice.’ That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever 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!”

Macaulay has this entry in his journal:--“I have now read once again all Miss Austen’s novels--charming they are. There are in the world no compositions which approach nearer to perfection.”

In Macaulay’s well-known essay on Madame d’Arblay, there is, in the course of an admirable comparison between the two writers, the following high praise of Jane Austen:--

“Highest among those who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue, stands Shakespeare. His variety is, like the variety of nature, endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity. The characters of which he has given us an impression, as vivid as that which we receive from the characters of our own associates, are to be reckoned by scores. Yet in all these scores hardly one character is to be found which deviates widely from the common standard, and which we could call very eccentric if we met it in real life. The silly rule that every man has one ruling passion, and that this clue, once known, unravels all the mysteries of his conduct, finds no countenance in the plays of Shakespeare. There man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions, which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn. What is Hamlet’s ruling passion? Or Othello’s? Or Harry the Fifth’s? Or Wolsey’s? Or Lear’s? Or Shylock’s? Or Benedick’s? Or Macbeth’s? Or that of Cassius? Or that of Falconbridge? But we might go on for ever. Take a single example--Shylock. Is he so eager for money as to be indifferent to revenge? Or so eager for revenge as to be indifferent to money? Or so bent on both together as to be indifferent to the honour of his nation and the law of Moses? All his propensities are mingled with each other, so that, in trying to apportion to each its proper part, we find the same difficulty which constantly meets us in real life. A superficial critic may say that hatred is Shylock’s ruling passion. But how many passions have amalgamated to form that hatred? It is partly the result of wounded pride: Antonio has called him dog. It is partly the result of covetousness: Antonio has hindered him of half a million; and when Antonio is gone, there will be no limit to the gains of usury. It is partly the result of national and religious feeling: Antonio has spat on the Jewish gabardine; and the oath of revenge has been sworn by the Jewish Sabbath. We might go through all the characters which we have mentioned, and through fifty more in the same way, for it is the constant manner of Shakespeare to represent the human mind as lying not under the absolute dominion of one despotic 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.

“Shakespeare has 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. There are, for example, four clergymen, none of whom we should be surprised to find in any parsonage in the kingdom--Mr. Edward Ferrars, Mr. Henry Tilney, Mr. Edmund Bertram, and Mr. Elton. They are all specimens of the upper part of the middle class; they have all been liberally educated; they all lie under the restraints of the same sacred profession; they are all young; they are all in love; not one of them has any hobby-horse, to use the phrase of Sterne; not one has a ruling passion, such as we read of in Pope. Who would not have expected them to be insipid likenesses of each other? No such thing. Harpagon is not more unlike to Jourdain, Joseph Surface is not more unlike to Sir Lucius O’Trigger, than every one of Miss Austen’s young divines to all of his reverend brethren. And almost all this is done by touches so delicate, that they elude analysis, that they defy the powers of description, and that we know them to exist only by the general effect to which they have contributed.”

Macaulay’s sister, Lady Trevelyan, told Mr. Austen Leigh that her brother had intended to write a memoir of Jane Austen, with criticisms on her works, to prefix it to a new edition of her novels, and from the proceeds of the sale to erect a monument to her memory in Winchester Cathedral. It is said that the references to the novels in Lord Macaulay’s “Journal” served to carry out his purpose so far, attracting a public which--to its shame, shall I say?--knew not the author, and selling off a whole edition of Jane Austen’s tales. That the erection of the monument in Winchester Cathedral followed is of less consequence. She needs no monument save what her brain and hands wrought out. Let her own works follow her.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Jane Austen’s nephew, on visiting Abbotsford, was suffered to take into his hand one of the volumes of Sir Walter’s well-worn set of her novels.

JANE AUSTEN’S NOVELS, AND JANE AUSTEN.

“PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.”[13]