between a normal, healthy-natured girl and the romantic heroines of fiction; and, by showing the girl slightly affected with romantic notions, Jane Austen exhibits the contrast between the world as it is and the world as imagined by the romancers whom she wished to ridicule. The first paragraph of the first chapter, in telling us what Catherine Morland was, tells us, with delicate irony, what she was not; dwelling, in every line, upon the extraordinary beauty and ability of romantic heroines. As the story goes on, we learn that a girl may completely lack this extraordinary beauty and ability without falling into the opposite extremes. At Bath, Catherine Morland comes into contact with silly and vulgar people, the Thorpes; and the contrast makes her candour and right feeling shine all the brighter; while, under the educative influence of wellbred people with a sense of humour, the Tilneys, she develops quickly. Staying at the Tilneys' house, she is cured of her last remnant of romantic folly; and, on leaving her, we are confident that she will make Henry Tilney a sensible and charming wife. Jane Austen's sound and lively sense, her Greek feeling for balance and proportion, are not less clear in Northanger Abbey than in the other novels. None of the others, moreover, gives so clear an impression of the author's enjoyment in writing her story. The scenes of amusement at Bath, the vulgarity and insincerity of Isabella Thorpe, the broader comedy of her brother, the ironic talk of Henry Tilney, all are executed with high-spirited gusto; and we may believe that Jane Austen loved the simple-minded, warm-hearted girl, whom she tenderly steers between the rocks into harbour.

With Sense and Sensibility, we revert to the chronological order of publication. Elinor and Marianne, a first sketch of the story, written in the form of letters, appears to have been read aloud by Jane Austen to her family about 1795; in the autumn of 1797, she began to write the novel in its present form; and, after laying it aside for some years, she prepared it for publication in 1809, when, after several changes of abode, she had settled at Chawton in Hampshire. Begun before Northanger Abbey, it lacks the youthful spirit of that novel, while betraying, in a different manner, the inexperience of its author. In construction and characterisation, it is the weakest of Jane Austen's novels. The hearty, vulgar Mrs Jennings, her bearish son-in-law, Mr Palmer, her silly daughter, Mrs Palmer, provide comedy, it is true; but this comedy is mere 'comic relief '—a separate matter from the story; and it is not fitted to the story with perfect

adroitness. In the conduct of the novel, the feebleness of Edward Ferrars, the nonentity of colonel Brandon and the meanness of the Steele sisters are all a little exaggerated, as if Jane Austen's desire to make her point had interfered with her complete control of her material. It is, to some extent, the same with Mrs Dashwood and her two elder daughters. Anxiety to demonstrate that strong feelings are not incompatible with selfrestraint, and to show the folly of an exaggerated expression of sentiment, has resulted in a touch of something like acerbity in the treatment of Mrs Dashwood and Marianne (suggesting that Jane Austen was personally angry with them), and in a too rarely dissipated atmosphere of reproof about Elinor. The spirit of pure comedy is not so constant in Sense and Sensibility as in any other novel that Jane Austen wrote; though the second chapter, which describes the famous discussion between John Dashwood and his wife, is, perhaps, the most perfect to be found in any of her novels.

Jane Austen's next novel, Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813, is her most brilliant work. The wit in it sparkles. She herself thought that it needed more relief. She wrote to her sister, Cassandra, with a characteristic couching of sober sense in playful exaggeration :

The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story; an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Buonoparte, on anything that would form a contrast, and bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness and epigrammatism of the general style.

She did not perceive, perhaps, how the story gains in gravity and quiet when it comes to the change in Elizabeth Bennet's feeling for Darcy. This part of the book offers a foretaste of the sympathetic understanding which, later, was to give its peculiar charm to Persuasion; and, besides supplying the needed relief to the flashing wit with which Jane Austen reveals her critical insight into people with whom she did not sympathise, it affords a signal example of her subtle method. The story is seen almost wholly through the eyes of Elizabeth Bennet; yet, without moving from this standpoint, Jane Austen contrives to show what was happening, without Elizabeth's knowledge, in Elizabeth's mind. To a modern reader, the great blot on the book is the author's neglect to lift Darcy sufficiently above the level of aristocratic brutality: it has constantly to be

remembered that, in Jane Austen's day and social class, birth and fortune were regarded with more respect than they are now. Darcy's pride was something other than snobbishness; it was the result of a genuinely aristocratic consciousness of merit, acting upon a haughty nature. To Jane Austen herself, Elizabeth Bennet was as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print'; and Pride and Prejudice (immediately upon its publication) was 'her own darling child.' With subsequent generations, it has been the most popular of her novels, but not because of Elizabeth or Darcy, still less for sweet Jane Bennet and her honest Bingley. The outstanding merit of the book is its witty exposition of foolish and disagreeable people: Mr Bennet (he must be included for his moral indolence, however he may delight by his humour), Mrs Bennet, Elizabeth's younger sisters, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, best of all, Mr Collins. Taken by itself, this study of a pompous prig is masterly; but, in Pride and Prejudice, nothing can be taken by itself. The art of the book is so fine that it contains no character which is without effect upon the whole; and, in a novel dealing with pride and with prejudice, the study of such toadyism and such stupidity as that of Mr Collins gives and gains incalculable force.

Jane Austen's next novel, Mansfield Park, is less brilliant and sparkling than Pride and Prejudice, and, while entering no less subtly than Persuasion into the fine shades of the affections and feelings, it is the widest in scope of the six. Begun, probably, in the autumn of 1812, and finished in the summer of 1813, this was the first novel which Jane Austen had written without interruption, and remains the finest example of her power of sustaining the interest throughout a long and quiet narrative. The development of Fanny Price, from the shy little girl into the woman who marries Edmund Bertram, is one of Jane Austen's finest achievements in the exposition of character; and, in all fiction, there are few more masterly devices of artistic truth than the effect of Crawford's advances upon Fanny herself and upon Fanny's importance in the reader's mind. In Mansfield Park, the study of Fanny Price is only one of several excellent studies of young women-the two Bertram girls and Miss Crawford being chief among the rest. Mansfield Park is the book in which Jane Austen most clearly shows the influence of Richardson, whose Sir Charles Grandison was one of her favourite novels; and her genius can scarcely be more happily appreciated than by a study of the manner in which she weaves into material of a Richardsonian

fineness the brilliant threads of such witty portraiture of mean or foolish people as that of Lady Bertram, of Mrs Norris, of Fanny's own family, of Mr Yates, Mr Rushworth and others. Edmund Bertram, though presenting a great advance on the Edward Ferrars of Sense and Sensibility, suffers, in his character of 'hero,' from something of the same disability, a weakness which, to some extent, interferes with the reader's interest in his fortune. And there appears to be some slight uncertainty in the drawing of Sir Thomas Bertram, whom we are scarcely prepared by the early part of the story to find a man of so much good sense and affection as he appears later. Against him, however, must be set the author's notable success in the character of Henry Crawford --an example of male portraiture that has never been equalled by a woman writer. One subsidiary person in the novel may lend to it a personal interest. It has been suggested1 that Fanny's brother, William Price, the young sailor, was drawn from Jane Austen's recollections of what one of her own sailor brothers, Charles Austen, had been, twelve or fourteen years earlier.

Emma, the fourth and last novel which Jane Austen published in her lifetime, was begun in January 1814, and finished in March 1815, to appear in the following December. Jane Austen was now at the height of her powers. The book was written rapidly and surely; and the success of her previous novels doubtless encouraged her to express herself with confidence in the way peculiarly her own. She chose, as she declared, 'a heroine whom no one but myself will much like'; and, in delineating her, she made no sacrifices to any public desire for what Mary Russell Mitford, in passing judgment on her work, called 'the beau idéal of the female character.' Emma is a tiresome girl, full of faults; and yet, far from not being 'much liked,' she has called forth more fervent affection than any other of Jane Austen's characters. Jane Austen herself admired Elizabeth Bennet; she loved little Fanny Price; Emma, she both loved and admired, without a shade of patronage or a hint of heroine-worship. That Emma should be loved, as she is loved, for her faults as well as for her virtues, is one among Jane Austen's many claims to the rank of greatness in her art. Scarcely less skilful is the portrait of the wise and patient Knightley, whose reproofs to the wayward girl never shake the reader's conviction of his humanity and charm. The laughter of the comic spirit never comes near to sharpness in Emma, except in the case of Mrs Elton; and, even 1 Austen-Leigh, W. and R. A., Jane Austen, p. 298.

with Mrs Elton, we feel, as we scarcely feel with the Steele sisters or with Mr Collins, that Jane Austen is not allowing the lady to show herself at her very worst. For Mr Woodhouse, Miss Bates and Harriet Smith she clearly had some degree of affection, which she communicates to her readers. And, with regard to Harriet Smith, it is to be noticed that, rarely as Jane Austen touches our pity, she feels this helpless, bewildered creature to be a fit occasion for compassion, as her more capable women are not, and allows us to be touched by Harriet Smith's regrets for Robert Martin and the Abbey Mill farm. There are, we may add, few finer examples in fiction of suggestive reticence than Jane Austen's treatment of Jane Fairfax. The mystery of the story demands that we should be kept in the dark about her; yet we feel that we know her as well as any character that Jane Austen created.

After Emma, Jane Austen published nothing in her lifetime. The posthumous novel Persuasion was begun in the spring or summer of 1815 and finished in July 1816, the last two chapters being written a little later, to take the place of the original last chapter, which did not satisfy the author. Then she put the manuscript by; and her ill-health and death caused it to remain unpublished. Signs of failing energy and spirits have been observed by some in Persuasion. The interpolated story told to Anne Eliot by Mrs Smith may be admitted to be dull, for Jane Austen ; and some weight may be attached to her statement that Anne Eliot was 'almost too good for me.' The tone of the novel, as a whole, is graver and tenderer than that of any of the other five; but woven in with its gravity and tenderness is the most delicate and mellow of all Jane Austen's humour. Such imperfections as the novel may have may be interpreted with equal fairness as signs of growth rather than of decay. Jane Austen, was changing her tone, and had not yet completely mastered the new conditions. Whether Anne Eliot was 'too good' for her or not, she achieved the difficult feat of making her interesting from start to finish. The same may be said of captain Wentworth. In himself, he is an interesting personage; but, in Persuasion, Jane Austen accomplishes more perfectly than in any other of her novels the task of revealing the interest which lies in the interplay of ordinary persons. All the characters in Persuasion are less sharply accentuated than those in the other novels. In Sir Walter Eliot and Miss Eliot, Mrs Clay and Mr and Mrs Charles Musgrave, Jane Austen is making milder fun than usual of less prominent 'humours' than usual. The charm of the novel lies in