Johnson, Crabbe, and Cowper seem to have been the only authors for whom
she had an appreciation. She would sometimes say, in jest, that "if ever
she married at all, she could fancy being Mrs. Crabbe!" But her bent of
original composition, her amazing power of observation, her
inexhaustible sense of humor, her absorbing interest in what she saw
about her, were so strong that she needed no reinforcement of culture.
It was no more in her power than it was in Wordsworth's to "gather a
posy of other men's thoughts."

During her lifetime she had not a single literary friend. Other women
novelists possessed their sponsors and devotees. Miss Ferrier was the
delight of a brilliant Edinboro' coterie. Miss Edgeworth was feasted and
flattered, not only in England, but on the Continent; Miss Burney
counted Johnson, Burke, Garrick, Windham, Sheridan, among the admiring
friends who assured her that no flight in fiction or the drama was
beyond her powers. But the creator of Elizabeth Bennet, of Emma, and of
Mr. Collins, never met an author of eminence, received no encouragement
to write except that of her own family, heard no literary talk, and
obtained in her lifetime but the slightest literary recognition. It was
long after her death that Walter Scott wrote in his journal:--"Read
again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen's 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 ever met with. The Big Bow-wow
strain I can do myself, like any now going; but the exquisite touch
which renders commonplace things and characters interesting from the
truth of the description and the sentiment is denied to me." It was
still later that Macaulay made his famous estimate of her
genius:--"Shakespeare has neither equal nor second; but among those who,
in the point we have noticed (the delineation of character), approached