unjust performance, what a text you had for a tendenz-romanz. Nay,
you can allow Kitty to report that a Private had been flogged,
without introducing a chapter on Flogging in the Army. But you
formally declined to stretch your matter out, here and there, "with
solemn specious nonsense about something unconnected with the
story." No "padding" for Miss Austen! in fact, madam, as you were
born before Analysis came in, or Passion, or Realism, or Naturalism,
or Irreverence, or Religious Open-mindedness, you really cannot hope
to rival your literary sisters in the minds of a perplexed
generation. Your heroines are not passionate, we do not see their
red wet cheeks, and tresses dishevelled in the manner of our frank
young Maenads. What says your best successor, a lady who adds fresh
lustre to a name that in fiction equals yours? She says of Miss
Austen: "Her heroines have a stamp of their own. THEY HAVE A
CERTAIN GENTLE SELF-RESPECT AND HUMOUR AND HARDNESS OF HEART . . .
Love with them does not mean a passion as much as an interest, deep
and silent." I think one prefers them so, and that Englishwomen
should be more like Anne Elliot than Maggie Tulliver. "All the
privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest when
existence or when hope is gone," said Anne; perhaps she insisted on
a monopoly that neither sex has all to itself. Ah, madam, what a
relief it is to come back to your witty volumes, and forget the
follies of to-day in those of Mr. Collins and of Mrs. Bennet! How
fine, nay, how noble is your art in its delicate reserve, never
insisting, never forcing the note, never pushing the sketch into the
caricature! You worked, without thinking of it, in the spirit of
Greece, on a labour happily limited, and exquisitely organised.
"Dear books," we say, with Miss Thackeray--"dear books, bright,
sparkling with wit and animation, in which the homely heroines
charm, the dull hours fly, and the very bores are enchanting."