Chapter II: Part 2

Obviously hero and heroine are born for each other. He admires her above all women, himself has every perfection. And though Mrs. Tyrold may have “gloried in the virtuous delicacy of her daughter, that so properly, _till it was called for_, concealed her tenderness from the object who so deservingly inspired it,” the reader can feel no doubt, from the beginning, of her decided “partiality.”

There are two obstacles, however, between the lovers. In the first place, Edgar’s tutor had twice been deceived by women; and so acts upon his loyal pupil, by the urgent recommendation of caution and delay, that he becomes “a creature whose whole composition is a pile of accumulated punctilios”; one who “will spend his life in refining away his own happiness.” It is obvious that, left to herself, Camilla’s nature would bear the closest inspection, as even the old misanthrope ultimately admits. But Miss Margland cannot endure any rivalry with Indiana, the “beautiful vacant-looking cousin” who has been taught to consider herself irresistible, though it is not quite clear what Miss Burney would have her readers believe as to the power of beauty. At one point she declares that “a very young man seldom likes a silly wife. It is generally when he is further advanced in life that he takes that depraved taste. He then flatters himself a fool will be easier to govern.” But elsewhere we are told that

“Men are always enchanted with something that is both pretty and silly; because they can so easily please and so soon disconcert it; and when they have made the little blooming fools blush and look down, they feel nobly superior, and pride themselves in victory.... A man looks enchanted while his beautiful young bride talks nonsense; it comes so prettily from her ruby lips, and she blushes and dimples with such lovely attraction while she utters it; he casts his eyes around him with conscious elation to see her admirers, and his enviers.”

The wily governess has all the audacity of a born diplomatist. She simply informs Sir Hugh, who always believes everybody, that Edgar is “practically” engaged to her pet pupil. The old man regards the matter as settled, and, in perfect innocence, encourages her machinations to make a fact of her desire--the girl herself being flattered into an indifferent accomplice.

Now Camilla had acquired the habit, quite becoming to girlhood, of looking to Edgar, more or less consciously, for guidance through life, and of actually asking his advice on all delicate, or doubtful, occasions. Miss Margland ingeniously accuses her of trying to catch the heir by these “confidences,” and Sir Hugh, without for one moment acknowledging the possibility of Camilla having a bad motive, advises her to avoid even the appearance of jealousy, and leave Indiana a fair field. Such an appeal to her generosity, from so kind a friend, was sure of eager support; and the unfortunate girl is thus driven to seek friends against whom Edgar had warned her, and to assume the character of capriciousness and instability. This proves her Introduction to the Great World, whither Miss Burney hurries all her heroines. Like the rest, she arrives entirely unprepared, parents of those days apparently not considering either advice or guidance on such matters a part of their duty. Framed for innocent pleasure, her natural gaiety and ardent temperament lead her astray in every direction. She remains entirely unsoiled, but invariably does the wrong thing. She gets into debt, through sheer ignorance and humility; she makes friends of “doubtful” people, through pity and innocence; she even follows the advice of a worldly acquaintance, attempting to move her lover by flirting with other men. Every word and action is designed to please him: all have the contrary effect. His heart remains faithful; his reason must criticise.

At this stage of the work Miss Burney revives somewhat of her first, spontaneous, manner. The descriptions of Society--wherein “_Ton_, in the scale of connoisseurs in _certain circles_, is as much above fashion, as fashion is above fortune”--are animated and amusing. We are introduced to many new types, male and female, naïvely exaggerated perhaps in detail, but absolutely alive and cunningly varied. The “prevailing ill-manners of the leaders in the _ton_” astonish, no less than their brutal cowardice--in face of a _girl’s_ danger--disgusts. Fine gentlemen, it would seem, are neither gallant nor chivalrous. The ladies, indeed, are not much better. A divinity, unequally yoked, “excites every hope by a _sposo_[2] properly detestable--yet gives birth to despair by a coldness the most shivering.” Less favoured beauties are equally vain, and some of them more indiscreet.

But here, as in _Cecilia_, our author cannot resist the indulgence of heroics. She is not satisfied with her delightful “Comedy of Manners,” with the ordinary misunderstandings and heart-burnings essential to romance. In her later volumes she plunges Camilla, and the whole Tyrold family, into the wildest distress. They lose all their money; Eugenia’s husband commits suicide; Lionel nearly murders an uncle, from whom he had expectations, by a practical joke; and Camilla acquires, by an over-elaborated series of foolish impulses, the appearance of having injured her parents beyond forgiveness. Immersed in difficulties, and not in the least understanding the circumstances, her father and mother refuse to see her; and the forsaken maiden prays for death. The whole episode is given in Miss Burney’s worst manner, tempting the reader to mere angry impatience with so much false sentiment and senseless emotion. They tremble, they faint, they weep, they see visions; we could almost fancy ourselves in Bedlam.

In the end, of course, Edgar comes back, receives an “explanation” from Camilla--written, as she supposed, on her death-bed; and promptly restores everybody to their senses and, incidentally--having plenty to spare--to prosperity.

“Thus ended the long conflicts, doubts, suspenses, and sufferings of Edgar and Camilla; who, without one inevitable calamity, one unavoidable distress, so nearly fell the sacrifice to the two extremes of Imprudence, and Suspicion, to the natural heedlessness of youth unguided, or to the acquired distrust of experience that had been wounded.”

At first sight, certainly, it would seem that we had little here of the Richardson-realism, and that Miss Burney was challenging comparison, in their own field, with such melodramatic romancists as Mrs. Radcliffe. Yet Camilla, and even Eugenia, are far more like real life than Emily St. Aubert. However extravagantly composed, they are _founded on_ nature, whereas the older novelists worked entirely from imagination. Before Richardson (and here, of course, Mrs. Radcliffe belongs to the earlier age) the models for character were not drawn from experience and observation. There was, it would seem, a preconceived notion, and certain accepted rules, for the “make-up” of heroes, heroines, parents, villains and the rest--which are somewhat akin to the constructed ideal of abstract Beauty favoured by certain art critics. They were prepared, without very much reference to actual humanity, from mysteriously acquired recipes of virtue and vice.

We cannot find any reason to believe that Miss Burney ever worked, in her most “exalted” moments, on such a plan. She idealised from life, not from the imagination. She really believed that the young ladies of her acquaintance all aimed, more or less consciously, at that exquisite delicacy which she delighted to exhibit; and, in all probability, she was justified in her faith. Her rhapsodies are sincere; and they obviously apply to her own sentiments, shared by her contemporaries. They are--in their own very feminine fashion--reflections on reality--not creations of art by any accepted canons.

And the very exaggerated artificiality of _Camilla_ makes it more typical--of herself and her period--than _Evelina_ or _Cecilia_: and therefore more representative of Woman, when she began to write fiction for herself. The genius of her earlier work carried it some way in advance of its time; although the progress of her immediate successors is most remarkable. Camilla is the very essence of eighteenth-century girlhood; ill-mated, as they were no doubt, to “our present race of young men,” whose “frivolous fickleness nauseates whatever they can reach”; who--when they are not heroes--“have a weak shame of asserting, or even listening to what is right, and a shallow pride in professing and performing what is wrong.”

It is instructive, indeed, to observe with what apparent crudity Miss Burney has chosen to illustrate the greater purity and refinement, the superior moral standard, of women to those of men: a problem which seems to have almost vanished with Jane Austen (though we may detect it at work under the surface), and which has reappeared so prominently, after quite a new fashion, in modern literature. By the men novelists this was practically assumed without comment; but our knowledge of facts would seem to warrant the emphasis awarded the question by women in their opening campaign of the pen. Here, as elsewhere, Miss Burney was almost the first to teach us what women actually thought and felt: in marked contrast to what it had been hitherto considered becoming for them to express. She was, always, and everywhere, the mouthpiece of her sex.

And, finally, because she was not an “instructed” or professional writer, and had not studied good literature, we must recognise the real, great drawback of _Camilla_: its grandiloquent style. Dr. Johnson did much for English prose: his ultimate influence was towards vigour, simplicity, clearness, and common sense. But he was personally pompous, a whale in the dictionary; and those who copied him without discretion only made themselves ridiculous. It would be easy enough to find parallels in _Rasselas_, and elsewhere, for all the clumsy inversions and stilted antitheses of _Camilla_. But here we can only regret the blindness of ignorant hero-worship, and the natural, if foolish, desire to please or flatter by imitation. Miss Burney wrote Johnsonese fluently, and thereby ruined her natural powers. We cannot estimate, by her foolishness, the influence of the Dictator.

Imitation has not been, fortunately, the besetting sin of women novelists, and we may pass over this one “terrible example” without further comment.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] The “_caro sposo_” of Mrs. Elton.

“CECILIA” TO “SENSE AND SENSIBILITY”

(1782-1811)

In considering the women writers immediately following Miss Burney, we are confronted at the outset with a deliberate return to the methods of composition in vogue before Richardson. If MRS. RADCLIFFE (1764-1823) employs, as she does, Defoe-like minuteness of detail in description, she entitles all her works “Romances,” and is fully justified in that nomenclature. “It was the cry at the period,” says her biographer, “and has sometimes been repeated since, that the romances of Mrs. Radcliffe, and the applause with which they were received, were evil signs of the times, and argued a great and increasing degradation of the public taste, which, instead of banqueting as heretofore upon scenes of passion, like those of Richardson, or of life and manners, as in the pages of Smollett and Fielding, was now coming back to the fare of the nursery, and gorged upon the wild and improbable fictions of an over-heated imagination.”

Yet the anonymous author of the _Pursuits of Literature_ writes of some sister-novelists: “Though all of them are ingenious ladies, yet they are too frequently whining and frisking in novels, till our girls’ heads turn wild with impossible adventures. Not so the mighty magician of _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, bred and nourished by the Florentine muses in their sacred solitary caverns, amid the paler shrines of Gothic superstition, and in all the dreariness of enchantment: a poetess whom Ariosto would with rapture have acknowledged, as

‘... La nudrita
Damigella Trivulzia al sacro speco.’”--O.F. c. xlvi.

We fear to-day it would be difficult to find men “too mercurial to be delighted” by Richardson, “too dull to comprehend” Le Sage, “too saturnine to relish” Fielding, who would yet “with difficulty be divorced from _The Romance of the Forest_”: since every one of us now

“boasts an English heart,
Unused at ghosts or rattling bones to start.”

Jane Austen, of course, could never have written _Northanger Abbey_ had she not enjoyed Mrs. Radcliffe; and we say at once that those delightfully absurd chapters in which Catherine is allowed to indulge in the most unfounded suspicions of General Tilney, are not substantially unfair to the famous wife of William Radcliffe, Esq.; as the artless conversations between Miss Morland and Miss Thorpe no doubt justly reflect the deep interest excited by her stories in the young and inexperienced. We do not readily, to-day, admire so much “exuberance and fertility of imagination”: we have little, or no, patience with “adventures heaped on adventures in quick and brilliant succession, with all the hairbreadth charms of escape or capture,” resembling some “splendid Oriental tale.”

But there can be no question that Mrs. Radcliffe achieved, in three admirable examples, a perfectly legitimate attempt--the establishment of that School of Terror inaugurated by no less brilliant a writer than Horace Walpole (in his _Castle of Otranto_, 1764), and seldom revived in England with any success.

It is true that very careful criticism of her methods may discover their artificiality. “Her heroines voluntarily expose themselves to situations which, in nature, a lonely female would certainly have avoided. They are too apt to choose the midnight hour for investigating the mysteries of a deserted chamber or secret passage, and generally are only supplied,” like Mr. Pickwick, “with an expiring lamp when about to read the most interesting documents.” But Emily St. Aubert is not surely designed for comparison with even that “imbecility in females” which Henry Tilney declared to be “a great enhancement of their personal charms.” She is a heroine, not a woman; and if, unlike Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe demands, and supplies, a material explanation of all supernatural appearances, she yet allows her imagination to wander freely over the realms of superstitious alarm, wherein the _reason_ of woman cannot presumably hold sway. Certainly, had Emily been less impulsive she would have missed many opportunities of proving herself courageous.

I cannot myself, however, entirely avoid the impression that, in their natural desire for classification, the critics have laid undue stress on Mrs. Radcliffe’s use of Mystery. In the three hundred and four, double column, pages of _Udolpho_ there are, besides occasional voices, only three definite examples of this artifice--the waxen figure behind the veil, the moving pall, and the disappearance of Ludovico. The main plot is really no more than a spirited example of the conventional Romance-plan (in the development of which she is wittily said to have invented Lord Byron)--an involved narrative of terrible sufferings and dangers incurred by an immaculate heroine, of unmeasured tyranny and violence exerted by a melancholy villain, of protracted misunderstandings concerning the gallant hero, with hurried explanations all round in the last chapter to justify the wedding-bells.

Obviously there is no realism here. Everything depends upon conscious exaggeration: whether it be a description of “the Apennines in their darkest horrors,” or of a “gloomy and sublime” castle’s “mouldering walls”; of crime indulged without restraint, or innocence unsullied by the world. Montoni is not more inhuman in his passion than Emily in the “tender elevation of her mind.”

For despite the most solemn warnings of St. Aubert (quoted above), his Emily has far more sensibility than any of Miss Burney’s heroines, and exemplifies the dangerous doctrine that “virtue and taste are nearly the same.” She and Valancourt, indeed, were indifferent to “the frivolities of common life”; their “ideas were simple and grand, like the landscapes among which they moved”; their sentiments spontaneously “arranged themselves” in original verse.

The fact is, that Scott’s startlingly generous estimate suggests several sound conclusions: by dwelling upon the genuine poetical feeling to be observed in Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances, and the sincerity of her sympathy with nature. Though it has been remarked, with some justice, that “as her story is usually enveloped in mystery, so there is, as it were, a haze over her landscapes”; and that, “were six artists to attempt to embody the Castle of Udolpho upon canvas, they would probably produce six drawings entirely dissimilar to each other, all of them equally authorised by the printed description.”

MRS. INCHBALD (1753-1821), on the other hand, followed the new school in writing simple narratives of everyday life; but she produced little more than a pale imitation of _The Man of Feeling_ (1771), by Henry Mackenzie, the only masculine exponent of “sensibility”; though her _Simple Story_ (1791) and _Nature and Art_ (1796) have been frequently reprinted. She aimed at dissecting the human heart, as Richardson had done; and there is, admittedly, a certain melodramatic, and almost decadent, charm in her work.

MARIA EDGEWORTH (1767-1849) was, certainly, the most prominent of our novelists between Fanny Burney and Jane Austen. Being a girl of eleven when _Evelina_ was published, she lived to witness the triumph of _Vanity Fair_. Living beyond her eighth decade, she produced over sixty books. Having inspired Scott, on his own testimony, to the production of the Waverley Novels, she actually inaugurated, promoted, or established at least four forms of fiction more or less new to her contemporaries.

Like Fanny Burney, she owed much to the enthusiasm and example of a liberal-minded and cultured father: that Richard Lovell Edgeworth who married several of the young persons whom the author of _Sandford and Merton_ had educated for the honour of his own hand. He and Day were notable scholastic reformers, and the influence of their innumerable theories on life and the Pedagogue, largely imported from over the Channel, is everywhere visible in Maria’s work.

Richard Lovell actually collaborated in the two volumes, inspired by Rousseau’s _Émile_, on _Practical Education_ (1798), and supplied forewords of edification to that marvellous series in which she first proved the possibility of training the young idea by ethical storiettes which were _not_ tracts. That most clumsily named _Parents’ Assistant_ (1801), the _Moral Tales_ of the same year, and the fascinating _Frank_, are still nursery classics deserving of immortality. We may not, to-day, accept without protest many of the “lessons” which they were designed to enforce; but their sympathetic insight into the nature of the child (with which recently we have been so much concerned), the attractive simplicity and dramatic interest of the direct narrative, set an example, from the very foundations of juvenile literature, which has borne plentiful fruit.

It should be noticed, moreover, in this connection that Miss Edgeworth had already produced a spirited defence of female education (_Letters to Literary Ladies_, 1795); while she soon followed in the footsteps of Fanny Burney by writing most lively satires on _fin de siècle_ Society, pointed with travesties of French “naturalism,” of which the chief, perhaps, is _Belinda_, published in 1801; and further extended the scope of the modern novel by the introduction of the finished Short Story, under the attractive heading of _Tales of Fashionable Life_.

And, finally, besides again collaborating with her father in an _Essay on Irish Bulls_ (1802), she produced that stimulating “Irish Brigade,” which banished the “stage” Patrick from literature, introduced genuine Celtic types, such as Coney, King of the Black Isles; and, by creating the “national” novel, may be regarded as the legitimate parent of what their illustrious author so modestly offered to the public as “something of the same kind for his own country.”

Although just failing everywhere to reveal genius, Miss Edgeworth reflects, with marvellous versatility, all the intellectual movements of her generation. Adopting, and adapting to her own purposes, the “form for women” set out by Miss Burney, she widened its application to the discussion of social and political problems, and was the first to make fiction a picture not only of life, but of its meaning. In fact she forestalled no less for adults, than for the young, that vast array of consciously didactic narrative which threatens, in our own time, to bury beyond revival the original, and the supreme, inspiration of Art in Literature--to give pleasure.

The humour, the pathos, the knowledge of the world, and, above all, the common sense regulating Miss Edgeworth’s work, have not secured her as permanent a popularity as she justly merits. But, if we do not, to-day, frequently read even _Ormond_, _The Absentee_, or _Castle Rackrent_, the occasions which gratefully recall their accomplished author to our remembrance are most astonishingly frequent.

Of HANNAH MORE (1745-1833) most readers probably know even far less than of Maria Edgeworth; and her work can only claim notice in this place on account of the energy with which she followed Miss Edgeworth’s lead in didactic fiction. Accustomed to the society of fashionable blue-stockings (then a comparative novelty in London life), she exposed their foibles with considerable humour in private correspondence; while her plays were cheerfully staged by Garrick. But awakened, in later life, to the sin of play-going, she became known for her vigorous tracts (inspiring, by turns, the foundation of Sunday schools and of the Religious Tract Society), until she published, at sixty-four, her one novel entitled _Cœlebs in Search of a Wife_.

If this somewhat ponderous effusion does not altogether deserve the satirical onslaught with which Sydney Smith heralded in the _Edinburgh_ its first appearance, we cannot claim for the author any particular skill in construction or much fidelity to real life. It is, in fact, no more than a “dramatic sermon,” and a sermon, moreover, in support of narrow-minded sectarianism. As the reviewer informs us, “Cœlebs wants a wife ... who may add materially to the happiness of his future life. His first journey is to London, where, in the midst of the gay society of the metropolis, of course, he does not find a wife; and his next journey is to the family of Mr. Stanley, the head of the Methodists, a serious people, where, of course, he does find a wife.” That is the whole story. We must submit, in the meantime, to diatribes, pronounced by the virtuous, against dancing, theatres, cards, assemblies, and frivolous conversation, until we are in danger of losing all interest in the persons of the tale.

It is enough for us, in fact, to mark a niche for Miss More in the development of women’s work; only remembering the great service she rendered her generation by a rarely sympathetic understanding of the poor as individual human beings.

A STUDY IN FINE ART

(JANE AUSTEN, 1775-1817)

With Jane Austen we reach the centre of our subject: the establishment of the Woman’s School, the final expression of domesticity. If not, perhaps, more essentially feminine than Fanny Burney, she is more womanly. The charming girlishness of _Evelina_ has here matured into a grown-up sisterly attitude towards humanity, which, without being either quite worldly or at all pedantic, is yet artistically composed. Whether consciously or not, she has spoken--within her chosen province--the last word for all women for all time. There is no comment on life, no picture of manners, no detail of characterisation--either humorous or sympathetic--which a man could have expressed in these precise words. Woman is openly the centre of her world; and, if men are more to her than fireside pets, she is only concerned with them as an element (or rather the chief element) in the life of women.

The comparison, already instituted, between the man-made “feminines” of _Pamela_ and _Clarissa Harlowe_ with Miss Burney’s “young ladies,” may be applied to Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse with added emphasis in every particular. The “woman” in them is more modern, nearer the heart of humanity, but still spontaneously of that sex.

“To say the truth,” confesses a contemporary reviewer, “we suspect one of Miss Austen’s great merits in our eyes to be the insight she gives us into the peculiarities of female character. Authoresses can scarcely ever forget the _esprit de corps_--can scarcely ever forget that they _are authoresses_. They seem to feel a sympathetic shudder at exposing naked a female mind. _Elles se peignent en buste_, and leave the mysteries of womanhood to be described by some interloping male, like Richardson or Marivaux, who is turned out before he has seen half the rites, and is forced to spin from his own conjectures the rest. Now from this fault Miss Austen is free. Her heroines are what one knows women must be, though one never can get them to acknowledge it. As liable ‘to fall in love first,’ as anxious to attract the attention of an agreeable man, as much taken with a striking manner, or a handsome face, as unequally gifted with constancy and firmness, as liable to have their affections biased by convenience or fashion, as we, on our part, will admit men to be. As some illustration of what we mean, we refer our readers to the conversation between Miss Crawford and Fanny (vol. iii. p. 102); Fanny’s meeting with her father (p. 199); her reflection after reading Edmund’s letter (p. 246); her happiness (good, and heroine though she be), in the midst of the miseries of all her friends, when she finds that Edmund has decidedly broken with her rival; feelings, all of them, which, under the influence of strong passion, must alloy the purest mind, but with which scarcely any _authoress_ but Miss Austen would have ventured to temper the œtherial materials of a heroine.”

Again, Miss Burney, as we have seen, had first made it possible for a woman to write novels and be respectable. Yet even with her, authorship was something of an adventure. Her earliest manuscripts were solemnly burnt, as in repentance for frivolity, before her sorrowing sisters; needlework was ordained every morning by a not tyrannical stepmother; social duties occupied most afternoons and evenings. And if she _must_ write, Dr. Burney was always ready enough at dictation, and any lady might act as secretary to such a father without reproach.

In the outside world, when her success was won, we can detect a similar attitude. The authoress of _Evelina_, indeed, was taken up everywhere and universally petted; but even literary Society never regarded her quite as one of themselves. We feel that she was always on show among them--a kind of freak, like the girl who cried to order at dinner-parties without spoiling her complexion; welcomed, but not admitted--as were actors, musicians, and others born and bred for the amusement of the great.

She herself never resumed work for its own sake after the first flush of popularity, in which she composed _Cecilia_. As lady-in-waiting, bored by tiresome punctilio; as Madame D’Arblay, happy in simple domesticity; her pen lay idle save when exercised by filial piety or specifically to earn money. The later novels were pure hack-work, obviously lacking in spontaneity.

It was reserved for Jane Austen, the daughter of a later generation, though actually dying before Miss Burney, to establish finally the position of woman as a professional novelist. True, she was even more domestic than her predecessor, and entirely without what we should regard as the necessary training or experience. Her family were seldom aware of the time given to work, simply because it never occurred to her that she might claim privacy or resent interruption. But they took a keen interest in the results, and evidence exists in abundance of their reading every completed volume with enthusiasm.

Of her own attitude towards her work, and of its reception with the public, there can be no doubt. She always regarded herself, and was regarded, as a professional. Circumstances might induce temporary silence, because she was domestic, modest, and affectionate; but if Jane Austen never complained--and we hear of no protest at the extraordinary delay in their appearance--we may be quite sure the novels were written for the public, by whom she felt confident one day of being read. The style is obviously spontaneous, of which the writing itself meant keen enjoyment; but the work was not done merely for the pleasure of doing it. It was her life--not because of any disappointment in love, if she experienced such, but because genius such as hers demands self-expression and commands a hearing. From the beginning, moreover, no one stopped to marvel that a woman could do so well: they judged her as an artist among her peers.

Jane Austen had none of the advantages of Miss Burney, who knew everybody, including the wig-maker next door. Apparently she took little interest in politics or social problems; and our ideals of culture suffer shock before her allusions to _The Spectator_, to read and admire which she holds the affectation of a blue-stocking. Admittedly she was a voracious novel-reader, but for her own pleasure merely; certainly not with any idea of historical development or artistic criticism. In all probability even her study of human nature was spontaneous and unconscious.

Yet she expected to be taken seriously. Miss Burney had ventured an apology for her art--a plea as woman to men which was daring enough for her generation, but still an apology. Miss Austen, speaking as much for the authoress of _Evelina_ as for herself, shows far more confidence. She enlarges upon the skill and the labour involved in writing a novel, for which _honour is due_.[3] What she demands has been given her in full measure to overflowing. How closely her stories have wound themselves about the hearts of every successive generation, it were idle to measure or estimate. They are a part of our inheritance: appreciation is reckoned a test of culture.

In the perfection, or development, of the methods inaugurated by Samuel Richardson--particularly as applied by women-writers--she also stands supreme. She entirely avoids criminals, melodrama, or any form of excitement. She does not even demand sensibility from her common-sense heroines.

While a woman was thus placing the corner-stone to the rise of domestic realism, man accomplished a glorious revival of Romanticism. Scott was born only four years before Jane Austen: _Waverley_ and _Mansfield Park_ were published in the same year. Fortunately we are able to form an accurate estimate of the impression her work produced upon her great contemporary, since the earliest serious appreciation of Jane was actually written by Sir Walter, and opens with a most instructive comparison between the “former rules of the novel” and “a class of fictions which has arisen,” as he expresses it, “almost in our times.” The article appeared in the _Quarterly Review_, October 1815; and it is very significant for us to notice that Scott places _Peregrine Pickle_ and _Tom Jones_ in the “old school,” dating the new style only “fifteen or twenty years” back.

“In its first appearance, the novel was the legitimate child of the romance; and though the manners and general turn of the composition were altered so as to suit modern times, the author remained fettered by many peculiarities derived from the original style of romantic fiction. These may be chiefly traced in the conduct of the narrative, and the tone of sentiment attributed to the fictitious personages. On the first point, although

‘The talisman and magic wand were broke,
Knights, dwarfs, and genii vanish’d into smoke,’

still the reader expected to peruse a course of adventures of a nature more interesting and extraordinary than those which occur in his own life, or that of his next-door neighbour. The hero no longer defeated armies by his single sword, clove giants to the chine, or gained kingdoms. But he was expected to go through perils by sea and land, to be steeped in poverty, to be tried by temptation, to be exposed to the alternate vicissitudes of adversity and prosperity, and his life was a troubled scene of suffering and achievement. Few novelists, indeed, adventured to deny to the hero his final hour of tranquillity and happiness, though it was the prevailing fashion never to relieve him out of his last and most dreadful distress until the finishing chapters of his history; so that although his prosperity in the record of his life was short, we were bound to believe it was long and uninterrupted when the author had done with him. The heroine was usually condemned to equal hardships and hazards. She was regularly exposed to being forcibly carried off like a Sabine virgin by some frantic admirer. And even if she escaped the terrors of masked ruffians, an insidious ravisher, a cloak wrapped forcibly around her head, and a coach with the blinds [down] driving she could not conjecture whither, she had still her share of wandering, of poverty, of obloquy, of seclusion, and of imprisonment, and was frequently extended upon a bed of sickness, and reduced to her last shilling before the author condescended to shield her from persecution. In all these dread contingencies the mind of the reader was expected to sympathise, since by incidents so much beyond the bounds of his ordinary experience, his wonder and interest ought at once to be excited. But gradually he became familiar with the land of fiction, the adventures of which he assimilated not with those of real life, but with each other. Let the distress of the hero or heroine be ever so great, the reader reposed an imperturbable confidence in the talents of the author, who, as he had plunged them into distress, would in his own good time, and when things, as Tony Lumkin says, were in a concatenation accordingly, bring his favourites out of all their troubles. Mr. Crabbe has expressed his own and our feelings excellently on this subject.

‘For should we grant these beauties all endure
Severest pangs, they’ve still the speediest cure;
Before one charm be wither’d from the face,
Except the bloom which shall again have place,
In wedlock ends each wish, in triumph all disgrace.
And life to come, we fairly may suppose,
One light bright contrast to these wild dark woes.’

“In short, the author of novels was, in former times, expected to tread pretty much in the limits between the concentric circles of probability and possibility; and as he was not permitted to transgress the latter, his narrative, to make amends, almost always went beyond the bounds of the former. Now, although it may be urged that the vicissitudes of human life have occasionally led an individual through as many scenes of singular fortune as are represented in the most extravagant of these fictions, still the causes and personages acting on these changes have varied with the progress of the adventurer’s fortune, and do not present that combined plot, (the object of every skilful novelist), in which all the more interesting individuals of the dramatis personæ have their appropriate share in the action and in bringing about the catastrophe. Here, even more than in its various and violent changes of fortune, rests the improbability of the novel. The life of man rolls forth like a stream from the fountain, or it spreads out into tranquillity like a placid or stagnant lake. In the latter case, the individual grows old among the characters with whom he was born, and is contemporary,--shares precisely the sort of weal and woe to which his birth destined him,--moves in the same circle,--and, allowing for the change of seasons, is influenced by, and influences the same class of persons by which he was originally surrounded. The man of mark and of adventure, on the contrary, resembles, in the course of his life, the river whose mid-current and discharge into the ocean are widely removed from each other, as well as from the rocks and wild flowers which its fountains first reflected; violent changes of time, of place, and of circumstances, hurry him forward from one scene to another, and his adventures will usually be found only connected with each other because they have happened to the same individual. Such a history resembles an ingenious, fictitious narrative, exactly in the degree in which an old dramatic chronicle of the life and death of some distinguished character, where all the various agents appear and disappear as in the page of history, approaches a regular drama, in which every person introduced plays an appropriate part, and every point of the action tends to one common catastrophe.

“We return to the second broad line of distinction between the novel, as formerly composed, and real life,--the difference, namely, of the sentiments. The novelist professed to give an imitation of nature, but it was, as the French say, _la belle nature_. Human beings, indeed, were presented, but in the most sentimental mood, and with minds purified by a sensibility which often verged on extravagance. In the serious class of novels, the hero was usually

‘A knight or lover, who never broke a vow.’

And although, in those of a more humorous cast, he was permitted a licence, borrowed either from real life or from the libertinism of the drama, still a distinction was demanded even from Peregrine Pickle, or Tom Jones; and the hero, in every folly of which he might be guilty, was studiously vindicated from the charge of infidelity of the heart. The heroine was, of course, still more immaculate; and to have conferred her affections upon any other than the lover to whom the reader had destined her from their first meeting, would have been a crime against sentiment which no author, of moderate prudence, would have hazarded, under the old _régime_.

“Here, therefore, we have two essential and important circumstances, in which the earlier novels differed from those now in fashion, and were more nearly assimilated to the old romances. And there can be no doubt that, by the studied involution and extrication of the story, by the combination of incidents new, striking and wonderful beyond the course of ordinary life, the former authors opened that obvious and strong sense of interest which arises from curiosity; as by the pure, elevated, and romantic cast of the sentiment, they conciliated those better propensities of our nature which loves to contemplate the picture of virtue, even when confessedly unable to imitate its excellences.

“But strong and powerful as these sources of emotion and interest may be, they are, like all others, capable of being exhausted by habit. The imitators who rushed in crowds upon each path in which the great masters of the art had successively led the way, produced upon the public mind the usual effect of satiety. The first writer of a new class is, as it were, placed on a pinnacle of excellence, to which, at the earliest glance of a surprised admirer, his ascent seems little less than miraculous. Time and imitation speedily diminish the wonder, and each successive attempt establishes a kind of progressive scale of ascent between the lately deified author, and the reader, who had deemed his excellence inaccessible. The stupidity, the mediocrity, the merit of his imitators, are alike fatal to the first inventor, by showing how possible it is to exaggerate his faults and to come within a certain point of his beauties.

“Materials also (and the man of genius as well as his wretched imitator must work with the same) become stale and familiar. Social life, in our civilized days, affords few instances capable of being painted in the strong dark colours which excite surprise and horror; and robbers, smugglers, bailiffs, caverns, dungeons, and mad-houses, have been all introduced until they cease to interest. And thus in the novel, as in every style of composition which appeals to the public taste, the more rich and easily worked mines being exhausted, the adventurous author must, if he is desirous of success, have recourse to those which were disdained by his predecessors as unproductive, or avoided as only capable of being turned to profit by great skill and labour.

“Accordingly a style of novel has arisen, within the last fifteen or twenty years, differing from the former in the points upon which the interest hinges; neither alarming our credulity nor amusing our imagination by wild variety of incident, or by those pictures of romantic affection and sensibility, which were formerly as certain attributes of fictitious characters as they are of rare occurrence among those who actually live and die. The substitute for these excitements, which had lost much of their poignancy by the repeated and injudicious use of them, was the art of copying from nature as she really exists in the common walks of life, and presenting to the reader, instead of the splendid scenes of an imaginary world, a correct and striking representation of that which is daily taking place around him.

“In adventuring upon this task, the author makes obvious sacrifices, and encounters peculiar difficulty. He who paints from _le beau idéal_, if his scenes and sentiments are striking and interesting, is in a great measure exempted from the difficult task of reconciling them with the ordinary probabilities of life: but he who paints a scene of common occurrence, places his composition within that extensive range of criticism which general experience offers to every reader. The resemblance of a statue of Hercules we must take on the artist’s judgment; but every one can criticize that which is presented as the portrait of a friend, or neighbour. Something more than a mere sign-post likeness is also demanded. The portrait must have spirit and character, as well as resemblance; and being deprived of all that, according to Bayes, goes ‘to elevate and surprize,’ it must make amends by displaying depth of knowledge and dexterity of execution. We, therefore, bestow no mean compliment upon the author of _Emma_, when we say that, keeping close to common incidents, and to such characters as occupy the ordinary walks of life, she has produced sketches of such spirit and originality, that we never miss the excitation which depends upon a narrative of uncommon events, arising from the consideration of minds, manners and sentiments, greatly above our own. In this class she stands almost alone; for the scenes of Miss Edgeworth are laid in higher life, varied by more romantic incident, and by her remarkable power of embodying and illustrating national character. But the author of _Emma_ confines herself chiefly to the middling classes of society; her most distinguished characters do not rise greatly above well-bred country gentlemen and ladies; and those which are sketched with most originality and precision, belong to a class rather below that standard. The narrative of all her novels is composed of such common occurrences as may have fallen under the observation of most folks; and her dramatis personæ conduct themselves upon the motives and principles which the readers may recognize as ruling their own and that of most of their acquaintances.”

It is manifestly clear to us, then, from these passages, that Jane Austen’s contemporaries were quite aware of her influence upon the progress of fiction; and so generous a tribute, from one whose mighty genius had set the current in other directions, must be accounted no less honourable to the critic than to the criticised.

Four years after her death (_i.e._ six years later) the new school is again applauded, in an admirable appreciation, by Archbishop Whately of the posthumous _Persuasion_ and _Northanger Abbey_,[4] who dwells at great length upon an important distinction between the “unnatural” and the “merely improbable” in fiction.

Scott, of course, was always generous in criticism; and his striking enthusiasm for Mrs. Radcliffe and the earlier women-writers, in his _Lives of the Novelists_, reveals no less chivalrous gallantry than his famous tribute to Miss Edgeworth. Still it was obviously necessary for the great critic to _explain_ the grounds of his enthusiasm; and the “more assured attitude of applause which Whateley was able to adopt, after so short an interval, may serve to witness the advance which her genius had achieved in the general estimate.”

We cannot avoid noticing, however, that neither of her contemporary masculine critics seems to have been quite happy about the ideal of womanhood which Jane Austen was certainly the first to introduce. It required courage, indeed, to conceive of a heroine without “sensibility,” and the creator of Marianne Dashwood must certainly have been perfectly conscious of the omission. It happens that Scott and Whateley were both thirty-four when these articles were written, yet each complains, after his own fashion, of the calculating prudence here revealed towards love and matrimony by the young ladies of the piece. One would have supposed that neither of them was either old enough to remember “sensibility” in real life, or young enough for idle dreaming. Clearly, however, they _had_ a tender partiality for the old type, probably shared by their readers; although both writers assure us that young people in their day were not in fact at all addicted to the sacrifice of all for love.

Scott is certainly not justified in stating that Elizabeth was led to accept Darcy by discovering the grandeur of his estates; both because such an attitude was inconsistent with her mental independence, and because she herself jokingly suggests this explanation of the remarkable change in her sentiments towards him, to tease her sister.

But, on the other hand, Jane Austen’s heroines may fairly be called cool and calculating in comparison with the poetical maidens of romance; and we have intentionally laboured this point at some length in order to emphasise the thoroughness with which reformers in fiction discarded the many artistic ornaments formerly used by story-tellers to enhance the “pleasures of imagination.” Every convention of romance was ruthlessly abandoned.

Later developments, as we shall see, introduced other elements which partially supplied these omissions, and once more removed the novel from pure realism; but it would almost seem as if Jane Austen had deliberately set herself to prove how much it was possible to do without. She admits neither unusual mixture of society, cultured allusion, nor morbid or criminal impulses. Like her immediate predecessors, she wilfully limits the variety of character-types by strictly confining herself to her own narrow experience--her groups of character are curiously similar, her plots repeat each other: she discards every source of excitement from adventure, mystery, or melodramatic emotion; and, finally, she denies the hero or heroine any charm which may be derived from “sensibility” or romantic idealism. Hers is realism,[5] naked and unashamed; challenging comparison with life itself at every point, wholly dependent upon truthfulness to nature. Her triumph is purely artistic: the absolute fitness of expression to reveal insight, observation, sympathy, and humour; in a simple narrative of parochial affairs, composed with rare skill, faithfully reflecting everyday life and ordinary people.

From such commonplace material she has woven a spell over the imagination and secured our warm interest in characters and episodes: much as the simplicity of English landscapes will hold our affection against the claims of nature’s grandest magnificence.

Detailed analysis of her six “studies from life” will serve only to increase our wonder, and may be indulged without fear of reversed, or even qualified, judgment.

Inevitably Jane Austen scribbled in girlhood--too busily, according to her own judgment; but the printed fragments are _not_ specially precocious, and we have no right to judge so careful an artist by work she left unfinished or rejected with deliberation, however interesting in itself.

As we all know, without having any clue to the explanation, she found herself rather suddenly, while still a young woman; and did all her work in two surprisingly brief periods--sharply separated, and each responsible for three novels, two full length and one much shorter. _Pride and Prejudice_, her first finished production, has every appearance of maturity, and reveals the principal qualities which characterised her to the end.

This novel, by many considered her greatest work, is primarily--like _Evelina_ and _Cecilia_--a study in manners. Its aim is frankly to amuse: the dominant note is irresponsible gaiety: the appeal is more intellectual than emotional. Certainly we are interested in the story, we have considerable affection for the characters: but it does not excite passion, stimulate philosophic reflection, or stir imagination. We find here no solutions to any vexed social problem. Past mistress she is in the great art of story-telling, and a supreme stylist; yet the authoress seems always content to skim the surface of things, taking no thought of storm or fire below.

Miss Austen is no cynic: she certainly detests coarseness: yet Lydia’s fall and its consequences, round which any modern novelist would have centred the whole picture, is handled with something very like levity. We can scarcely avoid amazement at the astonishingly vulgar attitude of Mrs. Bennet or at Mary’s appalling priggishness on the occasion: but such serious thoughts do not retain us long. In reality we are chiefly interested in the possible effects of the girl’s folly upon her elder sisters--will it, or will it not, separate them for ever from the men they love? It is only a few quiet words of unselfish sympathy from Jane, easily forgotten by most of us, that reveal the sentiments of the authoress on such questions--with which, apparently, she holds that fiction has little concern.

Primarily, however, we are attracted by _Pride and Prejudice_ as a work of art. The unfailing humour and pointed wit, the marvellous aptness of every polished phrase, hold us spellbound. The very first sentence plunges us right into the heart of affairs: every incident or dialogue, to the closing page, follows without pause or digression, clear and firm as crystal. No trace of obscurity or hesitation blurs the gay scene: every character is vividly, and individually, alive. Yet how simple, almost commonplace, the material: how parochial the outlook. We have here no mystery or melodrama, no psychology or local colour. Miss Austen’s young ladies have absolutely no interests in life except “the men,” however superior their manners and instincts to the egregious frivolity of Mrs. Bennet. They are the normal heroines of a conventional love-story; with the usual surroundings--a handsome hero or two, some tiresome relatives, a confidante, a mild villain, and varied comic relief. It has been said further that Miss Austen’s ideal of a gentleman was deficient, since Darcy’s insolence betrays lack of breeding: and, certainly, no Elizabeth of to-day would even temporarily be deceived or attracted by so common an adventurer as Wickham.

At a first glance, indeed, it might seem that Miss Austen depended entirely for her effects upon the creation of oddities. Reflecting on Lady Catherine and Mr. Collins, touching perfection, we may well fancy that we have surprised her secret--the impulse of her achievement, the cause of our own enthusiasm. This, however, is but a hasty and superficial impression. To begin with, she does not concentrate, either in wit or humour, upon these figures of fun: and, in the second place, she has powers quite other than the mirth-provoking. Though grammatically not above reproach, she seems always to use the right word by instinct, hitting every nail full on the head, never wasting a syllable. The art nowhere obtrudes itself: her most skilfully polished phrases appear natural and fluent, just what her characters must have said in real life, to express precisely their thoughts and feelings. Faultlessly neat and compact, her style is yet daring, vigorous, and thoroughly alive.

Similar qualities appear in her delineation of character. Always knowing her own mind, and going straight to the point: there is no vagueness in outline, no uncertainty anywhere. Jane Bennet could never have said or done just what came most naturally from Elizabeth; Darcy shared no thought or deed with his best friend: less prominent persons are as firmly, if less fully, individualised. The incidents, moreover, however trifling, are well varied; the plot has ample movement--once those concerned in it have won our sympathies. Assuredly Miss Austen’s aim is not strenuous; but it is direct, vigorous, and clear-headed. And where she aims, she hits.

_Sense and Sensibility_ reveals the very same method and the reappearance of many similar types, applied to an entirely new story in which no interest or situation repeats those of the earlier book. With her daring indifference to originality in the mechanical construction of a plot, Miss Austen once more centres her story round two sisters, more widely diverse in temperament, indeed, than Jane and Elizabeth, but no less everything to each other. Their mother, after the way of parents in these novels, is as foolish as Mrs. Bennet, though far more lovable. Willoughby is Wickham over again, with a fancy for accomplishments. The tragi-comedy introduced by Lucy Steele, more _essentially_ vulgar than any of the Bennets, Mrs. Palmer’s candid frivolity, and the languid elegance of Lady Middleton (later perfected in Lady Bertram), provide abundant occasion for laughter; though no one figure of absurdity stands out so strongly as those of the earlier novel. On the other hand, Miss Austen has nowhere exposed a character more trenchantly by one short dialogue than in the discussion between Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood about “what he could do for” his widowed mother and orphaned sisters. It were surely impossible for selfish hypocrisy to go further; and the subtle touches by which the wife reveals herself leader of the pair, must afford us the keenest enjoyment.