--

common -never rising above the level of in which "he was employed in agreeing to ordinary life, leaving nothing (so think the everything her ladyship said, thanking her uninstructed) to imagination or invention for every fish he won, and apologizing if at all and yet what other hand has ever he thought he won too many,”. are all so been able to detach such a group from the many touches which add perfection to the obscure level of the ordinary fate? Mr. picture; and when we take our parting Collins, for instar ho is the heir of Mr. glance of Mr. Collins, watching the country Bennet's entai and who, with a cer- road from his "book-room," and hastening tain quaint s e which enhances his to inform his wife and her friends every time self-importano prepared to propose Miss De Burgh drives by in her phaeton, to one of the da aters, whom he is obliged we feel that the power of consistent reto deprive of their inheritance. We give morseless ridicule can no further go. There so much explanation, with a certain shame is not a moment's faltering, nor the ghost at the very possibility that Mr. Collins of an inclination on the part of the author should want a formal introduction to any to depart from her wonderful conception. portion of the British public; but yet it is He stands before us tall and grave and pomtrue that the young ones are not so well up pous, wrapt in a cloud of solemn vanity, in the relationships of the Bennets as we servility, stupidity, and spitefulness, but could wish them to be. The sublime and without the faintest gleam of self-consciousundisturbed complacence of his arrival, when ness or suspicion of the ridiculous figure he he compliments Mrs. Bennet on having so cuts; and his author with no pity in her fine a family of daughters, “and added heart, walks round and round him, giving that he did not doubt her seeing them all in here and there a skilful touch to bring out time well disposed of in marriage," is inimi- the picture. It is amazing in its unity and table. "I am very sensible, madam, of completeness a picture perhaps unrivthe hardship to my fair cousins," he says, alled, certainly unsurpassed, in its way. It "and could say much on the subject, but I is, we repeat, cruel in its perfection. am cautious of appearing forward and pre- Whether it is not too cruel to make the cipitate. But I can assure the young ladies wife of this delightful Mr. Collins share so that I come prepared to admire them. At completely in his creator's estimate of him present I will not say more, but perhaps is a different matter. "When Mr. Collins when we are better acquainted "When could be forgotten there was really a great he receives Elizabeth's refusal to marry him with undisturbed complacency, attributing it to "your wish of increasing my love by suspense according to the usual practice of elegant females," the situation rises to one of the most genuine comedy, and our only regret is that Mr. Collins's adventures have never been adapted for the stage.

Miss Austen does not even let her victim escape her when he is married and has left the central scene. She pursues him to his home with the smile growing a little broader in her eyes. 66 Elizabeth was prepared to see him in all his glory; and she could not help fancying that in displaying the good proportions of his room, its aspect and its furniture, he addressed himself particularly to her, as if wishing to make her feel what she had lost in refusing him." His pompous assurance that "he has no hesitation in saying" that his goddess and patroness, Lady Catherine, will include his cousin in her invitations his triumph when the party is asked to dinner the pride with which he takes his seat at the foot of the table by her ladyship's command, looking "as if he felt that life could furnish nothing greater the "delighted alacrity" with which he carved and ate and praised his game at cards with his august patroness after dinner,

air of comfort throughout, and by Charlotte's evident enjoyment of it Elizabeth supposed he must be often forgotten" the unflinching narrative goes on. The room in which the ladies sat was backward, and Elizabeth at first had rather wondered that Charlotte should not prefer the dining-parlour for common use- - it was a bettersized room and had a pleasanter aspect; but she soon saw that her friend had an excellent reason for what she did, for Mr. Collins would undoubtedly have been much less in his own apartment had they sat in one equally lively; and she gave Charlotte credit for the arrangement." This is rather diabolical, it must be owned, and there is a calmness of acquiescence in the excellent Charlotte's arrangement which it takes all the reader's fortitude to stomach. It is possible that the very youth of the author may have produced this final stroke of unexampled consistency; for youth is always more or less cruel, and is slow to acknowledge that even the most stupid and arrogant of mortals has his rights.

Mr. Collins, however, is one of the most distinct and original portraits in the gallery of fiction, and we accept him gladly as a real contribution to our knowledge of humankind; not a contribution certainly which

a piece of revelation as we know, and proves that the young woman who had just given so original a work to the world was in reality quite unaware of its real power, and had set her heart upon her hero and heroine like any schoolgirl. Our beloved Mr. Collins, upon whom the spectator would be tempted to think a great deal of pains and some propended, evidently goes for very little with his maker. It is her lovers she is thinking of, a commonplace pair enough, while we are full of her inimitable fools, who are not at all commonplace. This curious fact disorders our head a little, and makes us ponder and wonder whether our author is in reality the gentle cynic we have concluded

will make us more in love with our fellowcreatures, but yet so lifelike, so perfect and complete, touched with so fine a wit and so keen a perception of the ridiculous, that the picture once seen remains a permanent possession. And when we are told that the Bennet family, with all its humours - the father who is so good and sensible, and yet such an unmitigated bear; the mother whom portionate anxiety must have been exhe despises and ridicules without hesitation, even to his heroine-daughters who accept his sarcastic comments as the most natural thing in the world; the stupid pompous Mary, the loud and noisy, heartless aud shameless Lydia are all drawn with an equally fine and delicate touch, we have not a word to say against it. We acknowledge its truth, and yet we rebel against this piti-her to be, or if she has produced all these less perfection of art. It shocks us as much as it could possibly have shocked Mr. Darcy, to allow that these should be the immediate surroundings of the young woman whom we are called upon to take to our hearts. We blush for the daughter who blushes for her mother. We hate the lover who points out to her, even in self-defence, the vulgarities and follies of her family. A heroine must be superior, it is true, but not so superior as this; and it detracts ever so much from the high qualities of Elizabeth when we see how very ready she is to be moved by a sense of the inferiority of her mother and sisters, how ashamed she is of their ways, and how thankful to think that her home will be at a distance from theirs. Curiously enough, it would seem that Miss Austen herself felt for this same Elizabeth, and for her alone, the enthusiasm of a parent for a child. "I have got my own darling child from London," she writes to her sister, in a little flutter of pleasure and ex-given to the feelings of the young novelist citement. "Miss B-dined with us on the very day of the book's coming, and in the evening we fairly set at it and read fully half the first volume to her, prefacing that having intelligence from Henry that such a book would soon appear, we had desired him to send it as soon as it came out; and I believe it passed with her unsuspected. She was amused, poor soul! That she could not help, you know, with two such people to lead the way, but she really does seem to admire Elizabeth. I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least I do not know." In a later letter she adds

66

Fanny's praise is very gratifying. My hopes were tolerably strong of her, but nothing like a certainty. Her liking Darcy and Elizabeth is enough; she might hate all the others if she would." This is as curious

marvels of selfish folly unawares, without knowing what she was doing, or meaning anything by it. Genius, however, goes a great deal deeper than conscious meaning, and has its own way, whatever may be the intentions of its owner; and we but smile at the novelist's strange delusion as we set aside Elizabeth and Darcy, the one a young woman very much addicted to making speeches, very pert often, fond of having the last word, and prone to hasty judgments, with really nothing but her prettiness and a certain sharp smartness of talk to recommend her; and the other a very ordinary young man, quite like hosts of other young men, with that appearance of outward pride and hauteur which is so captivating to the youthful feminine imagination, though it must be admitted that he possesses an extraordinary amount of candour and real humility of mind under this exterior. It is curious to realize what a shock it must have

when she found how little her favourite pair had to do with the successes of their own story, and how entirely her secondary characters, in their various and vivid originality, carried the day over her first,

"Sense and Sensibility," which was really the first of Miss Austen's publications, as well as the first production of her youthful brain, has fewer salient points. There is nothing in it that can approach within a hundred miles of the perfection of Mr. Collins. The Miss Steeles are simply vulgar and disagreeable, and we can scarcely be grateful for the vivid drawing of two persons whom we should be sorry ever to see again, and who really contribute nothing to our amusement, except so far as the fluttered sensibilities of the eldest in respect to "the Doctor" are concerned. No doubt the foolishness of Sir John Middleton, who is so much afraid of being alone that the addition of

and dries her eyes, and takes the bit in her pathize with the people it meets in fiction, teeth and is off again. We do not wonder to cry with them, and rejoice with them, that Mr. Knightley finds it a dangerous and take a real interest in all their conamusement to watch, and try to guide her cerns, it is scarcely to be expected that in her vagaries; and no doubt he had a hard books so cold and keen, and making so time of it when he had finally secured her, little claim upon their sympathy, would in that period that comes after Miss Austen ever be popular. "One of the ablest gives her up to him, but, we don't doubt, men of my acquaintance," said Mr. Austen liked it all the same. Leigh, "said in that kind of jest which has And it is impossible to conceive a more much earnest in it, that he had established perfect piece of village geography, a scene it in his own mind as a new test of ability more absolutely real. Highbury, with Ford's whether people could or could not apprecishop in the High Street, and Miss Bates's ate Miss Austen's merits." The standard rooms opposite, the parlour on the first is real enough. A certain amount of culfloor, with windows from which you can see ture and force of observation must be preall that is going on, and, indeed, call to supposed in any real independent admiration your friends down below, and hold conver- of these books. They are not the kind of sations with them. And the vicarage lane books which catch the popular fancy at once at one end of the town, which is muddy, and without pleasing the critic -a power somewhere the young vicar from his study can times possessed by very imperfect and unsee the young ladies passing on their way to satisfactory performances; neither do they their cottage pensioners, and has time to belong to that highest class of all which takes get his hat and umbrella and join them as every variety of imagination by storm, and they come back. And Hartfield, with its steps into favour without any probation. pretty shrubberies, standing well out of the They are rather of the class which attracts town, a dignified conclusion for the walks the connoisseur, which charms the critical of the ladies, whom Mr. Woodhouse is so and literary mind, and which, by dint of glad to see; and Randalls further on, with persistency and iteration, is carried by the its genial sanguine master, and the happy, superior rank of readers into a half-real quiet, middle-aged wife, who has been Em- half-fictitious universality of applause. Perma's governess, and is still "poor Miss Tay-haps the effort has been more successful in lor" to Emma's father. Nothing could be more easy than to make a map of it, with indications where the London road strikes off, and by which turning Frank Churchhill, on his tired horse, will come from Richmond. We know it as well as if we had lived there all our lives, and visited Miss Bates every other day.

"The

the case of Miss Austen than it has been
with any other writer. Her works have be-
come classic, and it is now the duty of every
student of recent English literature to be
more or less acquainted with them. Au-
thority was never better employed.
best judges" have here, for once, done the
office of an Academy, and laureated a writer
whom the populace would not have been
likely to laureate, but whom it has learned
to recognize.

Miss Austen's books did not secure her any sudden fame. They stole into notice so gradually and slowly, that even at her death they had not reached any great height of There is, however, one quaint instance of success. "Northanger Abbey," perhaps appreciation, recorded in the Memoir, which her prettiest story, as a story, and "Per- took place in her lifetime. The Prince-Resuasion," which is very charming and full gent admired Miss Austen's novels much, of delicate touches, though marked with the and sent her word through her doctor that old imperfection which renders every char- she might go and see Carlton House with acter a fool except the heroic pair who hold all its riches a permission which we cantheir place in the foreground were pub- not but think must have been more honourlished only after her death, the MS. having able than delightful. She took the trouble been sold for ten pounds to a careless coun- to do it, however, and there met a Mr. try bookseller, from whom it was repur- Clarke, librarian to his Royal Highness, chased, after the others had risen into fame. who forthwith took her in hand. This genWe are told that at her death all they had tleman, so far as can be judged by his letproduced of money was but seven hundred ters, was a personage altogether after pounds, and but a moderate modicum of Miss Austen's heart, and who might have praise. We cannot say we are in the least sur- stepped out of one of her own books. He prised at this fact; it is, we think, much more gives her permission unasked to dedicate surprising that they should at length have one of her books to the Regent a permisclimbed into the high place they now hold. sion, by the way, which we do not clearly To the general public, which loves to sym-understand if she ever availed herself of;

and, in addition, he proposes to her a subject the current of the river," a conclusion for a book. "I also, dear madam," writes scarcely less amusing than the preceding this ingenious gentleman, wished to be narrative. It appears, however, that this allowed to ask you to delineate in some fu- was by no means a singular occurrence. Her ture work the habits of life and character friends, who could see plainly that Jane and enthusiasm of a clergyman who should Austen was very much the same as other pass his time between the metropolis and people, and not a person to be in any way the country, who should be something like afraid of, were so kind as to give her many Beattie's minstrel hints. Here is a sketch found among her papers of the sort of work she ought to have written had she followed their suggestions: