A Memoir of Jane Austen: To Which are Added Lady Susan and Fragments of Two Other Unfinished Tales by Miss AustenRichard Bentley & Son, 1882 |
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Popular passages
Page 92 - You are now collecting your people delightfully, getting them exactly into such a spot as is the delight of my life. Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on...
Page 34 - Women are armed with fans as men with swords, and sometimes do more execution with them. To the end therefore that ladies may be entire mistresses of the weapon which they bear, I have erected an academy for the training up of young women in the exercise of the fan, according to the most fashionable airs and motions that are now practised at court The ladies who carry fans under...
Page 119 - An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.
Page 142 - 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 ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early ! "March 15.
Page 119 - mild eyes," to finish more, and be more subdued ; but neither am I sure of that. When authors write best, or, at least, when they write most fluently, an influence seems to waken in them which becomes their master — which will have its way — putting out of view all behests but its own, dictating certain words, and insisting on their being used, whether vehement or measured in their nature, new moulding characters, giving unthought of turns to incidents, rejecting carefully elaborated old ideas,...
Page 92 - Devereux Forester's being ruined by his Vanity is extremely good ; but I wish you would not let him plunge into a ' vortex of Dissipation.' I do not object to the Thing, but I cannot bear the expression ; — it is such thorough novel slang — and so old, that I dare say Adam met with it in the first novel he opened.
Page 119 - If I ever do write another book, I think I will have nothing of what you call 'melodrama;' I think so, but I am not sure. I think, too, I will endeavour to follow the counsel which shines out of Miss Austen's 'mild eyes,' 'to finish more and be more subdued;' but neither am I sure of that.
Page 29 - Nor will life's stream for observation stay, It hurries all too fast to mark their way : In vain sedate reflections we would make, When half our knowledge we must snatch, not take. Oft in the passions...
Page 166 - I will only say further that my dearest sister, my tender, watchful, indefatigable nurse, has not been made ill by her exertions. As to what I owe...
Page 116 - ... mother tongue, and has read little in that, would be totally without the power of giving. A classical education, or at any rate a very extensive acquaintance with English literature, ancient and modern, appears to me quite indispensable for the person who would do any justice to your clergyman ; and I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.