The result for which Jane Austen worked can scarcely be put in question. She was impelled to { 69} make her little world live in fiction, not precisely as she saw it and heard it, but as she could most attractively present it to minds possessing the indispensable modicum of humour, without which the charm is lost at least as nearly as the charm of a Turner sunset by a person whose optic nerve is irresponsive to the red rays. Apart from her prevailing humour, the modesty of her style is a continual beauty. There is none of that florid eloquence which depends more on sound than sense for its effect, nor of that forcing of strange phrases which in these days so often passes for literary excellence. There is no preciosity about her books; the narrative is easy, the incidents are probable; the dialogue, with few exceptions, is natural, the bright people being differentiated from the dull by their talk, and not, as in most novels, by the author's assurances. If Mr. Meredith was right when he declared that "it is unwholesome for men and women to see themselves as they are, if they are no better than they should be," there must be many "unwholesome" pages in Jane Austen's work for the tolerably large class to which he referred. Neither in real life nor in the life of her books did she "suffer fools gladly," { 70} and so far as the men of her creation are concerned she is on the whole more successful in representing the foolish than the wise. Her chief failure is in the realization of such a young man as one of her heroines would have been likely to admire. Most of the younger men are sketchily drawn, and we who are men would fain believe that she did not understand the nature of a man's heart, seeing that she never found one worth accepting. Knightley and Bertram seem to have been favourites of hers, but they are not lively people, nor sufficiently wanting in priggishness. The liveliest of them all is Henry Tilney, whatever his qualities of mind. The Jane Austen touch is charmingly varied, and it is felt in some of its happy strokes in the talk between this mercurial young rector and the girl whose early-budding affections he so speedily returns.
"'About a week, sir,' replied Catherine, trying not to laugh.