advantageous circumstances, and it is distinguished by an eternal irrepressibility. Certainly, it is not a little remarkable that Jane Austen should have produced one of her most finished works in her twenty-first year. But the groundwork of "Sense and Sensibility" was composed even earlier than this, while "Northanger Abbey" was first written in 1798. In less than the brief space of three years, therefore, and while the author was between her twentieth and her twenty-third year, this trinity of novels, all exhibiting first-class power, was conceived and executed.

The well-known antiquary, Sir Egerton Brydges, has left a sketch of Jane Austen, whom he knew as a little child. "I never suspected," he says, "that she was an authoress; but my eyes told me that she was fair and handsome, slight and elegant, but with cheeks a little too full." In character, she appears to have been all that might be predicated from a close acquaintance with her works. On this point her biographer observes: "Many may care to know whether the moral rectitude, the correct taste, and the warm affections with which she invested her ideal characters were really existing in the native source whence those ideas flowed, and were actually exhibited by her in the various relations of life. I can indeed bear witness that there was scarcely a charm in her most delightful characters that was not a true reflection of her own sweet temper and loving heart. I was young when we lost her; but the impressions made on the young are deep, and though in the course of fifty years I have forgotten much, I have not forgotten that Aunt Jane was the delight of all her nephews and nieces. We did not think of her as being clever, still less as being famous; but we valued her as one always kind, sympathising, and amusing." Readers who delight in tracing the course of love-and how many human hearts are there utterly insensible to the sentiment!--will find considerable space devoted to it in Miss Austen's works. It is but natural, perhaps, that this fact should have led to the query in what degree these numerous passages concerning tender attachments were due to the imagination, or whether they were not the actual reflection of experience. Indeed, a writer in the Quarterly Review half a century ago, referring to the passion of Fanny Price for Edmund Bertram, and the silence with which it was cherished, remarked how that "the slender hopes and enjoyments by which it is fed, the restlessness and jealousy with which it fills a mind naturally active, contented, and unsuspicious, the manner in which it tinges every event and every reflection, are painted with a vividness and a detail of which we can scarcely conceive any one but a female, and, we should almost add, a female

writing from recollection, capable." For this conjecture, Mr. Austen Leigh does not believe that any substantial basis exists; but he adds an autobiographic incident in connection with Jane Austen, which certainly shows that the assumption of the reviewer was by no means an impossible or an unreasonable one. Touching this passage of romance in the novelist's history, "Many years after her death, some circumstances induced her sister Cassandra to break through her habitual reticence and to speak of it. She said that, while staying at some seaside place, they became acquainted with a gentleman, whose charm of person, mind, and manners was such that Cassandra thought him worthy to possess and likely to win her sister's love. When they parted, he expressed his intention of soon seeing them again; and Cassandra felt no doubt as to his motives. But they never again met. Within a short time they heard of his sudden

I believe that, if Jane ever loved, it was this unnamed. gentleman; but the acquaintance had been short, and I am unable to say whether her feelings were of such a nature as to affect her happiness." Length of acquaintance is no test of passion, and it is possible that during this brief friendship Jane Austen, who had declined at an earlier period a most eligible parti-eligible, that is, as regards individual character and social position-had fallen a victim to the darts of Cupid. Wordsworth says that "poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity;" and we are aware that many authors have translated into the most vivid language-prose equally with verse-the overmastering emotions and sentiments which at some previous period in their career have held sway over them. We do not affirm that this is so with Miss Austen, but there are many passages in "Mansfield Park" which forbid the supposition from being dismissed as wholly improbable.

In the year 1801 the Austens removed to Bath, where "The Watsons," a story never concluded by the author, was written. Four years later, the Rev. George Austen died, and was buried at Walcot Church. Shortly after this event, Mrs. Austen and her daughters went to reside in Southampton. The residence in Bath had not been without its uses to the novelist, as many scenes in her works abundantly testify. She was, however, acquainted with the fashionable city of the West before it became the residence of her family. Their stay at Southampton was not of long duration, as in 1809, through the kindness of Mr. Knight, of Steventon, they were able to take up their abode at Chawton, in Hampshire. Chawton is described as the second as well as the last home of Jane Austen. The village stands about a mile from Alton, where the road to

Winchester branches off from that to Gosport. At this place Miss Austen resumed the habits of literary activity which had suffered a temporary check during her residence in Bath and Southampton. She now produced in rapid succession, and between the years 1811 and 1816, the three novels "Mansfield Park," "Emma," and "Persuasion." She delighted in working unsuspected by others, and wrote upon small sheets of paper which could readily be put away or covered over on the approach of intruders. It seems that the profits of the four novels which had been printed up to the time of her death did not amount to quite seven hundred pounds—a sum not equal to that which several living novelists now receive for each of their fictions. She did not affect the indifference which many authors profess to feel over the reception of their works. Writing to her sister with respect to " Pride and Prejudice," she observed : "Upon the whole, I am quite vain enough and well satisfied enough. The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn, specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story; an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Bonaparte, or something that would form a contrast, and bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness and epigrammatism of the style." Mr. Austen Leigh shows how different her life was from that of other authors who are thrown into literary society, and become "the observed of all observers." Miss Austen "lived in entire seclusion from the literary world; neither by correspondence nor by personal intercourse was she known to any contemporary authors. It is probable that she never was in company with any person whose talents or whose celebrity equalled her own; so that her powers never could have been sharpened by collision with superior intellects, nor her imagination aided by their casual suggestions." Her retired lot is contrasted with that of Madame d'Arblay, who was introduced by Dr. Johnson to Sir Joshua Reynolds and other celebrities of the time. Crabbe, also, was received at Holland House, and on one occasion was Sir Walter Scott's guest at Edinburgh; and even Charlotte Brontë, who spent her life on the Yorkshire moors, was greatly sought after upon her visit to London. The fame of Jane Austen was very largely posthumous, and one anecdote is told illustrative of this. Not long ago, a gentleman visiting Winchester Cathedral desired to be shown the grave of the author of " Pride and Prejudice." The verger, in pointing it out, inquired, "Pray, sir, can you tell me whether there was anything particular about that lady; so many

people want to know where she was buried?" Nor need we be surprised at this, for is there not a rhyme upon a greater than Jane Austen, which says

Seven Eastern cities claim great Homer dead,

Through which the living Homer begged his bread.

Miss Austen's novels were greatly admired by the Prince Regent, who, it seems, read them often, and kept a set in every one of his residences. Their author received an invitation to Carlton House, and her next novel was dedicated to the royal patron, whose literary taste in this instance was sound and true. The Prince's librarian, Mr. Clarke, writing to Miss Austen at the time of the approaching marriage of Prince Leopold to the Princess Charlotte, suggested that "an historical romance illustrative of the august House of Cobourg would just now be very interesting," and might very properly be dedicated to Prince Leopold. To this obliging recommendation, Miss Austen replied in terms which implied that she could not write to order. "I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable to me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter." Mr. Clarke's was a well-meaning though ludicrous attempt to transfer a round peg into one of the square holes of literature. Miss Austen composed in the natural and only rational manner described by Charlotte Brontë in a letter to a critic who had suggested that she should follow the elder novelist's style. "When authors write best," said the author of "Jane Eyre," "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, and suddenly creating and adopting new ones. Is it not so? And should we try to counteract this influence? Can we, indeed, counteract it?" The answer is emphatically No. Genius is like the free wind of heaven; it bloweth where it listeth, and no man knows its processes, its going and its coming. How could its noblest results be accomplished if it were not thus perfectly unfettered?

It has been matter of frequent remark that works which are now held in high esteem by the world at large absolutely went VOL. CCLVIII. NO. 1849.

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begging amongst the publishers. Thackeray, for example, is said to have carried his "Vanity Fair" from house to house, being unsuccessful on no fewer than sixteen or seventeen occasions; and other instances of a like character might be cited. James and Horace Smith's "Rejected Addresses" were refused by a publisher who afterwards purchased the work at thirty times the price he might have had it for in the outset. Success gilds many things. Cadell, the well-known publisher, declined by return of post to give any encouragement to the publication of Miss Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," or even to entertain the proposition to publish the work at the author's risk. "Northanger Abbey" was sold in 1803 to a publisher in Bath for 10/.; but so little enamoured was he of the story that he chose to abide by his first loss rather than risk further expense by publishing such a work. The author herself considered that when she received 150/. from the sale of "Sense and Sensibility," it was a prodigious recompense for that which had cost her little or nothing. Yet, with her strong judgment and critical faculty, she cannot but have felt astonishment sometimes at the success which attended work inferior to her own. Amongst the enthusiastic admirers of these novels by Miss Austen, which were little regarded by the public generally-were Southey, who held them to be more true to nature than any writings of the ageColeridge-who described them as perfectly genuine and individual. productions and Miss Mitford, who said that she could almost have cut off one of her hands if it would have enabled her to write like Miss Austen with the other. M. Guizot declared that “Miss Austen, Miss Ferrier, &c., form a school which, in the excellence and profusion of its productions, resembles the cloud of dramatic poets of the great Athenian age." The Earl of Carlisle, the noble writer of agreeable verse, referred to her as the "all-perfect Austen." The opinions of other distinguished literary men of much greater weight and power have been alluded to in the outset of this article. One of the best tributes paid to these admirable novels, however, is the picture of Lord Holland lying ill in his bed, with his sister Miss Fox reading aloud to him, as she always did on these occasions, some one of Miss Austen's stories, of which he was never wearied. "I well recollect the time," says Sir Henry Holland, who furnishes the above reminiscence, "when these charming novels, almost unique in their style of humour, burst suddenly on the world. It was sad that their writer did not live to witness the growth of her fame." It is a singular fact that many philosophers have developed a strong predilection for fiction; and the celebrated Whewell (who once wearied of his stay at Carnarvon because he had read the circulating library twice through)