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Austen herself, speaking for the last time. There is some-

thing so true, so womanly about her, that it is impossible

not to love her. She is the bright-eyed heroine of the

earlier novels matured, chastened, cultivated, to whom fidelity

has brought only greater depth and sweetness instead of

bitterness and pain. -- From "The Cornhill Magazine,"

August, 1871.

Criticism/Interpretation V, Goldwin Smith

As we should expect from such a life, Jane Austen's

view of the world is genial, kindly, and, we repeat,

free from anything like cynicism. It is that of a

clear-sighted and somewhat satirical onlooker, loving what

deserves love, and amusing herself with the foibles, the self-~

deceptions, the affectations of humanity. Refined almost to

fastidiousness, she is hard upon vulgarity; not, however,

on good-natured vulgarity, such as that of Mrs. Jennings in

"Sense and Sensibility," but on vulgarity like that of Miss

Steele, in the same novel, combined at once with effrontery

and with meanness of soul...

To sentimentality Jane Austen was a foe. Antipathy to

it runs through her works. She had encountered it in the

romances of the day, such as the works of Mrs. Radcliffe

and in people who had fed on them. What she would have

said if she had encountered it in the form of Rousseauism

we can only guess. The solid foundation of her own char-

acter was good sense, and her type of excellence as dis-

played in her heroines is a woman full of feeling, but with

her feelings thoroughly under control. Genuine sensibility,

however, even when too little under control, she can regard

as lovable. Marianne in "Sense and Sensibility" is an ob-

ject of sympathy, because her emotions, though they are

ungoverned and lead her into folly, are genuine, and are

matched in intensity by her sisterly affection. But affected

sentiment gets no quarter...

Jane Austen had, as she was sure to have, a feeling for

the beauties of nature. She paints in glowing language the

scenery of Lyme. She speaks almost with rapture of a

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