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Criticism/Interpretation VI, W.F. Cornish

Jane Austen needs no testimonials; her position is

at this moment established on a firmer basis than that

of any of her contemporaries. She has completely

distanced Miss Edgeworth, Miss Ferrier, Fanny Burney,

and Hannah More, writers who eclipsed her modest reputa-

tion in her own day. The readers of "Evelina," "Ormond,"

"Marriage," or "Caelebs" are few; but hundreds know inti-

mately every character and every scene in "Pride and

Prejudice." She has survived Trollope and Mrs. Gaskell:

one may almost say that she is less out of date than Currer

Bell and George Eliot. It was not always so. In 1859 a

writer in "Blackwood's Magazine" spoke of her as "being

still unfamiliar in men's mouths" and "not even now a house-

hold word."

The reason for this comparative obscurity in her own

time, compared with her fame at the present day, may in

some measure be that in writing, as in other arts, finish is

now more highly prized than formerly. But conception as

well as finish is in it. The miracle in Jane Austen's writing

is not only that her presentment of each character is com-

plete and consistent, but also that every fact and particu-

lar situation is viewed in comprehensive proportion and re-

lation to the rest... Some facts and expressions

which pass almost unnoticed by the reader, and quite un-

noticed by the other actors in the story, turn up later to

take their proper place. She never drops a stitch. The

reason is not so much that she took infinite trouble, though

no doubt she did, as that everything was actual to her, as in

his larger historical manner everything was actual to Ma-

caulay.

It is easier to feel than to estimate a genius which has

no parallel. Jane Austen's faults are obvious. She has no

remarkable distinction of style. Her plots, though worked

out with microscopic delicacy, are neither original nor

striking; incident is almost absent; she repeats situations,

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