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and to some extent even characters. She cared for story

and situation only as they threw light on character. She

has little idealism, little romance, tenderness, poetry, or re-

ligion. All this may be conceded, and yet she stands by the

side of Moliere, unsurpassed among writers of prose and

poetry, within the limits which she imposed on herself, for

clear and sympathetic vision of human character.

She sees everything in clear outline and perspective. She

does not care to analyze by logic what she knows by intui-

tion; she does not search out the grounds of motive like

George Eliot, nor illumine them like Meredith by search-

light flashes of insight, nor like Hardy display them by irony,

sardonic or pitying, nor like Henry James thread a laby-

rinth of indications and intimations, repulsions and attrac-

tions right and left, all pointing to the central temple, where

sits the problem. She has no need to construct her char-

acters, for there they are before her, like Mozart's music,

only waiting to be written down. -- From "Jane Austen" in

"English Men of Letters."

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