[Frontispiece: Jane Austen] JANE AUSTEN AND HER COUNTRY-HOUSE COMEDY BY W. H. HELM AUTHOR OF "ASPECTS OF BALZAC," ETC. EVELEIGH NASH FAWSIDE HOUSE LONDON 1909 RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. TO MY MOTHER "I concluded, however unaccountable the assertion might appear at first sight, that good-nature was an essential quality in a satirist, and that all the sentiments which are beautiful in this way of writing, must proceed from that quality in the author. Good-nature produces a disdain of all baseness, vice, and folly; which prompts them to express themselves with smartness against the errors of men, without bitterness towards their persons."--STEELE, _Tatler_, No. 242. NOTE The author is much indebted to the Hon. C. M. Knatchbull-Hugessen, and also to Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd., for permission to make extracts from the _Letters of Jane Austen_. CONTENTS I DOMINANT QUALITIES Jane Austen's abiding freshness--Why she has not more readers--Characteristics of her work--Absence of passion--Balzac, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Brontë--Jane in her home circle--Her tranquil nature--Her unselfishness--Compared with Dorothy Osborne--Prudent heroines--Thoughtless admiration II EQUIPMENT AND METHOD Literary influences--Jane Austen's defence of novelists--The old essayists--Her favourite authors--Some novels of her time--Criticism of her niece's novel--Sense of her own limitations--Her method--Humour--Familiar names--Some characteristics of style--Suggested emendations--A new "problem" of authorship--A "forbidding" writer--"Commonplace" and "superficial"--Thomas Love Peacock--Sapient suggestions III CONTACT WITH LIFE Origins of characters--Matchmaking--Second marriages--Negative qualities of the novels--Close knowledge of one class--Dislike of "lionizing"--Madame de Staël--The "lower orders"--Tradesmen--Social position--Quality of Jane's letters--Balls and parties IV ETHICS AND OPTIMISM Dr. Whately on Jane Austen--"Moral lessons" of her novels--Charge of "Indelicacy"--Marriage as a profession--A "problem" novel--"The Nostalgia of the Infinite"--The "whitewashing" of Willoughby--Lady Susan condemned by its author--_The Watsons_--Change in manners--No "heroes"--Woman's love--The Prince Regent--_The Quarterly Review_ V THE IMPARTIAL SATIRIST What has woman done?--"Nature's Salic law"--Women deficient in satire--Some types in the novels--The female snob--The valetudinarian--The fop--The too agreeable man--"Personal size and mental sorrow"--Knightley's opinion of Emma--Ashamed of relations--Mrs. Bennet--The clergy and their opinions--Worldly life--Absence of dogma--Authors confused with their creations VI PERSONAL AND TOPOGRAPHICAL