“I thank you with ye utmost Gratitude for ye good offices you was to have done me; and though I cannot now for Reasons above specifyd accept of them, yet I hope they will still continue in Reversion: not that I have any schemes for ever resuming my Designs upon Miss A.: (on ye contrary I should be very loth she should wait so long) but because whenever my Time is come You are ye first person I should apply to, as having a good Number of Friends and Correspondents; and none who are priviledged with ye Intimacy of Mrs. Jennings can fail of Accomplishments to render them highly agreable to your most obedient servant.” (_A Kentish Country House._) The character of the solemn, pompous, thick-skinned Mr. Collins is the best of the kind Jane ever drew; he is a creation whose name might signify a quality of “collinesqueness.” Perhaps within the limits possible for quotation there is nothing which in so short a space sums up so well his inimitable character as the letter of condolence he sends to Mr. Bennet on the occasion of Lydia’s having eloped with the weak and untrustworthy Wickham. “I feel myself called upon by our relationship and my situation in life, to condole with you on the grievous affliction you are now suffering under, of which we were yesterday informed by a letter from Hertfordshire. Be assured, my dear sir, that Mrs. Collins and myself sincerely sympathise with you, and all your respectable family, in your present distress, which must be of the bitterest kind, because proceeding from a cause which no time can remove. No arguments shall be wanting on my part, that can alleviate so severe a misfortune; or that can comfort you under a circumstance that must be of all others, most afflicting to a parent’s mind. The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison of this. And it is the more to be lamented, because there is reason to suppose, as my dear Charlotte informs me, that this licentiousness of behaviour in your daughter has proceeded from a faulty degree of indulgence; though, at the same time, for the consolation of yourself and Mrs. Bennet, I am inclined to think that her own disposition must be naturally bad, or she could not be guilty of such an enormity, at so early an age. This false step in one daughter will be injurious to the fortunes of all the others; for who, as Lady Catherine herself condescendingly says, will connect themselves with such a family? And this consideration leads me to reflect, with augmented satisfaction on a certain event of last November, for had it been otherwise I must have been involved in all your sorrow and disgrace. Let me advise you then, my dear sir, to console yourself as much as possible, to throw off your unworthy child from your affection for ever, and leave her to reap the fruits of her own heinous offence.” Jane’s own impressions of _Pride and Prejudice_ are given in a letter to her sister, written many years later, on the publication of the book—