The book is very rich in secondary characters. The garrulous, kind-hearted Miss Bates, with her rattling tongue, is one of the strongly individualised comic characters which Jane generally manages to insert. She ranks with Mr. Collins, with Mrs. Norris, and the lesser specimens of the same gallery, Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Jennings. She is admirably true to life, just such a garrulous, empty-headed, good-hearted, tiresome creature as many a governess of the old school has degenerated into in the evening of her life. Emma’s father, the valetudinarian Mr. Woodhouse, has been said to be overdrawn, but the great merit of Jane’s work is that she does not exaggerate; traits to be found in people that any of us might number among our acquaintance are so skilfully depicted as to appear prominent; she selects true if extreme types, and does not draw monstrosities such as those in which Dickens’s books abound, and of which one can only say they _may_ have existed, once, at one time, but are as rare as the exhibits in a dime museum. Mr. Woodhouse’s married daughter, Mrs. Knightley, is excellently done; her sympathy with her father’s tastes is only kept in check by her affection for husband and children, which forces her to attend to them and forget herself; yet the enjoyment with which she sips her gruel, when allowed to have it, is real enjoyment, and she would have certainly lived on gruel too had she been an old maid. The hero, Mr. Knightley, is one of the few sensible men among Jane’s heroes, and he with his experience and strength of character, is, as has been said elsewhere, the only true mate for Emma. Knightley has been criticised as a prig, but he is far from that. He was a stern elderly man apparently at least forty-five in age, though we are told he was only thirty. Emma herself has more ability than her rival, Elizabeth Bennet, in _Pride and Prejudice_; her mind has more depth and application: we could imagine Emma reading and studying, whereas, pleasant as Elizabeth might have been as a companion, her forte was general intelligent interest not depth, and we could not picture her deeply absorbed in any book but a novel. Emma was one of Jane’s own favourite heroines, and she said of her, “I am going to draw a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.” It is true that for the generality of men Emma would, in real life, have been just a little too strong, but she is none the less interesting to read about.