Dr. Johnson’s definition of a novel as “a smooth tale, generally of love,” fits Miss Austen well. It is not that she assigns to love a heavy rôle; but there is nothing to interfere with its command of the situation. Vague yearnings, tempestuous doubts, combative principles, play no part in her well-ordered world. The poor and the oppressed are discreetly excluded from its precincts. Emma does not teach the orphan boy to read, or the orphan girl to sew. She looks after her father’s comfort, and plays backgammon with him in the evenings. Of politics she knows nothing, and the most complicated social problem she is called on to face is the recognition, or the rejection, of her less fashionable neighbours. Are, or are not, the Coles sufficiently genteel to warrant her dining with them? Highbury is her universe, and no restless discontent haunts her with waking dreams of the Tiber and the Nile. Frank Churchill may go to London, sixteen miles off, to get his hair cut; but Emma remains at Hartfield, and holds the centre of the stage. We can count the days, we can almost count the hours in her monotonous life. She is unemotional, even for her setting; and it was after reading her placid history that Charlotte Brontë wrote the memorable depreciation of all Miss Austen’s novels. But, though beset and environed by dullness, Emma is not dull. On the contrary, she is remarkably engaging; less vivacious than Elizabeth Bennet, but infinitely more agreeable. She puts us into a good humour with ourselves, she “produces delight.” The secret of her potency is that she has grasped the essential things of life, and let the non-essentials go. There is distinction in the way she accepts near duties, in her sense of balance, and order, and propriety. She is a normal creature, highly civilized, and sanely artificial. Mr. Saintsbury says that Miss Austen knew two things: humanity and art. “Her men, though limited, are true, and her women are, in the old sense, absolute.” Emma is “absolute.” The possibility--or impossibility--of being Mr. Knightley’s intellectual competitor never occurs to her. She covets no empty honours. She is content to be necessary and unassailable.