While Miss Austen has been so often likened to Shakespeare, she is in no sense a romantic writer. She belongs purely to the classic school. She has the restraint, the perfect poise of the Greeks. She recognises everywhere the need of law. She accepts society as it exists under the restraints of law and religion. She no more questioned the English prayer book and the English constitution than Homer questioned the existence of the gods and the supreme power of kings. This feeling for law shaped her art. Her plots are perfectly symmetrical. There is no redundancy in expression. There is none of that wild luxuriance in fancy or expression so common in romanticism. Each word used is needed in the sentence, and is in its proper place. The strength of romanticism lies in its impetuosity; the strength of classicism lies in its self-control. This is the strength of Jane Austen. Emotion in her books is so restrained that the superficial reader doubts its existence. Yet her characters feel deeply and are sensitive to the acts and words of those about them. Although their feelings are under control, they are none the less real. The reader watches, but is not asked to participate in their griefs. As she never moves to tears, neither does she provoke laughter, but she lightens every page with a quiet glow of humour. Humour was as natural to her as to Elizabeth Bennet, whose sayings give the sparkle to _Pride and Prejudice_. Much of the humour in her letters consists of an unexpected turn to a sentence or an incongruous combination of words. She writes of meeting "Dr. Hall in such very deep mourning that either his mother, his wife or himself must be dead." She announces the marriage of a gentleman to a widow by the laconic message, "Dr. Gardiner was married yesterday to Mrs. Percy and her three daughters." And again she says that a certain Mrs. Blount appeared the same as in September, "with the same broad face, diamond bandeau, white shoes, pink husband, and fat neck." She sees through the affectations of society and observes the pleasure afforded by the small misfortunes of another as plainly as did Thackeray later. The wife of a certain gentleman is discovered "to be everything the neighbourhood could wish, silly and cross as well as extravagant." She finds continual source of enjoyment in people's foibles, and thinks that her own misfortunes ought to furnish jokes to her acquaintances, or she will die in their debt for entertainment.