LITMIR.BIZ

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again.' Catharine turned away her head, not knowing whether she ought venture to laugh. ' I see what you think of me,' said he gravely. ' I shall make but a poor figure in your journal to-morrow. . . . I know exactly what you will say. Friday went to the Lower Rooms; wore my sprigged muslin robe with blue trimmings, plain black shoes; appeared to much advantage, but was strangely harassed by a queer, half-witted man who would make me dance with him, and distressed me by his nonsense.' 'Indeed I shall say no such thing.' 'Shall I tell you what you ought to say?' ' If you please.' ' I danced with a very agreeable young man, had a good deal of conversation with him, seems a most extraordinary genius; hope I may know more of him. That, madam, is what I wish you to say.' 'But perhaps I keep no journal.' 'Perhaps you are not sitting in this room, and I am not sitting beside you.'"

      It is plain from the beginning what must be Catharine's fate with a young man who can laugh at her so caressingly, and what must be his with a girl so helplessly transparent to his eyes. Henry Tilney is as good as he is subtle, and he knows how to value her wholesome honesty aright; but all her friends are not witty young clergymen, and one of them is as little like him in appreciation of Catharine's rare nature as she is like Catharine in the qualities which take him. This is putting it rather too severely if it conveys the reproach of willful bad faith in the case of Isabella Thorp, who becomes the bosom friend of Catharine at a moment's notice, and the betrothed of Catharine's brother with very little more delay. She is simply what she was born, a self-centered jilt in every motion of her being, and not to be blamed for fulfilling the jilt's function in a world where she is divined in almost her modern importance. In this character, the author forecasts the supremacy of a type which had scarcely been recognized before, but which has since played so dominant a part in fiction, and as with the several types of snobs, proves herself not only artist but prophet. Isabella is not of the lineage of the high and mighty flirts, the dark and deadly flirts, who deal destruction round among the hearts of men. She is what was known in her time as a "rattle"; her longue runs while her eyes fly, and her charms are perpetually alert for admiration. She is involved in an incessant drama of fictitious occurrences; she is as romantic in her own way as Catharine is in hers; she peoples an unreal world with conquests, while Catharine dwells in the devotion of one true, if quite imaginary lover. As Catharine cannot make anything of such a character, she decides to love and believe in her utterly, and she cannot well do more after Isabella becomes engaged to her brother James, and declares that she is going to withdraw from the world in his absence, and vows that though she may go to the assembly she will do it merely because Catharine asks it. ' But do not insist upon me being very agreeable, for my heart you know will be forty miles off; and as for dancing, do not mention it, I beg; that is quite out of the question.' "

      Catharine takes her friend so literally that when Tilney asks her in behalf of his handsome brother the question whether Miss Thorp would have any objection to dancing, "'Your brother will not mind it, I know,' said she, ' because I heard him say before that he hated dancing; but it was very good-natured of him to think of it. I suppose he saw Isabella sitting down, and fancied she might wish for a partner, but . . . she would not dance on any account in the world.' Henry smiled and said, 'How very little trouble it can give you to understand the motive of other people's actions.' 'Why, what do you mean?' ... 'I only meant that your attributing my brother's wish of dancing with Miss Thorp to good-nature, convinced me of your being superior in good-nature yourself to all the rest of the world.' Catharine blushed and disclaimed. . . She drew back for some time, forgetting to speak or to listen . . . till roused by the voice of Isabella, she looked up and saw her with Captain Tilney preparing to give their hands across. Isabella shrugged her shoulders and smiled, the only explanation of this extraordinary change which could at that time be given. Catharine . . . spoke her astonishment in very plain terms to her partner. 'I cannot think how it could happen. Isabella was so determined not to dance.' 'And did Isabella never change her mind before?' 'Oh! but because—and your brother! After what you told him from me, how could he think of going to ask her?' . . . 'The fairness of your friend was an open attraction; her firmness, you know, could only be understood by yourself.' 'You are laughing; but I assure you Isabella is very firm in general.' . . . The friends were not able to get together . . . till after the dancing was over; but then as they walked about the room arm in arm, Isabella thus explained herself: ' I do not wonder at your surprise, and I am really fatigued to death. ... I would have given the world to sit still.' 'Then why did not you?' . . . 'Oh, my dear, it would have looked so particular, and you know how I abhor doing that. . . . You have no idea how he pressed me. ... I found there would be no peace if I did not stand up. Besides, I thought Mrs. Hughes, who introduced him, might take it ill if I did; and your dear brother, I am sure, would have been miserable if I had sat down the whole evening. My spirits are quite jaded, listening to his nonsense; and then being such a smart young fellow, I saw every eye was upon us.' 'He is very handsome indeed.' 'Handsome? Yes, I suppose he may . . . But he is not at all in my style of beauty. I hate a florid complexion and dark eyes in a man. However, he is very well. Amazingly conceited, I am sure. I took him down, several times, you know, in my way.'"

      The born jilt, the jilt so natured that the part she perpetually plays is as unconscious with her as the circulation of the blood, has never been more perfectly presented than in Isabella Thorp, in whom she was first presented; and her whole family, so thoroughly false that they live in an atmosphere of lies, are miracles of art. The soft, kindly, really well-meaning mother is as great a liar as her hollow-hearted, hollow-headed daughter, or her braggart son who babbles blasphemous falsehoods because they are his native speech, with only the purpose of a momentary effect, and hardly the hope or wish of deceit. His pursuit of the trusting Catharine, who desires to believe in him as the friend of her brother, is the farcical element of the pretty comedy. The farce darkens into as much tragedy as the scheme will suffer when General Tilney, a liar in his own way, is taken in by John Thorp's talk, and believes her very rich; but it all brightens into the sweetest and loveliest comedy again, when Henry Tilney follows her home from his father's house, and the cheerful scene is not again eclipsed till the curtain goes down upon her radiant happiness.

      JANE AUSTEN'S EMMA WOODHOUSE, MARIANNE DASHWOOD, AND FANNY PRICE

      IN primitive fiction plot is more important than character; as the art advances character becomes the chief interest, and the action is such as springs from it. In the old tales and romances there is no such tiling as character in the modem sense; their readers were satisfied with what the heroes and heroines did and suffered.

      When the desire for character arose, the novelists loaded their types with attributes; but still there was no character, which is rooted in personality. The novelist of to-day who has not conceived of this is as archaic as any romancer of the Middle Ages in his ideal of art. Most of the novels printed in the last year, in fact, are as crudely devised as those which have amused people of childish imagination at any time in the last thousand years; and it will always be so with most novels, because most people are of childish imagination. The masterpieces in fiction are those which delight the mind with the traits of personality, with human nature recognizable by the reader through its truth to himself.

      The wonder of Jane Austen is that at a time when even the best fiction was overloaded with incident, and its types went staggering about under the attributes heaped upon them, she imagined getting on with only so much incident as would suffice to let her characters express their natures movingly or amusingly. She seems to have reached this really unsurpassable degree of perfection without a formulated philosophy, and merely by her clear vision of the true relation of art to life; but however she came to be what she was, she was so unquestionably great, so unmistakably the norm and prophecy of most that is excellent in Anglo-Saxon fiction since her time, that I shall make no excuse for what may seem a disproportionate study of her heroines.

      I

      Emma Woodhouse, in the story named after her, is one of the most boldly imagined of Jane Austen's heroines. Perhaps she is the very most so, for it took supreme courage to portray a girl, meant to win and keep the reader's fancy, with the characteristics frankly ascribed to Emma Woodhouse. We are indeed allowed to know that she is pretty; not formally, but casually, from the words of a partial friend: "Such an eye!— the true hazel eye—and so brilliant!—regular

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