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"Pride and Prejudice" was not published till sixteen years after it had been composed; "Sense and Sensibility," the first published of Jane Austen's novels, not for thirteen years after the first time it was re-written. "Northanger Abbey" was the first sold of these earlier novels, but it cannot be considered more lucky than its predecessors. Its fate was, if possible, still more mortifying. It was disposed of to a publisher in Bath for the modest sum of ten pounds, five years after it was written, and two years before the death of Jane Austen's father. It lay ignominiously in a drawer in the shop of its purchaser for many years. At last it was bought back for the sum originally given, by one of the author's brothers, who, when the transaction was finished, triumphantly informed the dilatory publisher that he had just re-sold a work by the well-known author of "Pride and Prejudice." "Northanger Abbey," on which Lord Macaulay set such store, was not brought out till 1818, after Jane Austen's death, when it appeared together with her last story, "Persuasion," just twenty years from the date at which the former novel was written. Surely, few young authors have had to suffer greater and more prolonged disappointment in finding a publisher and a public. The experience may serve as a consolation to all struggling literary aspirants. On the other hand we may seek generation after generation of authors doomed to obscurity, temporary or permanent, before we find another Jane Austen. Of a nephew and a niece of the author's who took to youthful novel-writing in their aunt's lifetime, and received all indulgence and encouragement from their kinswoman, it is recorded that neither of their novels ever saw the light; yet we might have said of them that they had novel-writing in the blood. One of them wrote with the inspiring association of dwelling in Steventon Parsonage, the other received invaluable hints and suggestions from a mistress of her art; but it was all of no avail.

It is said that Jane Austen bore her early literary disappointments very philosophically. She did not write for money; her father was in easy circumstances. She might not then anticipate fame--though she was far from undervaluing her powers--and she did not over-rate the worth of a literary reputation; still I can scarcely comprehend the equanimity of a very young woman remaining entirely unshaken by the unbroken train of undeserved failures and rebuffs. There is one thing that I feel sure Jane Austen must have grieved for:--her father, who had superintended her education, and taken a fatherly interest in her first attempts at authorship, did not live to see the faint dawn of the success which, though it came late, has proved ample.

Before quitting the subject of the novelist's youth at Steventon, I should like to say a word on the influences already referred to, which I believe affected her as a woman and an author. During her whole life she remained to a great extent engrossed by the interests of her family and their limited circle of old and intimate friends. This was as it should be--so far, but there may be too much of a good thing. The tendency of strictly restricted family parties and sets--when their members are above small bickerings and squabblings--when they are really superior people in every sense, is to form "mutual admiration" societies, and neither does this more respectable and amiable weakness act beneficially upon its victims. In the incessant intercourse between the Great House and Upper Cross Cottage in "Persuasion," we have an example, under Jane Austen's own hand, of the evils of such constant communication among people of inferior understanding and intelligence. If we look nearer home, we may have a glimpse of disadvantages of a different sort, attendant on what Scotch people call "clannishness" in a higher region. Good as Jane Austen was, there is a certain spirit of exclusiveness, intolerance, condescension, and what may be classed as refined family selfishness, in the attitude which she, the happy member of a large and united family, distinguished by many estimable qualities, assumed to the world without. She was independent of it to a large extent for social intercourse; and so she told it candidly, and just a little haughtily--forgetting, for the most part, the wants of less favoured individuals--that she needed nothing from it.

Fondly loved and remembered as Jane Austen has been, with much reason, among her own people, in their considerable ramifications, I cannot imagine her as greatly liked, or even regarded with anything save some amount of prejudice, out of the immediate circle of her friends, and in general society. I hope I may not be misunderstood. I do not mean that the novelist was other than an excellent woman, pre-eminently a gentlewoman. What I mean is, that she allowed her interests and sympathies to become narrow, even for her day, and that her tender charity not only began, but ended, in a large measure, at home. No doubt I am alluding to the characteristics of a generation and class, which showed themselves, in a marked manner, in the repugnance with which other intellectual gentlewomen shrank from acknowledging the profession of authorship, with its obligations, no less than its privileges, as if it involved a degradation--something distinctly injurious to them, both as women and gentlewomen. Fanny Burney, on the other hand, was brought up among artists of every description, which, perhaps, accounts for the transparent literary vanity which forms so broad a contrast to the shyness--often equally self-conscious--of her sister-authors. But the whole bent of Jane Austen's disposition and rearing seem to point in the contrary direction.

We may grant fully that Jane Austen was far too good an artist to make absolute copies from real persons to figure in the pages of her books, and too good a woman not to regard such a practice as a breach of social honour and propriety. But we all know how human beings--especially the duller among us, distrust and dislike being turned into ridicule. "A chiel amang us takin' notes" is not half so offensive as an audacious boy or girl convicted of taking us off, whether behind our backs or to our faces. I do not mean to infer that Miss Austen at any age was guilty of the mean and disloyal practice called "drawing out people" until they expose their weakness, and then making game of the weaknesses, whether in the victim's company or out of it. I have it on excellent authority that, however thoroughly she was able to sympathise with the witty repartees of two of her favourite heroines, in general company she herself was shy and silent; even in more familiar circles she was innocent of speaking sharp words, and was rather distinguished for her tolerant indulgence to her fellow-creatures, than for her hard judgments on them. The tolerance belonged, by right, to her breadth of comprehension, and to the humour which still more than wit characterised her genius. The suggestion I make is that, seeing her neighbours' foibles, as she certainly did see them, she could not, however generously she might use her superior knowledge, conceal it altogether from her neighbours, and this was less likely to be the case when she was a young girl with some share, presumably, of the thoughtlessness and rashness of other girls, than when she was a mature woman, with the wisdom and gentleness of experience. I have pointed out the softened as well as the more serious tone of her later novels, the difference, for instance, between "Northanger Abbey" and "Persuasion." But who is to guess that the boy or the girl is to turn out a great novelist and humourist, whose genius is a fire in the bones, and an excuse for a hundred liberties?

As an author, in the few letters that have been preserved in which we have Jane Austen's private feelings on the subject of her novels frankly written to her family and friends, she gives one the impression of having always found herself the queen of her company: never in an arrogant, vulgar way; on the contrary, with a sweet playfulness and gracious kindness to those who were closely allied to her by kindred, blood, and the ties of friendship; but all the same she reigned queen. She might come down from her throne and defer to her elder sister Cassandra, or to any other relative, but her sceptre was still in her hand. I do not draw inferences merely from Jane Austen's hearty, undissembled appreciation of her own work, and her distinct perception, freely announced, of its superior claims; doubtless that was inevitable to such a woman as she was, in the circumstances in which she found herself. It is in the whole assured tone of the half-jesting criticism; the half-pretended impatience that any new great novelist should enter the lists; the total absence--as in the case of Mrs. Radcliffe--of any natural desire to know and be known by her fellow-writers, to measure herself in familiar intercourse with them, above all, to give and receive sympathy.

Of course these peculiarities in the individual woman were not enough to hinder her from admiring at a distance, and occasionally generously proclaiming the admiration for, some of her contemporaries. I am bound also, in fairness, to add to my own impressions that it remained the firm persuasion of Jane Austen's biographer that she was as far as possible from being censorious and satirical. With regard to the censoriousness, I agree perfectly with this witness; but as to the satire, I must bring forward the opposite and impartial testimony of her own writings. Jane Austen was on the whole more humorous than satirical, yet in the earlier novels the satire is prominent. I can give far more unqualified credence to the statement that, while her unusually quick sense of the ridiculous led her to play with all the common-places of every-day life--whether as regarded persons or things--she never played with its serious duties or responsibilities.

With all her neighbours in the village--her humbler neighbours, I suppose--Mr. Austen Leigh says she was on friendly though not on intimate terms, "She took a kindly interest in all their proceedings, and liked to hear about them. They often served for her amusement, but it was her own nonsense that gave zest to the gossip." The last is a nice distinction, hardly likely to be understood by the neighbours over whose affairs she laughed.

That Jane Austen, with her singular Shakespeare-like sympathy in little, her power of putting herself in another's place, could not help feeling both interested and entertained by the proceedings of the fellow-creatures around her, I can easily believe. What I doubt is that she who turned those simple souls, and the incidents of their lives, inside out, for her mingled instruction and diversion, could altogether conceal the process, or render it palatable to the subjects of the operation.

It was the conviction of the Austen family that Jane's occupation as a novel writer continued long unsuspected by her ordinary acquaintances and neighbours. That may have been, but we cannot imagine that her close study of the characters around her, with her shrewd, humorous conclusions--so extraordinary at the age at which she began to make them--could have been either quite unperceived or wholly approved of by her associates.

There are one or two of Jane Austen's letters from Steventon published in her memoir. They are bright, chatty letters, not far removed from those which any merry-hearted, clever girl might have written. They deal entirely with domestic and local details. The arrival of a set of tables, with which everybody, for a wonder, was pleased; a great November storm, that made havoc among the Parsonage trees; an accident to a neighbour's son; an anticipated ball; the fact that Jane was then reading Hume's "History of England," form the topics. As there is no continuity, either in the letters or the narrative, of which such incidents might supply a part, they fall vaguely and flatly on the reader. The most interesting paragraphs are those which refer to the absent sailor brothers, and the eagerness of the mother and sisters to hear stray news of them, or to forward letters to them, and procure answering letters by the chances of coming and going ships. There is one passage which tallies with the details of a gift made in "Mansfield Park":--"Charles has received thirty pounds for his share of the privateer, and expects ten pounds more; but of what avail is it to take prizes if he lays out the produce in presents to his sisters? He has been buying gold chains and topaz crosses for us. He must be well scolded.... I shall write again by this post to thank and reproach him. We shall be unbearably fine."

During an absence from home on Jane Austen's part, it was settled, before she knew, that her father, who at the age of seventy had resigned his living of Steventon to his son James, should remove with his wife and daughters to Bath. However much Jane may have felt the fascination of her girlish visits to Bath, she did not approve of it as a place of residence in her more mature womanhood. We are reminded of a sentence in "Persuasion" where the author remarks drily Anne Elliot did not like Bath; fancied it disagreed with her; would have preferred any other place; therefore, to Bath, as a matter of course, the family went. So much for the unpropitiousness of events.

The Austens went to Bath in 1801, when Jane was twenty-six years of age. The family resided first at No. 4, Sydney Terrace, and later at Green Park Buildings. An attraction to Bath, suggested by Mr. Austen Leigh, is that Mrs. Austen's only brother, Mr. Leigh Perrot, with his wife, was in the habit of spending his time between Bath and his place of Scarletts. Like his uncle, the Master of Balliol, Mr. Leigh Perrot was a witty man, and some of his epigrams and riddles, in which he must have far outshone Mr. Woodhouse, found their way, among other morsels, into print. The Austens, with their strong family proclivities, were much with the Leigh Perrots.

Jane was still young, pretty, and cheerful enough to enter with a fair proportion of enjoyment into the gaieties of the place. She had given up writing, in a great measure, since she was three or four and twenty, whether chilled by her lack of success or distracted by other engagements and amusements. However, it is thought that it was during her stay in Bath she wrote several chapters of an unfinished novel called "The Watsons," which, unlike the youthful performance, "Lady Susan," published along with these chapters in the same volume with the memoir, bear a strong flavour of Jane Austen in her sagacity and banter.

She may have been inspirited to the effort by the sale, though for so small a sum, of the MS. of "Northanger Abbey," which happened two years after she came to Bath, when she was twenty-eight years of age. We know the sale proved fruitless, so far as speedy publication was concerned, but the mortifying conclusion could not have been foreseen, and the sale of one of her novels for ten pounds was Jane Austen's first faint gleam of good fortune in authorship, the only one which visited her during her father's lifetime.

The Austens remained at Bath about four years. In their last autumn there, the autumn of 1804, Jane, with her father and mother, spent some weeks at the lovely sea-bathing place of Lyme, which she admired so much, and has immortalised in "Persuasion." We cannot avoid being struck by the small number of the opportunities which Jane Austen had of seeing the world, and by the great use she made of them. Her journeyings were not so very much more extensive than those of the Vicar of Wakefield and his wife in the days of their prosperity, but they were sufficient for her to avail herself of them for the information and delight of her fellow-creatures. It is not the amount of what we see, but the eyes with which we see it, that signifies.

In the following spring, that of 1805, the Rev. George Austen died at Bath. His widow and daughters then removed to Southampton--drawn to its society very likely by the sailor Austens--and there they stayed for four more years. Mrs. Austen occupied a large old-fashioned house in a corner of Castle Square. The house had a pleasant garden, bounded on one side by the old city wall. A flight of steps led to the top of the wall, which formed a walk with an extensive view of sea and land.

In 1809 the Austens made their last removal. It was back to the country--of which Jane always makes her heroines fond--back to the old neighbourhood of Steventon, her birth-place. Edward Knight offered his mother a choice of two houses--the one on his estate in Kent, the other on his estate in Hampshire. She selected the house in Hampshire, Chawton Cottage, near the squire's occasional home, Chawton House.

Chawton Cottage, in the village of the same name, was not originally a farm house, like Upper Cross Cottage, in "Persuasion;" it had been intended for an inn. Indeed, it stood so close to the high road on which the front door opened, that a very narrow enclosure "paled" in on each side had been necessary to protect the building from the danger of collision with runaway vehicles. In addition to the Gosport Road in front, the Winchester Road skirted the house on one side, so that it could not be regarded as a secluded habitation, but in those days cheerfulness was more prized than seclusion. There was a large pond close to Chawton Cottage, at the junction of the two public roads. Happily the theory which connects insalubrity with such ponds had not yet been aired, so that to the Austens, no doubt, Chawton pond was a very desirable sheet of water, tending still more to enhance the attractions of the scene. They would not much mind the duckweed and other slimy vegetation. Horses and donkeys, ducks and geese, would disport themselves there in summer. In winter village sliders would bestow animation on the ice.

The squire added to the house, and contrived some judicious planting and screening. A good-sized entrance and two sitting-rooms were managed. In the drawing-room a window which looked to the Gosport Road was blocked up and turned into a bookcase, and another window was opened out and made to command only turf and trees, for a high wooden fence and a hornbeam hedge shut out the Winchester Road. Here was a little bit of genteel privacy. A shrubbery was carried round the enclosure, which Mr. Austen Leigh tells us gave a sufficient space for "ladies' exercise," though we cannot help thinking the exercise-ground must have been rather limited for the middle-aged women.

However, there was a pleasant irregular mixture of hedgerow, gravel-walk, and orchard, with grass for mowing, made by two or three little enclosures having been thrown together. As it happened, walking had to be relinquished before many years by the younger sister, and Jane Austen, as well as her mother, had to resort to a donkey-carriage for exercise.

Altogether Chawton Cottage was "quite as good as the generality of parsonages, and nearly in the same style." It was capable of receiving other members of the family as frequent visitors. In this respect it must have contrasted favourably in Jane's mind with the cottage in which she had established Ellinor and Marianne Dashwood with their mother, in "Sense and Sensibility." Chawton Cottage was sufficiently well furnished. Altogether it formed a comfortable and "lady-like" establishment for a family of ladies whose means were not large. To Jane Austen it was her own house, among her own people, points which meant a great deal to her. Besides, she was a woman possessed at once of too much self-respect and self-resource, and of too serene a spirit and lively a temper to care much either for outward show or interior luxury.

Jane Austen was thirty-four years of age when she settled down at Chawton, her sister Cassandra was thirty-seven, their mother seventy. They were a household of old and middle-aged women, increased either then or a little later by a family connection--a Miss Lloyd--who lived with the Austens. Their prospects were as clearly defined as earthly prospects could well be, and they accepted the definition. Jane Austen was never seen without a cap, either in the morning or the evening, after she went to Chawton. The Austen sisters assumed early the caps which were then the mark of matronhood or confirmed spinsterhood. Possibly Cassandra Austen first adopted the badge as a quiet sign that she wished to have nothing more to do with love and marriage, and Jane bore her faithful company in this as in everything else. Mr. Austen Leigh mentions also--and every trifle is welcome which bears on the novelist's character and habits--it was held that his aunts, though remarkably neat in their dress, as in all their ways, were not sufficiently attentive to the fashionable or the becoming. In short, Jane and Cassandra Austen, though they had been the young beauties of Steventon in their time, entertained no fear of being styled dowdies or frights in their middle age, whether by their young relatives or the "dressy" among their contemporaries.

The Austens dwelt in the centre of family interests, several members of the old Steventon household living near, while a younger generation was growing up, with fresh claims on the affectionate sympathies of their grandmother and aunts. In her family and among her old friends Jane Austen was unsurpassed as a tender sick-nurse, an untiring confidante, and a wise counsellor.

In these congenial circumstances it seemed as if a fresh spring of courage and hopefulness, and with them renewed inspiration in her art, came to the author. She began the very year of her arrival at Chawton to revise and prepare her old MSS. for publication. She had found a publisher in a Mr. Egerton, and she brought out in succession two novels--the first, "Sense and Sensibility," when she was thirty-six years of age, in 1811, fourteen or fifteen years after it was re-written at Steventon. She got for it, though after how short or long an interval, or by what arrangement, we are not told, a hundred and fifty pounds. In her gay way she exclaimed at so large a reward for what had cost her nothing--nothing save genius, ungrudging trouble, and long patience. "Pride and Prejudice" was published two years later, in 1813.

In the meantime Jane Austen began fresh work, for "Mansfield Park" was commenced the year before. She had no separate study; she worked in the family sitting-room, undisturbed by the conversation, or the various occupations going on around her, and subjected to all kinds of interruptions. She wrote at a little mahogany writing-desk, on small pieces of paper, which could be easily put aside, or covered with blotting-paper at the sight of visitors. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that she did not take the greatest pains with her work. She wrote and re-wrote, filed and polished; her own comparison for the process was painting on a few inches of ivory by repeated touches.

"Pride and Prejudice" attracted attention before long. When the secret of the authorship became known, in spite of the author's name being omitted on the title-page, Jane Austen's experience was that of a prophet who has no honour in his own country. Mr. Austen Leigh says that any praise which reached the author and her family from their neighbours and acquaintances was of the mildest description, and that those excellent people would have considered Miss Jane's relatives mad if it had been suspected that they put her, in their own minds, on a level with Madame d'Arblay or even with far inferior writers. A letter is given in which the novelist describes to her sister Cassandra in the liveliest terms her feelings on seeing "Pride and Prejudice" in print. She had got her own darling child from London. The advertisement of it had appeared in their paper that day for the first time. Eighteen shillings! She should ask a guinea for her two next, and twenty-eight shillings for her stupidest of all.

In another letter Jane Austen refers to the second reading, which had not come off quite so well, and had even caused her some fits of disgust. She attributed the comparative failure to the rapid way in which her mother, who seemed to have been the reader, got on, and to her not being able to speak as the characters ought, though she understood them perfectly. When we recollect that the old lady was already seventy-four years of age, we are rather astonished that she found voice and breath for such a labour of love as reading aloud her daughter's novel, than that she was not able to give the dialogue with sufficient point. Upon the whole, the daughter winds up, she was quite vain enough and well satisfied enough, and the only fault which she found with her story was that it was rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wanted to be stretched here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had, if not of solemn specious nonsense. Unquestionably the novelist was not plagued with diffidence, any more than with mock-modesty.

In the same letter she refers to an out-of-the-way book for a woman to read, with which she was then engaged; it was an "Essay on the Military Police, and Institutions of the British Empire, by Captain Pasley, of the Engineers." She declared it was delightfully written, and highly entertaining, and that the author was the first soldier she had ever sighed for. The last assertion reminds one of Jane Austen's strong preference for the sister service, which may be best explained by the circumstance that she had two brothers in the navy, and none in the army. Her heroes are squires, clergymen, and sailors, just as the male Austens were. She uses their Christian names, James, Henry, Frank, Edward, as well as her own. Her sister's name was too singular and conspicuous to be thus employed.

Another letter a year later, in 1814, supplies an account of a journey which Jane Austen made "post" to London, in company with her brother Henry, who read the MS. of "Mansfield Park" by the way. It sounds as if the brother and sister were themselves the bearers of the new work to the publisher, who brought it out the same year.

"Emma," the heroine of which proved almost as great a favourite as Elizabeth Bennet with their author, was written and published two years later, in 1816. It was in connection with this, the last book of hers which Jane Austen lived to see come out, that she received what her nephew calls the only mark of distinction ever bestowed upon her. She was in London during the previous autumn of 1815, the year of Waterloo, nursing her brother Henry through a dangerous illness, in his house in Hans Place. Henry Austen was attended by one of the Prince Regent's physicians. To this gentleman it became known that his patient's nurse was the author of "Pride and Prejudice." The court physician told the lady that the Prince was a great admirer of her novels; that he read them often, and kept a set in every one of his residences; that he himself had thought it right to inform his royal highness that Miss Austen was staying in London, and that the Prince had desired Mr. Clarke, the librarian at Carlton House, to wait upon her.

The next day Mr. Clarke made his appearance and invited Jane Austen to Carlton House, saying that he had the Prince's instructions to show her the library, and other apartments, and to pay her every possible attention. The invitation was of course accepted, and in the course of the visit to Carlton House Mr. Clarke declared himself commissioned to say that if Miss Austen had any other novel forthcoming, she was at liberty to dedicate it to the Prince. Accordingly, such a dedication was immediately prefixed to "Emma," which was at that time in John Murray's hands.

As a qualification to the pleasure derived from the princely compliment, Jane Austen had to suffer the annoyance of receiving and declining to comply with two rather preposterous suggestions offered to her by Mr. Clarke. The one was for her to pourtray the habits of life, character, and enthusiasm of a clergyman who should pass his time between London and the country, and who should bear some resemblance to Beattie's Minstrel.

In a letter in which she thanks her correspondent for his praise of her novels, and expresses her anxiety that her fourth work might not disgrace what was good in the others, remarking she was haunted by the idea that the readers who have preferred "Pride and Prejudice" will think "Emma" inferior in wit; and those who have preferred "Mansfield Park" will consider the present novel deficient in sense, she demurely puts aside Mr. Clarke's hint for her next story, on the plea that, though she might be equal to the comic part of it, the learned side of the clergyman would demand a classic education and an amount of acquaintance with ancient and modern literature that was far beyond her. Perhaps in self-defence from similar assaults, she concludes by boasting herself, "with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress."

But the irrepressible Mr. Clarke was not to be deterred from his purpose of advising the novelist as to the direction of her talents. His second piece of advice was more startling and incongruous than his first. Prince Leopold was then on the eve of his marriage with Princess Charlotte. Mr. Clarke had had the good fortune to be appointed Chaplain and private English Secretary to the Prince. The clergyman might have had a generous desire that another clergyman's daughter should have the chance of sharing his good luck and assurance of preferment. Or he might have had a wish to procure a compliment for his last princely patron, and might have believed it was specially due from Jane Austen as a small return for the notice which the Prince Regent had condescended to take of her and her work. Mr. Clarke proposed that Miss Austen should write an historical novel illustrative of the august house of Cobourg, which would just then be very interesting, and might very properly be dedicated to Prince Leopold. The date of the proposal brings vividly before us the deliberation with which public events were discussed in those days. For a public event to be dealt with now-a-days so as to take the tide of public interest at its height, an author would require to be as much in advance of the historical circumstance as publishers show themselves in their anticipation of Christmas. It would be necessary, in order that a novel founded on a royal marriage should command readers, that the author should be taken into what Mr. Clarke would have called the august confidence of the principals at the very first step of the negotiations, so that he might be able to bring out his work within twelve hours of the ceremony.

Jane Austen was not so profoundly honoured by the recommendation as Jane Porter felt when she set herself to comply with a royal wish that she should commemorate the first beginnings of the House of Brunswick.

After all, so-called historical novels were in Miss Porter's way and not in Miss Austen's. Mr. Austen Leigh speaks of the grave civility with which Jane Austen refused to make such an attempt. It seems to me that while she respectfully acknowledges the courtesies of Carlton House, and readily responds with answering friendliness to the friendly tone of Mr. Clarke's communication, there is considerable impatience and scorn in her merry but most decided dismissal of his ridiculous project. Even to her congratulations on his recent appointment she adds a sentence which has a suspicion of irony in it. "In my opinion," she writes, "the service of a court can hardly be too well paid, for immense must be the sacrifice of time and feeling required by it." She goes on to say, "You are very kind in your hints as to the sort of composition which might recommend me at present, and I am fully sensible that an historical romance, founded on the House of Saxe-Cobourg, might be much more to the purpose of profit or popularity than such pictures of domestic life in country villages as I deal in. But I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up, and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No; I must keep to my own style, and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other."

There is an anecdote of Jane Austen which coincides with her character, and has been widely circulated, though it is not mentioned by Mr. Austen Leigh. If it had a foundation in fact, it must have occurred either during this visit to London or in the course of that paid not long before. It is said that Miss Austen received an invitation to a rout given by an aristocratic couple with whom she was not previously acquainted. The reason assigned for the invitation was, that the author of "Pride and Prejudice" might be introduced to the author of "Corinne." Tradition has it that the English novelist refused the invitation, saying, that to no house where she was not asked as Jane Austen would she go as the author of "Pride and Prejudice."

The anecdote is often quoted with marks of admiration for the author's independence. But even the most honest and honourable independence has its becoming limits. That of Jane Austen, ultra self-sufficing, fastidious, tinged with haughtiness, is just a trifle repellant out of that small circle in which she was always at home.

Jane Austen was destined to add only one more tale--and that a short, if charming story--to the list of her novels. In the course of 1816, she wrote "Persuasion," which is not merely very good, in her own style, but possesses distinguishing excellences wanting in the others.

Between February, 1811, and August, 1816, rather more than five years, Jane Austen wrote her three later novels, "Mansfield Park," "Emma," and "Persuasion"--pendants, as it were, to her three earlier works, "Pride and Prejudice," "Sense and Sensibility," and "Northanger Abbey," belonging to 1796, '97, and '98--twenty years before. The author's second period of composition was as productive as her first, if we take into consideration that "Sense and Sensibility" was simply an adaptation from a more juvenile story still.

Making allowance for the novelist's strong individuality, there is an undoubted change in the tone. There are greater tolerance and tenderness especially noticeable in "Persuasion"--more thoughtfulness and earnestness in "Mansfield Park"--a perfection of composition which belongs peculiarly to "Emma." All the three novels are distinguished by greater polish of the simple, vigorous diction, and a still more determined adherence to probability. The later novels may lack some amount of what Jane Austen herself defined as the sparkle of "Pride and Prejudice"--a sparkle which was often hard as well as bright; but the notion of any falling-off in power in the author would be absurd. There was an ample equivalent for anything she might have lost in fresh spontaneousness by what she had gained in reflection and feeling, and in delicacy of execution.

The shadow of what proved a mortal illness was already hanging over Jane Austen while she was working at "Persuasion," and this circumstance may help to account for a certain soft pensiveness in the book, in opposition to the author's earlier unbroken, often hard, brilliance. But, as a proof that her high standard of literary excellence, and the pains which she did not grudge in order to attain it, had not abated, Mr. Austen Leigh tells us that, having ended her novel, "Persuasion," she was dissatisfied with the close, and her dissatisfaction preyed on her mind to such a degree as to affect her usually cheerful spirits. She retired to bed one night quite depressed, but rose next morning with renewed energy and hope to make a fresh effort. She pulled down what she had done so far as to cancel the chapter containing the re-engagement of the hero and heroine, which she had pronounced flat and tame. She wrote two entirely new chapters--among the most delightful in the book--in its place. Instead of reconciling the couple at the Crofts' lodgings, she brought the Musgroves and Captain Harville to Bath, and we know the result. Any one who has the least idea of the relief implied to a conscientious artist in the conclusion of a long thought out, long laboured at piece of work--the double relief when bodily health and spirits have failed under the task--will comprehend something of the devotion to her art and concern for her reputation which compelled the novelist thus to resume and re-construct her last scenes.

Struggling against illness as Jane Austen was from the earlier stages of the internal disease which ultimately proved fatal, in the January of 1817--the year in which she died--she began another tale, and wrote on--in spite of such bodily weakness that the last portions were first traced in pencil, though the quantity continued as great as twelve chapters in seven weeks--till the 17th of March, two months before she left Chawton not to return, and four months before her death. Mr. Austen Leigh mentions some family troubles in the spring of 1816, which his aunt took to heart, and which might have aggravated her complaint. I do not know whether these had anything to do with the persistent industry under adverse circumstances; whether she might be anxious to contribute her share still, as she had been doing within the last few years, to the family income; or whether she might be prompted feverishly to seek the distraction from other cares afforded by mental work.

In another letter to the same correspondent, Jane Austen said that one reason of her writing was for the pleasure of directing to the young fellow as Esquire. She wished him joy on having left Winchester for good. Now he might own how miserable he had been there; now it would gradually all come out, his crimes and his miseries: how often he had gone up by the mail to London and thrown away fifty guineas at a tavern, and how often he had been on the point of hanging himself, restrained only, as some ill-natured person writing on poor Winton had it, by the want of a tree within some miles of the city.

This nephew, like one of the author's nieces, appears to have been perpetrating a boyish attempt at a novel under the fascination of the favourite Aunt Jane's vocation. There was some delightful banter from her on their common craft. After a brief allusion to his Uncle Henry's very superior sermons, she proceeded to suggest that the budding novelist and herself ought to get hold of one or two and put them into their novels; it would be a fine help to a volume; they could make their heroines read them aloud on a Sunday evening, just as well as Isabella Wardlaw in the "Antiquary" was made to read the history of the Hartz demon in the ruins of St. Ruth, though Jane believed on recollection Lovel was the reader. She was quite concerned for the loss the lad's mother had mentioned in her letter. Two chapters and a half to be missing was monstrous. It was well that she had not been at Steventon lately, and therefore could not be suspected of purloining them; two strong twigs and a half towards a nest of her own would have been something. She did not think, however, that any theft of that sort would be really very useful to her. What could she have done with his strong, manly, vigorous sketches, full of variety and glow? How could she possibly have joined them on to the little bit of ivory on which she worked with so fine a brush as produced little effect after much labour?

Jane Austen's disease increased gradually, while she was spared much suffering. Her friends were not aware how soon or how late she apprehended the serious nature of her complaint. Her unselfishness and her buoyant temper alike inclined her to make light of any illness. An instance is given of her constant consideration for those around her. In the usual sitting-room at Chawton Cottage there was only one sofa, frequently occupied by Mrs. Austen, then in her seventy-eighth year. Jane, who was forced to lie down often, would never use the sofa, even in her mother's absence. She contrived a sort of couch for herself with two or three chairs, and alleged that the arrangement was much more comfortable to her than a real sofa; but the importunity of a little niece drew from the invalid the private explanation that she believed if she herself had shown any inclination to use the sofa, her mother might have scrupled being on it so much as was good for her.

In a long letter to a friend, in the beginning of 1817, Jane wrote happily about herself, as having certainly gained strength during the winter, and being then not far from well. She thought she understood her case better than she had done, and ascribed her symptoms to biliousness, which could be kept off by care. After various bits of family news she finished the letter, then added in a postscript that the real object of the epistle was to ask her friend for a recipe, but she had thought it genteel not to let it appear early.

In the following month, May, Jane Austen was induced to go to Winchester, to be near a skilful doctor, who spoke encouragingly to his patient, but who from the first entertained little expectation of a permanent cure. She was accompanied by her life-long friend and sister Cassandra. They could leave their aged mother behind them with the friend and family connection who made one of the household at Chawton Cottage. Besides, Mrs. Austen was near several of her children and grandchildren. In Winchester, where the sisters had lodgings in the corner house in College Street, at the entrance to Commoners, the Austens had old and valued friends among the residents in the Close. Still Jane wrote hopefully about herself to the nephew to whom she appears to have been so much attached. There was no better way of thanking him for his affectionate concern for her during her illness than by telling him herself, as soon as possible, that she continued to get better. She seems to have been aware of the change in her penmanship, which struck him also, and hastened to observe gaily that she would not boast of her handwriting: neither that nor her face had yet recovered their proper beauty, but in other respects she gained strength very fast. She was then out of bed from nine in the morning until ten at night--upon the sofa, it was true, but she ate her meals with Aunt Cassandra in a rational way, and could employ herself and walk from one room to another. Mr. Lyford said he would cure her, and if he failed, she would draw up a memorial to the Dean and Chapter, and had no doubt of redress from that pious, learned, and disinterested body. The sisters' lodgings were very comfortable. They had a neat little drawing-room with a bow window, overlooking Dr. Gabell's garden. Thanks to the kindness of her correspondent's father and mother in sending her their carriage, her journey to Winchester on Saturday had been performed with very little fatigue, and had it been a fine day, she thought she would have felt none; but it had distressed her much to see Uncle Henry and William Knight, who had kindly attended them on horseback, riding in the rain almost the whole way.

For amidst the sweet and jubilant sights and sounds of an English May and June in the old grey cathedral town, the great English novelist was fast passing away. Jane Austen had always been a sweet-tempered, contented woman, and all that was best and noblest in her nature and her faith came out in the patience, humility, and thankfulness with which she met her last enemy. "I will only say farther," are her loving words, in one more letter, that "my dearest sister, my tender, watchful, indefatigable nurse, has not been made ill by her exertions. As to what I owe her, and the anxious affection of all my beloved family on this occasion, I can only cry over it, and pray God to bless them more and more."

The sister who had lived together with Jane in their home--who had been with her waking and sleeping for forty-two years--who had served the little girl as a model--who had held the office of the young author's sole confidante beforehand, as to her characters and plots--who had rejoiced and suffered with her, stood by and soothed Jane Austen's death-bed; so did a sister-in-law, to whom the dying woman said, almost with her last breath, "You have always been a kind sister to me, Mary."

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