Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: JANE AUSTEN Miss AUSTEN'S fame is great, her adorers are many. It is three-quarters of a century since she died, and still the incense hides the altar. The devotees, more numerous with every year that passes by, stand round with drawn swords and compel our homage. Fifty years ago Lord Macaulay acclaimed her "Shakespearean," it is but the other day1 that Mr. Howells called her "divine." The generous enthusiasm of Macaulay compels us to listen to all that he says. As for Mr. Howells, it must be admitted that The Rise of Silas Lapham is as good work as the best of Jane Austen's. So that when a great master accords divine honours to an authoress (sprung from a race that he cordially despises) we must perforce take note of his estimate. But really: Shakespearean ? Divine ? Are there any two qualities more entirely lacking to Miss Austen ? She was essentially human, with a graceful realism; wholly ladylike and reserved in her treatment of life; a patient and accurate observer of what facts lay around her in one tiny circle. She is a stranger to the Alps and torrents of Shakespearean English. In Miss Austen's landscape there are pleasant grass plots, well-trimmed lawns, and neatly planned hedgerows. There are no acclivities morealarming than those which our grandmothers were wont to tend as " rockeries." Externals count for much with her. The rush and riot of Shakespearean life, its tumultuous passions, its hell-black tragedies, and its glimpses of heavens undreamed of—I do protest that all these things would be vastly improper in Miss Austen's world. 1 In Criticism and Fiction, What was Miss Austen's world ? Take the world of to-day and eliminate Japan; eliminate China and the South Seas—all Asia, in fact, except India. In Europe eliminate everything except France. For purp...