odhouse's
perambulation among his guests, and his words to Jane Fairfax, "My dear,
did you change your stockings?" In this respect we have advanced beyond
the _Quarterly_ reviewer of 1815, {64b} who says: "The faults of these
works arise from the minute detail which the author's plan comprehends.
Characters of folly or simplicity, such as those of old Woodhouse and
Miss Bates, are ridiculous when first presented, but if too often brought
forward, or too long dwelt on, their prosing is apt to become as tiresome
in fiction as in real society." If ever a reviewer "damned himself to
everlasting fame," surely this writer did so; but, indeed, we need not
have quoted so much, since (in the words of Corporal Trim) "he is damned
already" for leaving out the 'Mr.' before the name Woodhouse.

But six years later (1821) another _Quarterly_ reviewer (said to be
Archbishop Whately) reversed the above unfortunate judgment by singling
out the drawing of Miss Austen's fools as shining examples of her skill.

Jane Austen must surely be the most re-read author of the last hundred
years. Lord Holland is said to have read her books when he had the gout,
and in that case he must have experienced what smaller people have
suffered during less picturesque complaints, viz., from not being able to
determine which of her books they have most nearly forgotten. In this
frame of mind one longs for a new Miss Austen more than for a new
symphony of Beethoven, or a play of Shakespeare, and much more than for
the lost books of Livy, which, indeed, I, for one, do not desire at all.

The power of endlessly re-reading the novels of Miss Austen is the only
advantage conferred by a bad memory. I do not imagine that Macaulay,
greatly as he admired her, could have endured to read her as often as I
have. Nor am I willing to allow that this is intellectual idleness, for
her works like those of Nature, always yield something new to the
faithful student.

And she, like Nature, has the power of creating in her devotees a minute
interest which I rarely experience in other writers. It does not seem to
Austenites a foolish thing to inquire what was Mr. Woodhouse's Christian
name, a problem only soluble by remembering that he thought it "very
pretty" of poor Isabella to call her eldest little boy Henry, and by
implication proving that the child, who should have been christened John
after his father, was named after his grandfather. And I am proud to
remember