success. She is pretty, but not beautiful: sensible and well-natured,
but capable, like most of us, of making a complete fool of herself and
of doing complete injustice to other people; fairly well educated, but
not in the least learned or accomplished. In real life she would be
simply a unit in the thousands of quite nice but ordinary girls whom
Providence providentially provides in order that mankind shall not be
alone. In literature she is more precious than rubies--exactly because
art has so masterfully followed and duplicated nature.

Precisely to what extent the attractive quality of this art is enhanced
by the pervading irony of the treatment would be a very difficult
problem to work out. It is scarcely hazardous to say that irony is the
very salt of the novel: and that just as you put salt even in a cake, so
it is not wise to neglect it wholly even in a romance. Life itself, as
soon as it gets beyond mere vegetation, is notoriously full of irony:
and no imitation of it which dispenses with the seasoning can be worth
much. That Miss Austen's irony is consummate can hardly be said to be
matter of serious contest.

It has sometimes been thought--perhaps mistakenly--that the exhibition
of it in _Northanger Abbey_ is, though a very creditable essay, _not_
consummate. But _Pride and Prejudice_ is known to be, in part, little if
at all later than _Northanger Abbey_: and there can again be very little
dispute among judges in any way competent as to the quality of the irony
there. Nor does it much matter what part of this wonderful book was
written later and what earlier: for its ironical character is
all-pervading, in almost every character, except Jane and her lover who
are mere foils to Elizabeth and Darcy, and even in these to some extent;
and in the whole story, even in the at least permitted suggestion that
the sight of Pemberley, and Darcy's altered demeanour, had something to
do with Elizabeth's resignation of the old romantic part of _Belle dame
sans merci_. It may further be admitted, even by those who protest
against the undervaluation of _Northanger Abbey_, that _Pride and
Prejudice_ flies higher, and maintains its flight triumphantly. It is
not only longer; it is not only quite independent of parody or contrast
with something previous; but it is far more intricate and elaborate as
well as more original. Elizabeth herself is not merely an ordinary girl:
and the putting forward of her, as an extraordinary yet