even descends to
a butler, in her range of personages who are not mere mutes. It is not
at all unlikely--in fact it is almost certain--that she might have
enlarged this range, and that of her incident, with perfect safety and
to the great profit and delight of her readers. But these actual things
she knew she could do consummately; and she would not risk the
production of anything not consummate.

The value of her, artistically, is of course in the perfection of what
she did; but the value of her historically is in the way in which she
showed that, given the treatment, any material could be perfected. It
was in this way, as has been pointed out, that the possibilities of the
novel were shown to be practically illimitable. Tragedy is not needed:
and the most ordinary transactions, the most everyday characters,
develop into an infinite series of comedies with which the novelist can
amuse himself and his readers. The _ludicrum humani seculi_ on the one
hand, and the artist's power of extracting and arranging it on the
other--these two things supply all that is wanted. This Hampshire
parson's daughter had found the philosopher's stone of the novel: and
the very pots and pans, the tongs and pokers of the house, could be
turned into novel-gold by it.

But even gold is not everything: and only a fanatic, and a rather
foolish fanatic, would say that this style of fiction summed up and
exhausted all the good that fiction could give and do. Miss Austen's art
excludes (it has been said) tragedy; it does not let in much pure
romance; although its variety is in a way infinite, yet it is not
various in infinite ways, but rather in very finite ones. Everybody who
denies its excellence is to be blamed: but nobody is to be blamed for
saying that he should like some other excellences as well. The desire is
innocent, nay commendable: and it was being satisfied, at practically
the same time, by the work of Sir Walter Scott in a kind of novel almost
as new (when we regard it in connection with its earlier examples) as
Miss Austen's own. This was the Historical novel, which, in a way, not
only subsumed many though not quite all varieties of Romance, but also
summoned to its aid not a little--in fact a very great deal--of the
methods of the pure novel itself.

It is not very long since a critic, probably not very old, sentenced the
critical opinions of another critic, certainly not very young, to "go
into the melting pot" because they were