ere for the first
time with the freedom and imagination of a great artist.'[4]

And here, we may add, is the fruitful and vigorous stock out of which
has since radiated that immense growth of realistic novels which now
tends to overshadow and supersede the earlier species of romance
literature.

But Fielding's style is unblushingly masculine; his scenes are in the
street, the tavern, the sponging-house, and other places
unmentionable. By the end of his century the Novel of Manners had
fallen into very different hands, and to these it owes mainly the
shaping, both as to tone and subject, that decisively laid down its
course of future development. The electricity of that stormful period
which comprises the last years of the eighteenth and the opening of
the nineteenth century seems to have generated an efflorescence of
high original capacity in the department of imagination as well as of
action. Nevertheless nothing is more remarkable, probably nothing was
less expected, than the sudden accession of women to the first rank
of popular novelists. Miss Burney, Miss Edgeworth, Miss Austen (not to
mention Miss Ferrier), entered upon the same field from different
points and divided it among them. They may be said to have virtually
created the decent story of contemporary life, the light satirical
pictures of familiar folk, the representation of ordinary society in
the form of a delicate comedy, which rose to the pitch of racy humour
when the scenes and characters were Irish. Under the touch of this
feminine genius convention vanishes altogether; the painting is direct
from nature; the plot and incidents are saturated with probability;
the personages might be met at the corner of any street in town or
village; the very voice, gesture, and language are almost ludicrously
familiar. No heroics, not much use of the pathetic; very slight
landscape-painting and background; no psychology; there is no
systematic attempt to introduce, under the story's disguise, the
serious discussion of social, political, or polemical questions.

For an artist who deals so largely with country life, the absence of
landscape-painting in Miss Austen is very noticeable. The fine vein of
satire that pervades all her work, the constant presence of the human
element, leave her no room for expatiating on the aspects of nature;
and indeed she was manifestly impatient with enthusiasts over the
picturesque. She only touched upon such tastes in order to br