pair of horses in those
days were almost a necessity, if ladies were to move about at all; for
neither the condition of the roads nor the style of carriage-building
admitted of any comfortable vehicle being drawn by a single horse';
indeed, the object of the builders seems to have been 'to combine the
greatest possible weight with the least possible amount of
accommodation.'[38]

Jane Austen lost no time in entering on the career of authorship. She
wrote because she must, and with very little prevision of the path which
her genius was afterwards to mark out for her. She was urged onward 'by
the first stirrings of talent within her and the absorbing interest of
early composition.

'It is impossible to say at how early an age she began. There are
copy-books extant containing tales, some of which must have been
composed while she was a young girl, as they had amounted to a
considerable number by the time she was sixteen. Her earliest stories
are of a slight and flimsy texture, and are generally intended to be
nonsensical, but the nonsense has much spirit in it. They are usually
preceded by a dedication of mock solemnity to some one of her family. It
would seem that the grandiloquent dedications prevalent in those days
had not escaped her youthful penetration. Perhaps the most
characteristic feature in those early productions is that, however
puerile the matter, they are always composed in pure simple English,
quite free from the over-ornamented style which might be expected from
so young a writer.'[39] The following is a specimen:--

THE MYSTERY.

AN UNFINISHED COMEDY.

* * * * *

DEDICATION.

TO THE REV. GEORGE AUSTEN.

SIR,--I humbly solicit your patronage to the
following Comedy, which, though an unfinished one,
is, I flatter myself, as complete a _Mystery_ as
any of its kind.

I am, Sir, your most humble Servant,
THE AUTHOR.

THE MYSTERY, A COMEDY.

_DRAMATIS PERSONAE._

_Men._

Col. ELLIOT.
OLD HUMBUG.
YOUNG HUMBUG.
Sir EDWARD SPANGLE
_and_
CORYDON.

_Women._

FANNY ELLIOTT.
MRS. HUMBUG
_and_
DAPHNE.

ACT I.

SCENE I.--_A Garden._

_Enter_ CORYDON.

_Corydon._ But hu