PTER XLVIII
CHAPTER XLIX
CHAPTER L

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INTRODUCTION

With the title of _Sense and Sensibility_ is connected one of those minor
problems which delight the cummin-splitters of criticism. In the _Cecilia_
of Madame D'Arblay--the forerunner, if not the model, of Miss Austen--is a
sentence which at first sight suggests some relationship to the name of
the book which, in the present series, inaugurated Miss Austen's novels.
'The whole of this unfortunate business'--says a certain didactic Dr.
Lyster, talking in capitals, towards the end of volume three of
_Cecilia_--'has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE,' and looking to
the admitted familiarity of Miss Austen with Madame D'Arblay's work, it
has been concluded that Miss Austen borrowed from _Cecilia_, the title of
her second novel. But here comes in the little problem to which we have
referred. _Pride and Prejudice_ it is true, was written and finished
before _Sense and Sensibility_--its original title for several years being
_First Impressions_. Then, in 1797, the author fell to work upon an older
essay in letters _a la_ Richardson, called _Elinor and Marianne_, which
she re-christened _Sense and Sensibility._ This, as we know, was her first
published book; and whatever may be the connection between the title of
_Pride and Prejudice_ and the passage in _Cecilia_, there is an obvious
connection between the title of _Pride and Prejudice_ and the _title of
Sense and Sensibility_. If Miss Austen re-christened _Elinor and
Marianne_ before she changed the title of _First Impressions_, as she well
may have, it is extremely unlikely that the name of _Pride and Prejudice_
has anything to do with _Cecilia_ (which, besides, had been published at
least twenty years before). Upon the whole, therefore, it is most likely
that the passage in Madame D'Arblay is a mere coincidence; and that in
_Sense and Sensibility_, as well as in the novel that succeeded it in
publication, Miss Austen, after the fashion of the old morality plays,
simply substituted the leading characteristics of her principal personages
for their names. Indeed, in _Sense and Sensibility_ the sense of Elinor,
and the sensibility (or rather _sensiblerie_) of Marianne, are markedly
emphasised in the opening pages of the book But Miss Austen subsequently,
and, as we think, wisely, discarded in her remaining efforts the cheap
attraction of an alliterative title. _Emma_ and _