itical, pedantic,
fantastically delicate; whenever it sees them self-deceived or
hoodwinked, given to run riot in idolatries, drifting into
vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning shortsightedly,
plotting dementedly; whenever they are at variance with their
professions, and violate the unwritten but perceptible laws
binding them in consideration one to another; whenever they
offend sound reason, fair justice; are false in humility or
mined with conceit, individually or in the bulk--the Spirit
overhead will look humanly malign and cast an oblique light on
them, followed by volleys of silvery laughter. That is the Comic
Spirit."

If the "silvery laughter" betimes sounds a bit sharp and thinly
feminine, what would you have? Even genius must be subject to
the defect of its quality. Still, it must be confessed that this
attitude of the artist observer is broken in upon a little in
the later novels, beginning with "Mansfield Park," by a growing
tendency to moral on the time, a tendency that points ominously
to didacticism. There is something of the difference in Jane
Austen between early and late, that we shall afterwards meet in
that other great woman novelist, George Eliot. One might push
the point too far, but it is fair to make it.

We may also inquire--trying to see the thing freshly, with
independence, and to get away from the mere handing-on of a
traditional opinion--if Jane Austen's character-drawing, so far-famed
for its truth, does not at times o'erstep the modesty of
Nature. Goldwin Smith, in his biography of her, is quite right
in pointing out that she unquestionably overdraws her types: Mr.
Collins is at moments almost a reminder of Uriah Heap for oily
submissiveness: Sir Walter Eliot's conceit goes so far he seems
a theory more than a man, a "humor" in the Ben Jonson sense. So,
too, the valetudinarianism of Mr. Wood-house, like that of
Smollett's Bramble, is something strained; so is Lady de
Bourgh's pride and General Tilney's tyranny. Critics are fond of
violent contrasts and to set over against one another authors so
unlike, for example, as Miss Austen and Dickens is a favorite
occupation. Also is it convenient to put a tag on every author:
a mask reading realist, romanticist, psychologue, sensation-monger,
or some such designation, and then hold him to the name.
Thus, in the case of Austen it is a temptation to call her the
greatest truth-teller among novelists, and so leave her. But, as
a matte