know how much you will enjoy it. We
hear that Mr. Kean is more admired than ever. There are no good
places to be got in Drury Lane for the next fortnight, but Henry means
to secure some for Saturday fortnight, when you are reckoned upon.
Give my love to little Cass. I hope she found my bed comfortable last
night. I have seen nobody in London yet with such a long chin as Dr.
Syntax, nor anybody quite so large as Gogmagolicus.

'Yours affly.,
'J. AUSTEN.'

CHAPTER VII.

_Seclusion from the literary world--Notice from the Prince
Regent--Correspondence with Mr. Clarke--Suggestions to alter her style of
writing_.

Jane Austen lived in entire seclusion from the literary world: neither by
correspondence, nor by personal intercourse was she known to any
contemporary authors. It is probable that she never was in company with
any person whose talents or whose celebrity equalled her own; so that her
powers never could have been sharpened by collision with superior
intellects, nor her imagination aided by their casual suggestions.
Whatever she produced was a genuine home-made article. Even during the
last two or three years of her life, when her works were rising in the
estimation of the public, they did not enlarge the circle of her
acquaintance. Few of her readers knew even her name, and none knew more
of her than her name. I doubt whether it would be possible to mention
any other author of note, whose personal obscurity was so complete. I
can think of none like her, but of many to contrast with her in that
respect. Fanny Burney, afterwards Madame D'Arblay, was at an early age
petted by Dr. Johnson, and introduced to the wits and scholars of the day
at the tables of Mrs. Thrale and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Anna Seward, in
her self-constituted shrine at Lichfield, would have been miserable, had
she not trusted that the eyes of all lovers of poetry were devoutly fixed
on her. Joanna Baillie and Maria Edgeworth were indeed far from courting
publicity; they loved the privacy of their own families, one with her
brother and sister in their Hampstead villa, the other in her more
distant retreat in Ireland; but fame pursued them, and they were the
favourite correspondents of Sir Walter Scott. Crabbe, who was usually
buried in a country parish, yet sometimes visited London, and dined at
Holland House, and was received as a fellow-poet by Campbell, Moore, and
Rogers; and on one memorable occasion