ad for a
_Tendenz-Roman_. Nay, you can allow Kitty to report that a Private had
been flogged, without introducing a chapter on Flogging in the Army. But
you formally declined to stretch your matter out, here and there, 'with
solemn specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story.'
No 'padding' for Miss Austen! In fact, madam, as you were born before
Analysis came in, or Passion, or Realism, or Naturalism, or Irreverence,
or Religious Open-mindedness, you really cannot hope to rival your
literary sisters in the minds of a perplexed generation. Your heroines
are not passionate, we do not see their red wet cheeks, and tresses
dishevelled in the manner of our frank young Maenads. What says your
best successor, a lady who adds fresh lustre to a name that in fiction
equals yours? She says of Miss Austen: 'Her heroines have a stamp of
their own. They have a _certain gentle self-respect and humour and
hardness of heart_... Love with them does not mean a passion as much as
an interest, deep and silent.' I think one prefers them so, and that
Englishwomen should be more like Anne Elliot than Maggie Tulliver. 'All
the privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest when
existence or when hope is gone,' said Anne; perhaps she insisted on a
monopoly that neither sex has all to itself. Ah, madam, what a relief it
is to come back to your witty volumes, and forget the follies of to-day
in those of Mr. Collins and of Mrs. Bennet! How fine, nay, how noble is
your art in its delicate reserve, never insisting, never forcing the
note, never pushing the sketch into the caricature! You worked without
thinking of it, in the spirit of Greece, on a labour happily limited,
and exquisitely organised. 'Dear books,' we say, with Miss
Thackeray--'dear books, bright, sparkling with wit and animation, in
which the homely heroines charm, the dull hours fly, and the very bores
are enchanting.'

IX. To Master Isaak Walton.

Father Isaak,--When I would be quiet and go angling it is my custom
to carry in my wallet thy pretty book, 'The Compleat Angler.' Here,
methinks, if I find not trout I shall find content, and good company,
and sweet songs, fair milkmaids, and country mirth. For you are to know
that trout be now scarce, and whereas he was ever a fearful fish, he
hath of late become so wary that none but the cunningest anglers may be
even with him.

It is not as it was in your time, Father, when a man might leave his