JANE AUSTEN 63 



writings of Cowper and of Crabbe (the latter indeed 

 she proposed to herself to marry). We know that 

 Marianne Dashwood (that type of sensibility) was 

 very far from finding Cowper too quiet. For when 

 Edward Ferrars failed to read him aloud with 

 spirit, Marianne remarks, "Nay, mamma, if he is 

 not to be animated by Cowper ! " 



Bagehot^ in his article on the Letters of Cowper 

 unconsciously describes the life at Hartfield or 

 Mansfield Park. Of Cowper he writes : "Detail 

 was his forte and quietness his element. Accord- 

 ingly his delicate humour plays over perhaps a 

 million letters mostly descriptive of events which 

 no one else would have thought worth narrating, 

 and yet which, when narrated, show to us, and will 

 show to persons to whom it will be yet more strange, 

 the famihar, placid, easy, ruminating, provincial 

 existence of our great grandfathers." 



The domestic and intimate parts of life are the 

 most lastingly happy, and thus it is that an imagi- 

 nary existence, which in some moods seems to be 

 unbearably humdrum, harmonises with the best 

 parts of our own life. The quiet winds that blow 

 through Miss Austen's imagined land cannot turn 

 windmills or overset tall trees, but they can set 

 going those tunelike chains of simple experiences 

 written on our memories by the quiet and happy 

 parts of life. 



Imaginative writing is often compared to 

 painting, and Miss Austen has spoken^ of "the 

 little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work 



* Literary Studies, Vol. i., p. 303. * Memoir, p. 153. 



