64 JANE AUSTEN 



with so fine a brush, as produces Httle effect after 

 much labour." But this gives a false impression, 

 suggesting a niggling character from which her 

 work is free. What strikes one is rather how much 

 she conveys by touches which seem trifling until 

 we realise the triumph of the result. The eff^ect 

 is not a miniature, as the author suspects, but 

 something essentially broad in spite of its detail, 

 like a picture by Jan Steen. 



To discuss why Jane Austen's humour is 

 admirable, or how she reaches such perfection in 

 the drawing of character, seems to me as hopeless as 

 to ask by what means Bach or Beethoven wrote 

 such divinely beautiful tunes. Her powers are 

 rendered even more admirable by . the fact^ 

 that she did not draw portraits, so that no 

 one could say A is Mr. Collins and B is 

 Mrs. Palmer. 



I think it is true, but not easily explained, that 

 the simplest people in her books give us most 

 pleasure. Why is Admiral Croft so delightful, and 

 why do we read again and again the speech about 

 his wife, who suffered from sharing the exercise 

 prescribed for her husband's gout ? "She, poor 

 soul, is tied by the leg with a blister on one of her 

 heels as big as a three-shilling piece." Why do we 

 delight in Mr. Woodhouse's perambulation among 

 his guests, and his words to Jane Fairfax, "My dear, 

 did you change your stockings ? " In this respect 

 we have advanced beyond the Quarterly reviewer of 

 i8is,2 who says : "The faults of these works arise 



> Memoir, p. 147. » Ibid., p. 132. 



