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Indiana University Studies 



deterioration. These volumes teem with characters, but most of them 

 lack vividness, and many of them we recognize as duplicates of our 

 old acquaintances in the previous novels. In the former Sir Hugh 

 stands out most prominently, and in spite of his eccentricities, ap- 

 proaches closest to life. Eugenia, tho possessed of as little discretion as 

 Camilla, makes a more distinct impression ; and Lionel, while coaxing 

 his sister into borrowing for him, becomes remarkably human. But 

 Dr. Orkborne is only a cartoon. Sir Sedley only a type, and Dubster 

 only the outline of a fool. In the last novel we see but the glimmer 

 of the author's departing power. Four women stand out prominently — 

 Mrs. Maple, Mrs. Ireton, Mrs. Howel, and Miss Arbe, but their 

 distinctness is due only to their unmitigated meanness. Madame 

 D'Arblay seldom does her best work with her guileless characters. 

 Of the men. Lord Melbury leaves the most permanent impression, 

 but only the old Admiral and Mr. Tedman talk at all like human 

 beings. 



Evidently, therefore, Madame D'Arblay cannot rank with the 

 greatest creators of characters. She has portrayed a remarkable 

 number of types, and has skilfully differentiated them, but they do 

 not impress us as human beings. We remember them distinctly, we 

 can describe their dispositions, but we do not know them. We know 

 about them. One cause of our inability to visualize them is that she 

 seldom informs us as to their appearance, either their features or 

 their clothes. In this she differs fundamentally from Dickens and 

 Thackeray, whose people we recognize in everyday life, because we 

 know exactly how they look. She devotes her energies to giving us 

 the gradations of their emotions or exhibiting the eccentricities of 

 their conduct and speech, and we become acquainted with them only 

 thru the exaggeration and reiteration of these eccentricities. 



It is not the continual harping on one trait, however, that distorts 

 these characters out of all human proportions, but the unnatural 

 exaggeration. Madam D'Arblay has made too many freaks. These 

 little more than monomanics might have been human and 

 rational had she felt any sympathy for them, but except in the case 

 of her scrupulous heroines she shows very little regard for her charac- 

 ters. She never loves them as Dickens did his. Altho not cynical, 

 she seems to have had a bitter attitude towards life, for the majority of 

 her men and women are detestable. They are not only mean and 

 cruel and utterly indifferent to everyone else's feelings, but they 

 take a fiendish delight in making other people miserable. Most of 

 Evelina's distress would have been averted had the young beaux she 

 encountered had any feeling at all. This heartlessness increases with 



