n of which may be almost a matter of
regret.[316]

For the cancelled chapter in _Persuasion_, and for other posthumous
writings of the author, we will refer our readers to the second edition
of the _Memoir_. They will not fail to note the delicate touches put to
the characters of the Crofts by the Admiral's triumph over the servant
who was 'denying' Mrs. Croft, and by the frequent excursions of husband
and wife together 'upstairs to hear a noise, or downstairs to settle
their accounts, or upon the landing to trim the lamp.' But the added
chapters take one altogether into a higher province of fiction, where
the deepest emotion and the most delicate humour are blended in one
scene: a scene that makes one think that, had its author lived, we might
have had later masterpieces of a different type from that of their
predecessors.

_Persuasion_ is of about the same length as _Northanger Abbey_, and it
seems natural to suppose that there was some purpose in this similarity,
and that the two works were intended to be published together--as in the
end they were--each as a two-volume novel. She certainly contemplated
the publication of _Northanger Abbey_ (which at that stage bore the name
of _Catherine_) after she had recovered it in 1816, and when she wrote
the 'advertisement' which appears in the first edition of the book. Yet
afterwards she seems rather to have gone back from this intention.
Writing to Fanny Knight, March 13, 1817, she says:--

I _will_ answer your kind questions more than you
expect. _Miss Catherine_ is put upon the shelf for
the present, and I do not know that she will ever
come out; but I have a something ready for
publication, which may perhaps appear about a
twelvemonth hence. It is short--about the length
of _Catherine_. This is for yourself alone.

_Catherine_ is of course _Northanger Abbey_, and the 'something' is
_Persuasion_. She returns to the latter in writing again to Fanny, March
23, telling her she will not like it, and adding 'You may perhaps like
the heroine, as she is almost too good for me.'

Two remarkable points in these extracts are: the statement that
_Persuasion_ was 'ready for publication,' but was not to appear for a
twelvemonth, and the idea that the character of the heroine was, as it
were, imposed upon the author by an external force which she was
powerless to resist. The intended delay in publishi