ls which
none the less in their totality produce on him a most formidable
effect. Miss Austen's is not the style of startling tricks: nor
has she the flashing felicities of a Stevenson which lead one to
return to a passage for re-gustation. Her manner rarely if ever
takes the attention from her matter. But her words and their
marshaling (always bearing in her mind her unambitious purpose)
make as fit a garment for her thought as was ever devised upon
English looms. If this is style, then Jane Austen possesses it,
as have very few of the race. There is just a touch of the
archaic in it, enough to give a quaintness that has charm
without being precious in the French sense; hers are breeding
and dignity without distance or stiffness. Now and again the
life-likeness is accentuated by a sort of undress which goes to
the verge of the slip-shod--as if a gentlewoman should not be
too particular, lest she seem professional; the sort of liberty
with the starched proprieties of English which Thackeray later
took with such delightful results. Of her style as a whole,
then, we may say that it is good literature for the very reason
that it is not literary; neither mannered nor mincing nor
affectedly plain. The style is the woman--and the woman wrote as
a lady should who is portraying genteel society; very much as
she would talk--with the difference the artist will always make
between life and its expression in letters.

Miss Austen's place was won slowly but surely, unlike those
authors whose works spring into instantaneous popularity, to be
forgotten with equal promptness, or others who like Mrs. Stowe
write a book which, for historical reasons, gains immediate
vogue and yet retains a certain reputation. The author of "Pride
and Prejudice" gains in position with the passing of the years.
She is one of the select company of English writers who after a
century are really read, really of more than historical
significance. New and attractive editions of her books are
frequent: she not only holds critical regard (and to criticism
her importance is permanent) but is read by an appreciable
number of the lovers of sound literature; read far more
generally, we feel sure, than Disraeli or Bulwer or Charles
Kingsley, who are so much nearer our own day and who filled so
large a place in their respective times. Compared with them,
Jane Austen appears a serene classic. When all is said, the
test, the supreme test, is to be read: that means th