d policy. Jane, when a girl, had
strong political opinions, especially about the affairs of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. She was a vehement defender of Charles I. and
his grandmother Mary; but I think it was rather from an impulse of
feeling than from any enquiry into the evidences by which they must be
condemned or acquitted. As she grew up, the politics of the day occupied
very little of her attention, but she probably shared the feeling of
moderate Toryism which prevailed in her family. She was well acquainted
with the old periodicals from the 'Spectator' downwards. Her knowledge
of Richardson's works was such as no one is likely again to acquire, now
that the multitude and the merits of our light literature have called off
the attention of readers from that great master. Every circumstance
narrated in Sir Charles Grandison, all that was ever said or done in the
cedar parlour, was familiar to her; and the wedding days of Lady L. and
Lady G. were as well remembered as if they had been living friends.
Amongst her favourite writers, Johnson in prose, Crabbe in verse, and
Cowper in both, stood high. It is well that the native good taste of
herself and of those with whom she lived, saved her from the snare into
which a sister novelist had fallen, of imitating the grandiloquent style
of Johnson. She thoroughly enjoyed Crabbe; perhaps on account of a
certain resemblance to herself in minute and highly finished detail; and
would sometimes say, in jest, that, if she ever married at all, she could
fancy being Mrs. Crabbe; looking on the author quite as an abstract idea,
and ignorant and regardless what manner of man he might be. Scott's
poetry gave her great pleasure; she did not live to make much
acquaintance with his novels. Only three of them were published before
her death; but it will be seen by the following extract from one of her
letters, that she was quite prepared to admit the merits of 'Waverley';
and it is remarkable that, living, as she did, far apart from the gossip
of the literary world, she should even then have spoken so confidently of
his being the author of it:--

'Walter Scott has no business to write novels; especially good ones.
It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and ought
not to be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. I do not
mean to like "Waverley," if I can help it, but I fear I must. I am
quite determined, however, not to be pleas