IR,--I am honoured by the Prince's thanks and very much
obliged to yourself for the kind manner in which you mention the work.
I have also to acknowledge a former letter forwarded to me from Hans
Place. I assure you I felt very grateful for the friendly tenor of
it, and hope my silence will have been considered, as it was truly
meant, to proceed only from an unwillingness to tax your time with
idle thanks. Under every interesting circumstance which your own
talents and literary labours have placed you in, or the favour of the
Regent bestowed, you have my best wishes. Your recent appointments I
hope are a step to something still better. In my opinion, the service
of a court can hardly be too well paid, for immense must be the
sacrifice of time and feeling required by it.

'You are very kind in your hints as to the sort of composition which
might recommend me at present, and I am fully sensible that an
historical romance, founded on the House of Saxe Cobourg, might be
much more to the purpose of profit or popularity than such pictures of
domestic life in country villages as I deal in. But I could no more
write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to
write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life;
and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into
laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung
before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own
style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in
that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

'I remain, my dear Sir,

'Your very much obliged, and sincere friend,
'J. AUSTEN.

'Chawton, near Alton, April 1, 1816.'

Mr. Clarke should have recollected the warning of the wise man, 'Force
not the course of the river.' If you divert it from the channel in which
nature taught it to flow, and force it into one arbitrarily cut by
yourself, you will lose its grace and beauty.

But when his free course is not hindered,
He makes sweet music with the enamelled stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage:
And so by many winding nooks he strays
With willing sport.

All writers of fiction, who have genius strong enough to work out a
course of their own, resist every attempt to interfere with its
direction. No two