paragraphs:--"What we most heartily enjoy and applaud is truth in the
delineations of life and character.... To make our meaning precise, we
would say that Fielding and Miss Austen are the greatest novelists in
our language.... We would rather have written 'Pride and Prejudice,'
or 'Tom Jones,' than any of the 'Waverley Novels'.... Miss Austen has
been called a prose Shakspeare,--and among others, by Macaulay. In
spite of the sense of incongruity which besets us in the words _prose_
Shakspeare, we confess the greatness of Miss Austen, her marvellous
dramatic power, seems, more than anything in Scott, akin to
Shakspeare."

The conclusion of this article is devoted to a review of 'Jane Eyre,'
and led to the correspondence between Miss Bronte and Mr. Lewes
which will be found in the memoir of her life. In these letters it is
apparent that Mr. Lewes wishes Miss Bronte to read and to enjoy Miss
Austen's works, as he does himself. Mr. Lewes is disappointed, and
felt, doubtless, what all true lovers of Jane Austen have experienced,
a surprise to find how obtuse otherwise clever people sometimes
are. In this instance, however, we think Mr. Lewes expected what was
impossible. Charlotte Bronte could not harmonize with Jane Austen. The
luminous and familiar star which comes forth into the quiet evening
sky when the sun sets amid the amber light of an autumn evening, and
the comet which started into sight, unheralded and unnamed, and flamed
across the midnight sky, have no affinity, except in the Divine Mind,
whence both originate.

The notice of Miss Austen, by Macaulay, to which Mr. Lewes alludes,
must be, we presume, the passage which occurs in Macaulay's article on
Madame D'Arblay, in the "Edinburgh Review," for January, 1843. We do
not find the phrase, "prose Shakspeare," but the meaning is the same;
we give the passage as it stands before us:--

"Shakspeare has neither equal nor second; but among writers who, in
the point we have noticed, have approached nearest the manner of the
great master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, as a
woman of whom England is justly proud. She has given us a multitude of
characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace, all such as we meet
every day. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from each other
as if they were the most eccentric of human beings. There are, for
example, four clergymen, none of whom we should be surprised to
find in any parsonage in the kingdom,--Mr.