It was still later that Macaulay made his famous estimate of her genius:—­“Shakespeare has neither equal nor second; but among those who, in the point we have noticed (the delineation of character), approached nearest the great master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen as a woman of whom England may justly be 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....  And all this is done by touches so delicate that they elude analysis, that they defy the powers of description, and that we know them to exist only by the general effect to which they have contributed.”  And a new generation had almost forgotten her name before the exacting Lewes wrote:—­“To make our meaning precise, we would say that Fielding and Jane Austen are the greatest novelists in the English language....  We would rather have written ‘Pride and Prejudice’ or ‘Tom Jones,’ than any of the Waverley novels....  The greatness of Miss Austen (her marvelous dramatic power) seems more than anything in Scott akin to Shakespeare.”

The six novels which have made so great a reputation for their author relate the least sensational of histories in the least sensational way.  ‘Sense and Sensibility’ might be called a novel with a purpose, that purpose being to portray the dangerous haste with which sentiment degenerates into sentimentality; and because of its purpose, the story discloses a less excellent art than its fellows.  ‘Pride and Prejudice’ finds its motive in the crass pride of birth and place that characterize the really generous and high-minded hero, Darcy, and the fierce resentment of his claims to love and respect on the part of the clever, high-tempered, and chivalrous heroine, Elizabeth Bennet.  ’Northanger Abbey’ is a laughing skit at the school of Mrs. Radcliffe; ‘Persuasion,’ a simple story of upper middle-class society, of which the most charming of her charming girls, Anne Elliot, is the heroine; ‘Mansfield Park’ a new and fun-loving version of ‘Cinderella’; and finally ’Emma,’—­the favorite with most readers, concerning which Miss Austen said, “I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like,”—­the history of the blunders of a bright, kind-hearted, and really clever girl, who contrives as much discomfort for her friends as stupidity or ill-nature could devise.

Numberless as are the novelist’s characters, no two clergymen, no two British matrons, no two fussy spinsters, no two men of fashion, no two heavy fathers, no two smart young ladies, no two heroines, are alike.  And this variety results from the absolute fidelity of each character to the law of its own development, each one growing from within and not being simply described from without.  Nor are the circumstances which she permits herself to use less genuine than her people.  What surrounds them is what one must expect; what happens to them is seen to be inevitable.