and Darcy’s altered demeanour, had something to do with Elizabeth’s resignation of the old romantic part of Belle dame sans merci.  It may further be admitted, even by those who protest against the undervaluation of Northanger Abbey, that Pride and Prejudice flies higher, and maintains its flight triumphantly.  It is not only longer; it is not only quite independent of parody or contrast with something previous; but it is far more intricate and elaborate as well as more original.  Elizabeth herself is not merely an ordinary girl:  and the putting forward of her, as an extraordinary yet in no single point unnatural one, is victoriously carried out.  Her father, in spite of (nay, perhaps, including) his comparative collapse when he is called upon, not as before to talk but to act, in the business of Lydia’s flight, is a masterpiece.  Mr. Collins is, once more by common consent of the competent, unsurpassed, if not peerless:  those who think him unnatural simply do not know nature.  Shakespeare and Fielding were the only predecessors who could properly serve as sponsors to “this young lady” (as Scott delightfully calls her) on her introduction among the immortals on the strength of this character alone.  Lady Catherine is not much the inferior (it would have been pleasing to tell her so) of her protege and chaplain.  Of almost all the characters, and of quite the whole book, it is scarcely extravagant to say that it could not have been better on its own scale and scheme—­that it is difficult to conceive any scheme and scale on which it could have been better.  And, yet once more, there is nothing out of the way in it—­the only thing not of absolutely everyday occurrence, the elopement of Lydia, happens on so many days still, with slight variations, that it can hardly be called a licence.

The same qualities appear throughout the other books, whether in more or less quintessence and with less or more alloy is a question rather of individual taste than for general or final critical decision. Sense and Sensibility, the first actually to appear (1811), is believed to have been written about the same time as Pride and Prejudice, which appeared two years later, and Northanger Abbey, which did not see the light till its author was dead.  It is the weakest of the three—­perhaps it is the weakest of all:  but the weakness is due rather to an error of judgment than to a lack of power.  Like Northanger Abbey it has a certain dependence on something else:  the extravagances of Marianne satirise the Sensibility-novel just as those of Catherine do the Terror-story of the immediate past.  But it is on a much larger scale:  and things of the kind are better in miniature.  Moreover, the author’s sense of creative faculty made her try to throw up and contrast her heroine with other characters, in a way which she had not attempted in Northanger Abbey:  and good as these are in themselves, they make a less perfect whole.  Indeed, in the order of thought, Sense and Sensibility is the “youngest” of the novels—­the least self-criticised.  Nothing in it shows lack of power (John Dashwood and his wife are of the first order); a good deal in it shows lack of knowledge exactly how to direct that power.