Not one has any
ruling passion, such as we read in Pope. Who would not have expected
them to be insipid likenesses of each other? No such thing. Harpagon
is not more unlike Jourdain, Joseph Surface is not more unlike Sir
Lucius O'Trigger, than every one of Miss Austen's young divines to
all his reverend brethren. And almost 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."
Dr. Whately, the Archbishop of Dublin, in the "Quarterly Review,"
1821, sums up his estimate of Miss Austen with these words: "The
Eastern monarch who proclaimed a reward to him who should discover a
new pleasure would have deserved well of mankind, had he stipulated
it should be blameless. Those again who delight in the study of human
nature may improve in the knowledge of it, and in the profitable
application of that knowledge, by the perusal of such fictions. Miss
Austen introduces very little of what is technically called religion
into her books, yet that must be a blinded soul which does not
recognize the vital essence, everywhere present in her pages, of a
deep and enlightened piety.
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