A History of English Literature

followed Miss Burney, writing of the experiences of young ladies in
fashionable London life. In these novels her purpose was more obviously
moral than Miss Burney's--she aimed to make clear the folly of frivolity
and dissipation; and she also wrote moral tales for children which though
they now seem old-fashioned were long and widely popular. Since she had a
first-hand knowledge of both Ireland and England, she laid the scenes of
some of her books partly in both countries, thereby creating what was later
called 'the international novel.' Her most distinctive achievement,
however, was the introduction of the real Irishman (as distinct from the
humorous caricature) into fiction. Scott testified that it was her example
that suggested to him the similar portrayal of Scottish character and life.
JANE AUSTEN. Much the greatest of this trio of authoresses is the last,
Jane Austen, who perhaps belongs as much to the nineteenth century as the
eighteenth. The daughter of a clergyman, she past an absolutely uneventful
life of forty-two years (1775-1817) in various villages and towns in
Southern England. She had finished her masterpiece, 'Pride and Prejudice,'
at the age of twenty-two, but was unable for more than a dozen years to
find a publisher for this and her other earlier works. When at last they
were brought out she resumed her writing, but the total number of her
novels is only six. Her field, also, is more limited than that of any other
great English novelist; for she deliberately restricted herself, with
excellent judgment, to portraying what she knew at first-hand, namely the
life of the well-to-do classes of her own 'provincial' region. Moreover,
her theme is always love; desirable marriage for themselves or their
children seems to be the single object of almost all her characters; and
she always conducts her heroine successfully to this goal. Her artistic
achievement, like herself, is so well-bred and unobtrusive that a hasty
reader may easily fail to appreciate it. Her understanding of character is
almost perfect, her sense for structure and dramatic scenes (quiet ones)
equally good, and her quiet and delightful humor and irony all-pervasive.
Scott, with customary generosity, praised her 'power of rendering ordinary
things and characters interesting from the truth of her portrayal,' in
favorable contrast with his own facility in 'the Big Bow-Wow strain.'
Nevertheless the assertion of some present-day critics that she is the
greatest of all English authoresses is certainly extravagant. Her novels,
though masterly in their own field and style, do not have the fulness of
description or the elaboration of action which add beauty and power to most
later ones, and her lack of a sense for the greater issues of life denies
her legitimate comparison with such a writer as George Eliot.
SUMMARY. The variety of the literary influences in eighteenth century
England was so great that the century can scarcely be called a literary
unit; yet as a whole it contrasts clearly enough both with that which goes
before and with that which follows. Certainly its total contribution to
English literature was great and varied.
CHAPTER X
PERIOD VIII. THE ROMANTIC TRIUMPH, 1798 TO ABOUT 1830
THE GREAT WRITERS OF 1798-1830. THE CRITICAL REVIEWS. As we look back
to-day over the literature of the last three quarters of the eighteenth
century, here just surveyed, the progress of the Romantic Movement seems
the most conspicuous general fact which it presents. But at the, death of