A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Southampton 65
with a very handsome face. By this means we had the pleasure of
hearing Charles’s praises twice over. They think themselves
excessively obliged to him, and estimate him so highly as to wish
Lord Balgonie, when he is quite recovered, to go out to him.
There is a pretty little Lady Marianne of the party, to be shaken
hands with, and asked if she remembered Mr. Austen. ...
‘I shall write to Charles by the next packet, unless you tell me in
the meantime of your intending to do it.
‘Believe me, if you chuse,
‘Y r aff te Sister.’
Jane did not estimate too highly the ‘Cousin George’ mentioned
in the foregoing letter; who might easily have been
superior in sense and wit to the rest of the party. He was the Rev.
George Leigh Cooke,° long known and respected at Oxford,
where he held important offices, and had the privilege of helping
to form the minds of men more eminent than himself. As Tutor
in Corpus Christi College, he became instructor to some of the
most distinguished undergraduates of that time: amongst others
to Dr. Arnold, the Rev. John Keble, and Sir John Coleridge. The
latter has mentioned him in terms of affectionate regard, both in
his Memoir of Keble, and in a letter which appears in Dean
Stanley’s ‘Life of Arnold.’ Mr. Cooke was also an impressive
preacher of earnest awakening sermons. I remember to have
heard it observed by some of my undergraduate friends that, after
all, there was more good to be got from George Cooke’s plain
sermons than from much of the more laboured oratory of the
University pulpit. He was frequently Examiner in the schools,
and occupied the chair of the Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy,
from 1810 to 1853.
Before the end of 1805, the little family party removed to
Southampton.° They resided in a commodious old-fashioned
house in a corner of Castle Square.
I have no letters of my aunt, nor any other record of her, during
her four years’ residence at Southampton;° and though I now
began to know, and, what was the same thing, to love her myself,