A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Plan of a Novel 97
and confessed that she herself ‘should hardly like to live with her
ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses;’° but
each writer equally resisted interference with her own natural
style of composition. Miss Brontë, in reply to a friendly critic,
who had warned her against being too melodramatic, and had
ventured to propose Miss Austen’s works to her as a study, writes
thus:––
‘Whenever I do write another book, I think I will have nothing
of what you call “melodrama.” I think so, but I am not sure. I
think, too, I will endeavour to follow the counsel which shines out
of Miss Austen’s “mild eyes,” to finish more, and be more subdued;
but neither am I sure of that. When authors write best, or,
at least, when they write most fluently, an influence seems to
waken in them which becomes their master–– which will have its
way–– putting out of view all behests but its own, dictating certain
words, and insisting on their being used, whether vehement or
measured in their nature, new moulding characters, giving
unthought of turns to incidents, rejecting carefully elaborated old
ideas, and suddenly creating and adopting new ones. Is it not so?
And should we try to counteract this influence? Can we indeed
counteract it?’ 1
The playful raillery with which the one parries an attack on her
liberty, and the vehement eloquence of the other in pleading the
same cause and maintaining the independence of genius, are very
characteristic of the minds of the respective writers.
The suggestions which Jane received as to the sort of story that
she ought to write were, however, an amusement to her, though
they were not likely to prove useful; and she has left amongst her
papers one entitled, ‘Plan of a novel according to hints from
various quarters.’° The names of some of those advisers° are written
on the margin of the manuscript opposite to their respective
suggestions.
‘Heroine to be the daughter of a clergyman, who after having
lived much in the world had retired from it, and settled on a
curacy with a very small fortune of his own. The most excellent
1 Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Life of Miss Brontë,’ vol. ii. p. 53.