Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/169

 myself the justice to declare that, whatever may be my wishes for its success, I am strongly haunted with the idea that to those readers who have preferred Pride nnd Prejudice, it will appear inferior in wit, and to those who have preferred Mansfield Park, inferior in good sense. Such as it is, however, I hope you will do me the favour of accepting a copy. Mr. Murray will have directions for sending one. I am quite honoured by your thinking me capable of drawing such a clergyman as you gave the sketch of in your note of Nov. 16. But I assure you I am not. The comic part of the character I might be equal to, but not the good, the enthusiastic, the literary. Such a man's conversation must at times be on subjects of science and philosophy, of which I know nothing; or at least be occasionally abundant in quotations and allusions which a woman who, like me, knows only her own mother tongue, and has read little in that, would be totally without the power of giving. A classical education, or, at any rate, a very extensive acquaintance with English literature, ancient and modem, appears to me quite indispensable for the person who would do any justice to your clergyman, and I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.

"Believe me, dear Sir,

"Your obliged and faithful hum$bl$ serv$t.$,

"."

Possibly the tone of the letter led Mr. Clarke to believe seriously that Jane Austen was only prevented by diffidence from carrying out his suggestion, or perhaps it was only from a wish of pleasing his royal