Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/17

 it seems strange that her writings should not have become more immediately popular when so many worse ones were read with avidity; but, after all, the reason is not far to seek. Jane Austen's novels were a new departure in fiction; many clever novelists had written before her, but they had relied for their success either, like Fielding, on strong, highly-coloured pictures of life; or, like Richardson and Miss Burney, on endless complications of events; or, like Mrs. Radcliffe, on blood-curdling terrors. None of these great writers had successfully attempted a story in which there should not be one sensational incident, nor one extraordinary individual; which should deal neither with great people, nor with villains, nor with paragons of beauty and virtue, but simply with every-day types of character, leading every-day lives, and speaking and acting like ordinary mortals, but painted to the utmost perfection of finish by a most un-every-day genius. Jane Austen completely realised more than any other writer has ever done, the saying that no human being can be commonplace if you know him well enough. She knew human nature so well that no phase of it was uninteresting to her, and she painted it as thoroughly as she knew it; but her art was carried to the perfection which seems absolute simplicity, and the public could not immediately recognise the genius under the simplicity. A few able men and women instantly saw and proclaimed the merit of her works: Archbishop Whateley, Sir Walter Scott, Sydney Smith, the Countess of Morley, and—curiously enough—the Prince Regent, were among them; but they were in a small minority, and when she died in 1817 I can find no mention of her or of her writings in any newspaper or periodical of the day.