Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/212

 which, even in illness, could not enjoy a comfort if anyone else were deprived of it.

In spite of weakness and suffering, she finished Persuasion in July, 1816; but when she attempted the most difficult part of the story—the re-engagement of Anne and Captain Wentworth—her brain had, for the moment, lost its full power, and she produced a chapter which was certainly not up to her usual standard. Her clear judgment was not dimmed: she saw the deficiencies in what she had written, but, for the first time in her life, she felt incapable of correcting them, and a great wave of despondency swept over her as she realised her own weakness of mind and body, and felt that the pen which she had enjoyed the use of for so many years was at length slipping from her grasp. Her despondency was, however, premature; she went to bed in very low spirits, but next morning her brain was in full vigour again, and she resumed her pen with all the old energy. She now wrote two chapters in place of the one she had already composed; and as these give us the visit of the Musgroves to Bath; all the scenes immediately following that visit; and the reconciliation of Anne and Captain Wentworth, her readers must feel that she has left us nothing worthier of her genius. She herself was quite contented with her second attempt, and, indeed, it is difficult to see how she could have been otherwise.

For some time after this she attempted no further writing, but in January 1817 she either was, or fancied herself, better, for she wrote to a friend, "I have certainly gained strength through the winter, and am not far from being well; and I think I understand my own case now so much better than I did as to be