Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/35

 . And is he to ?

. I'll tell you all I know of the matter.

. Well, now I know everything about it I'll go away.

. and. And so will I.

Scene III.—The curtain rises and discovers Sir Edward Spangle reclined in an elegant attitude on a sofa fast asleep.

Enter.

[Goes up to, whispers him, and exit.

End of the First Act.Finis.

The Steventon theatricals came to an end when Jane was scarcely fifteen, but their influence on her writings existed for some time longer, and on the whole was scarcely a good one. "Instead of presenting faithful copies of nature, these tales were generally burlesques ridiculing the improbable events and exaggerated sentiments which she had met with in sundry silly romances." Caricature is not a high type of art, and we may be glad that Jane Austen got over this stage while young. A trace of it lingers in Northanger Abbey, but she soon dropped it, either because it grated upon her own taste, or perhaps from the advice of her brother James. He was a man of much ability, and, being ten years older than his sister Jane, had a considerable share in forming her literary taste and judgment.

About 1792 or thereabouts, she tried her hand at the form of novel in letters which Miss Burney and Richardson had then made very popular. It was natural that a girl deeply versed in Sir Charles