Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/39

 Pride and Prejudice there is almost as great a gulf as between Scenes of Clerical Life and Romola.

If published in her lifetime, Lady Susan might have injured Jane Austen's literary reputation, but by the time her descendants decided to give it to the world her matured fame stood on a pinnacle that no immature work could possibly affect, and, as she evidently did not think highly of it herself, none of her admirers need shrink from avowing the same feeling.