Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/88

 The advertisement is in our paper to-day for the first time: 18s. He shall ask £1 1s. for my two next, and £1 8s. for my stupidest of all." Then she relates a little piece of mystification, from which she had, not unnaturally, derived some amusement. "Miss B dined with us on the very day of the book's comings and in the evening we fairly set at it, and read half the first vol. to her, prefacing that, having intelligence from Henry that such a work would soon appear, we had desired him to send it whenever it came out, and I believe it passed with her unsuspected. She was amused, poor soul! That she could not help, you know, with two such people to lead the way, but she really does seem to admire Elizabeth." Jane's own opinion of her heroine, and of the first edition of the book, follows: "I must confess," she writes, "that I think her (Elizabeth) as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know. There are a few typical errors, and a 'said he' or a 'said she' would sometimes make the dialogue more immediately clear; but 'I do not write for such dull elves' as have not a great deal of ingenuity themselves. The second volume is shorter than I could wish, but the difference is not so much in reality as in look, there being a larger proportion of narrative in that part. I have lop't and crop't so successfully, however, that I imagine it must be rather shorter than Sense and Sensibility altogether. Now I will try and write of something else."

Cassandra Austen received the book with almost as much eagerness and pleasure as Jane herself, and she wrote her delight and admiration in terms which were very comforting to the authoress, who had been suffering from a little depression, as her answer shows: