Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/90

 by a generation which prefers drawing its own moral to finding it ready made.

Cassandra Austen continued to admire Pride and Prejudice warmly, and her niece, Fanny Knight, joined in the praise. With her usual child-like pleasure in the praise of those she loved, Jane answered, "I am exceedingly pleased that you can say what you do, after going through the whole work, and Fanny's praise is very gratifying. My hopes were tolerably strong of her, but nothing like a certainty. Her liking Darcy and Elizabeth is enough; she might hate all the others if she would. I have her opinion under her own hand this morning, but your transcript of it, which I read first, was not and is not the less acceptable. To me it is, of course, all praise, but the more exact truth which she sends you is good enough."

Further admiration filtered slowly in from various quarters, and Jane received and recorded it all with the same unaffected pleasure, though she would still have liked to preserve her incognita. "Lady Robert is delighted with P. and P., and really was so, as I understand, before she knew who wrote it, for, of course, she knows now. He (Henry Austen) told her with as much satisfaction as if it were my wish. He did not tell me this, but he told Fanny. And Mr. Hastings! I am quite delighted with what such a man writes about it.' For some reason or other she specially valued Mr. Hasting's criticism, for she adds further on, "I long to have you hear Mr. H.'s opinion of P. and P. His admiring my Elizabeth so much is particularly welcome to me." Then she relates of another friend, "Poor Dr. Isham is obliged to admire P. and P., and to send me word that he is sure he shall not like Madame D'Arblay's new novel half so well." Evidently Jane could imagine no greater