MISS AUSTEN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 5, 30 January 1892, Page 116

MISS AUSTEN.

ONE of the faults of our own age is its encouragement of literary mediocrity, and persons tit only to be called penny-a-liners submit with complacency to fulsome praise of their • works ’ trumpeted abroad by unwise personal friends. Of quite another stamp was Jane Austen, the novelist, whom Tennyson pronounced ‘ next to Shakespeare’ in her power of copying human nature, and whom George Eliot called ‘ the greatest artist that has ever written.’ During her lifetime, so modest and unassuming was this gentle woman, that few of her readers knew even her name, and none of them, to speak broadly, knew more than that. She had the greatest dislike for playing the rdZe of literarylion, and once, when her fame was fully established, wrote that she was ‘ frightened ’ because a strange lady wished to be introduced to her. *lf I am a wild beast, I cannot help it,’ she declared. ‘ It is not my fault.’ Although her works have always been the delight of the cultured few, the author's retiring personality had its effect in shutting itself away from the knowledge of men, and it was fully sixty years after her death that the first memoir of her was published. More than twenty years ago a gentleman visiting Winchester Cathedral asked a verger to show him Jane Austen’s tomb. The man readily guided him to the slab of black marble, and the visitor stood for some time studying the inscription with keen interest. As he turned away, his guide said, in an apologetic tone : ‘ Pray, sir, can you tell me whether there was anything particular about that lady ? So many people want to know where she was buried.’

Yet the fame of her genius is every year increasing, and her readers may be numbered by the hundred, instead of the score, as was formerly the case. She chose to be ‘ first woman, then artist,’ and time has accorded her an enviable renown in both characters.