the playwright has ever been laid upon Pride and Prejudice; and I dare

say that,{xii} if it were, the situations would prove not startling or

garish enough for the footlights, the character-scheme too subtle and

delicate for pit and gallery. But if the attempt were made, it would

certainly not be hampered by any of those loosenesses of construction,

which, sometimes disguised by the conveniences of which the novelist can

avail himself, appear at once on the stage.
I think, however, though the thought will doubtless seem heretical to

more than one school of critics, that construction is not the highest

merit, the choicest gift, of the novelist. It sets off his other gifts

and graces most advantageously to the critical eye; and the want of it

will sometimes mar those graces—appreciably, though not quite

consciously—to eyes by no means ultra-critical. But a very badly-built

novel which excelled in pathetic or humorous character, or which

displayed consummate command of dialogue—perhaps the rarest of all

faculties—would be an infinitely better thing than a faultless plot

acted and told by puppets with pebbles in their mouths. And despite the

ability which Miss Austen has shown in working out the story, I for one

should put Pride and Prejudice far lower if it did not contain what

seem to me the very masterpieces of Miss Austen’s humour and of her

faculty of character-creation—masterpieces who may indeed admit John

Thorpe, the Eltons, Mrs. Norris, and one or two others to their company,

but who, in one instance certainly, and perhaps in others, are still

superior to them.
The characteristics of Miss Austen’s humour are so subtle and delicate

that they are, perhaps, at all times easier to apprehend than to

express, and at any particular{xiii} time likely to be differently

apprehended by different persons. To me this humour seems to possess a

greater affinity, on the whole, to that of Addison than to any other of