to extend to her a share of the respect and affection (affection and

respect of a peculiar kind; doubtless), with which one regards Mr.

Collins, when she draws the moral of Lydia’s fall. I{xx} sometimes wish

that the exigencies of the story had permitted Miss Austen to unite

these personages, and thus at once achieve a notable mating and soothe

poor Mrs. Bennet’s anguish over the entail.
The Bingleys and the Gardiners and the Lucases, Miss Darcy and Miss de

Bourgh, Jane, Wickham, and the rest, must pass without special comment,

further than the remark that Charlotte Lucas (her egregious papa, though

delightful, is just a little on the thither side of the line between

comedy and farce) is a wonderfully clever study in drab of one kind, and

that Wickham (though something of Miss Austen’s hesitation of touch in

dealing with young men appears) is a not much less notable sketch in

drab of another. Only genius could have made Charlotte what she is, yet

not disagreeable; Wickham what he is, without investing him either with

a cheap Don Juanish attractiveness or a disgusting rascality. But the

hero and the heroine are not tints to be dismissed.
Darcy has always seemed to me by far the best and most interesting of

Miss Austen’s heroes; the only possible competitor being Henry Tilney,

whose part is so slight and simple that it hardly enters into

comparison. It has sometimes, I believe, been urged that his pride is

unnatural at first in its expression and later in its yielding, while

his falling in love at all is not extremely probable. Here again I

cannot go with the objectors. Darcy’s own account of the way in which

his pride had been pampered, is perfectly rational and sufficient; and

nothing could be, psychologically speaking, a causa verior for its

sudden restoration to healthy conditions than the shock of Elizabeth’s

scornful refusal acting on a nature{xxi} ex hypothesi generous. Nothing in