_The secret of that charm many men and not a few women,from Miss Austen herself downwards, have felt,and like most charms it is a thing rather to be felt than to be explained.Elizabeth of course belongs to the_ allegro _or_ allegra _division of the army of Venus. Miss Austen was always provokingly chary of description in regard to her beauties; and except the fine eyes, and a hint or two that she had at any rate sometimes a bright complexion, and was not very tall, we hear nothing about her looks. But her chief difference from other heroines of the lively type seems to lie first in her being distinctly clever--almost strong-minded, in the better sense of that objectionable word--and secondly in her being entirely destitute of ill-nature for all her propensity to tease and the sharpness of her tongue. Elizabeth can give at least as good as she gets when she is attacked; but she never “scratches,” and she never attacks first. Some of the merest obsoletenesses of phrase and manner give one or two of her early speeches a slight pertness, but that is nothing, and when she comes to serious business, as in the great proposal scene with Darcy (which is, as it should be, the climax of the interest of the book), and in the final ladies’ battle with Lady Catherine, she is unexceptionable. Then too she is a perfectly natural girl. She does not disguise from herself or anybody that she resents Darcy’s first ill-mannered personality with as personal a feeling. (By the way, the reproach that the ill-manners of this speech are overdone is certainly unjust; for things of the same kind, expressed no doubt less stiltedly but more coarsely, might have been heard in more than one ball-room during this very year from persons who ought to have been no worse bred than Darcy.) And she lets the injury done to Jane and the contempt shown to the rest of her family aggravate this resentment in the healthiest way in the world._
_Still, all this does not explain her charm, which,taking beauty as a common form of all heroines,may perhaps consist in the addition to her playfulness,her wit, her affectionate and natural disposition,of a certain fearlessness very uncommon in heroines of her type and age.Nearly all of them would have been in speechless awe of the magnificent Darcy;nearly all of them would have palpitated and fluttered at the idea of proposals, even naughty ones, from the fascinating Wickham. Elizabeth, with nothing offensive, nothing_ viraginous, _nothing of the “New Woman” about her, has by nature what the best modern (not “new”) women have by education and experience, a perfect freedom from the idea that all men may bully her if they choose, and that most will away with her if they can. Though not in the least “impudent and mannish grown,” she has no mere sensibility, no nasty niceness about her. The form of passion common and likely to seem natural in Miss Austen’s day was so invariably connected with the display of one or the other, or both of these qualities, that she has not made Elizabeth outwardly passionate. But I, at least, have not the slightest doubt that she would have married Darcy just as willingly without Pemberley as with it, and anybody who can read between lines will not find the lovers’ conversations in the final chapters so frigid as they might have looked to the Della Cruscans of their own day, and perhaps do look to the Della Cruscans of this._
_And, after all, what is the good of seeking for the reason of charm?--it is there. There were better sense in the sad mechanic exercise of determining the reason of its absence where it is not. In the novels of the last hundred years there are vast numbers of young ladies with whom it might be a pleasure to fall in love; there are at least five with whom, as it seems to me, no man of taste and spirit can help doing so. Their names are, in chronological order, Elizabeth Bennet, Diana Vernon, Argemone Lavington, Beatrix Esmond, and Barbara Grant. I should have been most in love with Beatrix and Argemone; I should, I think, for mere occasional companionship, have preferred Diana and Barbara. But to live with and to marry, I do not know that any one of the four can come into competition with Elizabeth._
_GEORGE SAINTSBURY._
[Illustration: List of Illustrations.]
PAGE
Frontispiece iv
Title-page v
Dedication vii
Heading to Preface ix
Heading to List of Illustrations xxv
Heading to Chapter I. 1
“He came down to see the place” 2
Mr. and Mrs. Bennet 5
“I hope Mr. Bingley will like it” 6
“I’m the tallest” 9
“He rode a black horse” 10
“When the party entered” 12
“She is tolerable” 15
Heading to Chapter IV. 18
Heading to Chapter V. 22
“Without once opening his lips” 24
Tailpiece to Chapter V. 26
Heading to Chapter VI. 27
“The entreaties of several” 31
“A note for Miss Bennet” 36
“Cheerful prognostics” 40
“The apothecary came” 43
“Covering a screen” 45
“Mrs. Bennet and her two youngest girls” 53
Heading to Chapter X. 60
“No, no; stay where you are” 67
“Piling up the fire” 69
Heading to Chapter XII. 75
Heading to Chapter XIII. 78
Heading to Chapter XIV. 84
“Protested that he never read novels” 87
Heading to Chapter XV. 89
Heading to Chapter XVI. 95
“The officers of the ----shire” 97
“Delighted to see their dear friend again” 108
Heading to Chapter XVIII. 113
“Such very superior dancing is not often seen” 118
“To assure you in the most animated language” 132
Heading to Chapter XX. 139
“They entered the breakfast-room” 143
Heading to Chapter XXI. 146
“Walked back with them” 148
Heading to Chapter XXII. 154
“So much love and eloquence” 156
“Protested he must be entirely mistaken” 161
“Whenever she spoke in a low voice” 166
Heading to Chapter XXIV. 168
Heading to Chapter XXV. 175
“Offended two or three young ladies” 177
“Will you come and see me?” 181