“Jane Eyre” And
“Wuthering Heights” … …………………………… 55
Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His
son………………………………… 61
“Aurora
Leigh”………………………………………………………… 67
“Robinson Crusoe”…
………………………………………………… 78
Dorothy Osborne’s “Letters”…
……………………………………… 85
Swift’s “Journal to Stella”…
………………………………………… 92
Modern Fiction… ……………………………………………………101
The Patron and the
Crocus……………………………………………109
The Modern Essay……………………………………………………113
Dr. Burney’s Evening Party… ………………………………………124
试读：
Jane Austen
It is probable that if Miss Cassandra Austen
had had her way we should have had nothing of Jane Austen’s except her novels.
To her elder sister alone did she write freely; to her alone she confided her
hopes and, if rumour is true, the one great disappointment of her life; but
when Miss Cassandra Austen grew old, and the growth of her sister’s fame made
her suspect that a time might come when strangers would pry and scholars
speculate, she burnt, at great cost to herself, every letter that could gratify
their curiosity, and spared only what she judged too trivial to be of interest.
Hence our knowledge of Jane Austen is derived
from a little gossip, a few letters, and her books. As for the gossip, gossip
which has survived its day is never despicable; with a little rearrangement it
suits our purpose admirably. For example, Jane “is not at all pretty and very
prim, unlike a girl of twelve ... Jane is whimsical and affected, ” says little
Philadelphia Austen of her cousin. Then we have Mrs. Mitford, who knew the
Austens as girls and thought Jane “the prettiest, silliest, most affected
husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers.” Next, there is Miss Mitford’s
anonymous friend “who visits her now [and] says that she has stiffened into the
most perpendicular, precise, taciturn piece of ‘single blessedness’ that ever
existed, and that, until Pride and
Prejudice showed what a
precious gem was hidden in that unbending case, she was no more regarded in
society than a poker or firescreen .... The case is very different now”, the
good lady goes on; “she is still a poker — but
a poker of whom everybody is afraid .... A wit, a delineator of character, who
does not talk is terrific indeed!” On the other side, of course, there are the
Austens, a race little given to panegyric of themselves, but nevertheless, they
say, her brothers “were very fond and very proud of her. They were attached to
her by her talents, her virtues, and her engaging manners, and each loved
afterwards to fancy a resemblance in some niece or daughter of his own to the
dear sister Jane, whose perfect equal they yet never expected to see.” Charming
but perpendicular, loved at home but feared by strangers, biting of tongue but
tender of heart — these contrasts are by no means incompatible,
and when we turn to the novels we shall find ourselves stumbling there too over
the same complexities in the writer.
To begin with, that prim little girl whom
Philadelphia found so unlike a child of twelve, whimsical and affected, was
soon to be the authoress of an astonishing and unchildish story, Love and Freindship, which, incredible though it appears, was written
at the age of fifteen. It was written, apparently, to amuse the schoolroom; one
of the stories in the same book is dedicated with mock solemnity to her
brother; another is neatly illustrated with water-colour heads by her sister.
These are jokes which, one feels, were family property; thrusts of satire,
which went home because all little Austens made mock in common of fine ladies
who “sighed and fainted on the sofa”.
Brothers and sisters must have laughed when
Jane read out loud her last hit at the vices which they all abhorred. “I die a
martyr to my grief for the loss of Augustus. One fatal swoon has cost me my
life. Beware of Swoons, Dear Laura .... Run mad as often as you chuse, but do
not faint .... ” And on she rushed, as fast as she could write and quicker than
she could spell, to tell the incredible adventures of Laura and sophia, of
Philander and Gustavus, of the gentleman who drove a coach between Edinburgh
and Stirling every other day, of the theft of the fortune that was kept in the
table drawer, of the starving mothers and the sons who acted Macbeth. Undoubtedly,
the story must have roused the schoolroom to uproarious laughter. And yet,
nothing is more obvious than that this girl of fifteen, sitting in her private
corner of the common parlour, was writing not to draw a laugh from brother and
sisters, and not for home consumption. She was writing for everybody, for
nobody, for our age, for her own; in other words, even at that early age Jane
Austen was writing. One hears it in the rhythm and shapeliness and severity of
the sentences. “She was nothing more than a mere good-tempered, civil, and
obliging young woman; as such we could scarcely dislike her — she was only an object of contempt.” Such a
sentence is meant to outlast the Christmas holidays. Spirited, easy, full of
fun, verging with freedom upon sheer nonsense, — Love and Freindship is all that; but what is this note which
never merges in the rest, which sounds distinctly and penetratingly all through
the volume? It is the sound of laughter. The girl of fifteen is laughing, in
her corner, at the world.
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