"rational, discreet, polished, he was not open. There never was any burst of feeling, any warmth of indignation or delight, at the evil or good of others. This, to Anne, was a decided imperfection. Her early impressions were incurable. She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others. Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still. She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped.
"Mr. Elliot was too generally agreeable. Various as were the tempers in her father's house, he pleased them all. He endured too well, stood too well with everybody."
Those who accuse Jane Austen of hardness have sometimes relied on her treatment of Mrs. Musgrove's sorrow over her ne'er-do-well son, long after his death, to support this charge. Anne and Wentworth, whose mutual liking was just beginning to bloom again, were "actually on the same sofa, for Mrs. Musgrove had most readily made room for him; they were divided only by Mrs. Musgrove. It was no insignificant barrier, indeed. Mrs. Musgrove was of a comfortable, substantial size, infinitely more fitted by nature to express good cheer and good humour than tenderness and sentiment; and while the agitations of Anne's slender form, and pensive face, may be considered as very completely screened, Captain Wentworth should be allowed some credit for the self-command with which he attended to her large fat sighings over the destiny of a son, whom alive nobody had cared for." And then the author stops in her narrative to observe that "Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions. A large, bulky figure has as good a right to be in deep affliction as the most graceful set of limbs in the world. But, fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will patronize in vain—which taste cannot tolerate—which ridicule will seize."
She thus bluntly expresses what almost every satirist merely implies, but she underrates her own powers. The ordinary writer might or might not be able to describe the grief of "a large, bulky figure" without offence to the ordinary "taste." Genius could assuredly do this thing. Shakespeare, with whom Whately, Macaulay and Tennyson compared Jane Austen, made one of his greatest characters "fat and scant of breath," but when Hamlet says to his friend, "Thou woulds't not think how ill all's here about my heart," we do not find it "ridiculous" that this "too, too solid flesh" should be joined with a mind weighted with such poignant sorrow. In any case, whether she mistrusted her own powers, or wanted Mrs. Musgrove to be slightly ridiculous, which seems more likely, Jane did not here strive to achieve what she pointedly tells us it would be beyond reason to expect.
The character of Emma is described with unusual fulness, but the description is placed in the mouth of George Knightley, her candid admirer, who was perhaps not guiltless of the fault which Fainall attributed to Mirabell, of being "too discerning in the failings of his mistress." Mrs. Weston ("Miss Taylor that was") has said that Emma means to read with Harriet Smith—
"'Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old,' replies Mr. Knightley. 'I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up, at various times, of books that she meant to read regularly through—and very good lists they were, very well chosen, and very neatly arranged—sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen—I remember thinking it did her judgment so much credit, that I preserved it some time, and I dare say she may have made out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to anything requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding. Where Miss Taylor failed to stimulate, I may safely affirm that Harriet Smith will do nothing. You never could persuade her to read half so much as you wished. You know you could not.'
"'I dare say,' replied Mrs. Weston, smiling, 'that I thought so then; but since we have parted, I can never remember Emma's omitting to do anything I wished.'
"'There is hardly any desiring to refresh such a memory as that,' said Mr. Knightley, feelingly; and for a moment or two he had done. 'But I,' he soon added, 'who have had no such charm thrown over my senses, must still see, hear, and remember. Emma is spoiled by being the cleverest of her family. At ten years old she had the misfortune of being able to answer questions which puzzled her sister at seventeen. She was always quick and assured; Isabella slow and diffident. And ever since she was twelve, Emma has been mistress of the house and of you all. In her mother she lost the only person able to cope with her.'"
An unhappy condition of most of Jane's heroines is that they are of necessity ashamed of their nearest relations. Anne Elliot felt this trouble keenly, when at length she and Wentworth decided to take the happiness which she had refused years before—