{"id":"01KJRRE0M2GSP296MHK2WB9E0T","cid":"bafkreiatqvlydhhyc546pvjdzhd2akxf7656ej3xb7wx2dd5o2r5xkj4x4","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":22148,"char_start":14411,"chunk_index":2,"chunk_total":108,"estimated_tokens":1935,"label":"only genius knows. The one was humanity, and the o","source_file_key":"pride-and-prejudice","text":"only genius knows. The one was humanity, and the other was art. On the\r\nfirst head she could not make a mistake; her men, though limited, are\r\ntrue, and her women are, in the old sense, “absolute.” As to art, if she\r\nhas never tried idealism, her realism is real to a degree which makes\r\nthe false realism of our own day look merely dead-alive. Take almost any\r\nFrenchman, except the late M. de Maupassant, and watch him laboriously\r\npiling up strokes in the hope of giving a complete impression. You get\r\nnone; you are lucky if, discarding two-thirds of what he gives, you can\r\nshape a real impression out of the rest. But with Miss Austen the\r\nmyriad, trivial, unforced strokes build up the picture like magic.\r\nNothing is false; nothing is superfluous. When (to take the present book\r\nonly) Mr. Collins changed his mind from Jane to Elizabeth “while Mrs.\r\nBennet was stirring the fire” (and we know_ how _Mrs. Bennet would have\r\nstirred the fire), when Mr. Darcy “brought his coffee-cup back_\r\nhimself,” _the touch in each case is like that of Swift--“taller by the\r\nbreadth of my nail”--which impressed the half-reluctant Thackeray with\r\njust and outspoken admiration. Indeed, fantastic as it may seem, I\r\nshould put Miss Austen as near to Swift in some ways, as I have put her\r\nto Addison in others._\r\n\r\n_This Swiftian quality appears in the present novel as it appears\r\nnowhere else in the character of the immortal, the ineffable Mr.\r\nCollins. Mr. Collins is really_ great; _far greater than anything Addison\r\never did, almost great enough for Fielding or for Swift himself. It has\r\nbeen said that no one ever was like him. But in the first place,_ he\r\n_was like him; he is there--alive, imperishable, more real than hundreds\r\nof prime ministers and archbishops, of “metals, semi-metals, and\r\ndistinguished philosophers.” In the second place, it is rash, I think,\r\nto conclude that an actual Mr. Collins was impossible or non-existent at\r\nthe end of the eighteenth century. It is very interesting that we\r\npossess, in this same gallery, what may be called a spoiled first\r\ndraught, or an unsuccessful study of him, in John Dashwood. The\r\nformality, the under-breeding, the meanness, are there; but the portrait\r\nis only half alive, and is felt to be even a little unnatural. Mr.\r\nCollins is perfectly natural, and perfectly alive. In fact, for all the\r\n“miniature,” there is something gigantic in the way in which a certain\r\nside, and more than one, of humanity, and especially eighteenth-century\r\nhumanity, its Philistinism, its well-meaning but hide-bound morality,\r\nits formal pettiness, its grovelling respect for rank, its materialism,\r\nits selfishness, receives exhibition. I will not admit that one speech\r\nor one action of this inestimable man is incapable of being reconciled\r\nwith reality, and I should not wonder if many of these words and actions\r\nare historically true._\r\n\r\n_But the greatness of Mr. Collins could not have been so satisfactorily\r\nexhibited if his creatress had not adjusted so artfully to him the\r\nfigures of Mr. Bennet and of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. The latter, like\r\nMr. Collins himself, has been charged with exaggeration. There is,\r\nperhaps, a very faint shade of colour for the charge; but it seems to me\r\nvery faint indeed. Even now I do not think that it would be impossible\r\nto find persons, especially female persons, not necessarily of noble\r\nbirth, as overbearing, as self-centred, as neglectful of good manners,\r\nas Lady Catherine. A hundred years ago, an earl’s daughter, the Lady\r\nPowerful (if not exactly Bountiful) of an out-of-the-way country parish,\r\nrich, long out of marital authority, and so forth, had opportunities of\r\ndeveloping these agreeable characteristics which seldom present\r\nthemselves now. As for Mr. Bennet, Miss Austen, and Mr. Darcy, and even\r\nMiss Elizabeth herself, were, I am inclined to think, rather hard on him\r\nfor the “impropriety” of his conduct. His wife was evidently, and must\r\nalways have been, a quite irreclaimable fool; and unless he had shot her\r\nor himself there was no way out of it for a man of sense and spirit but\r\nthe ironic. From no other point of view is he open to any reproach,\r\nexcept for an excusable and not unnatural helplessness at the crisis of\r\nthe elopement, and his utterances are the most acutely delightful in the\r\nconsciously humorous kind--in the kind that we laugh with, not at--that\r\neven Miss Austen has put into the mouth of any of her characters. It is\r\ndifficult to know whether he is most agreeable when talking to his wife,\r\nor when putting Mr. Collins through his paces; but the general sense of\r\nthe world has probably been right in preferring to the first rank his\r\nconsolation to the former when she maunders over the entail, “My dear,\r\ndo not give way to such gloomy thoughts. Let us hope for better things.\r\nLet us flatter ourselves that_ I _may be the survivor;” and his inquiry\r\nto his colossal cousin as to the compliments which Mr. Collins has just\r\nrelated as made by himself to Lady Catherine, “May I ask whether these\r\npleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the\r\nresult of previous study?” These are the things which give Miss Austen’s\r\nreaders the pleasant shocks, the delightful thrills, which are felt by\r\nthe readers of Swift, of Fielding, and we may here add, of Thackeray, as\r\nthey are felt by the readers of no other English author of fiction\r\noutside of these four._\r\n\r\n_The goodness of the minor characters in_ Pride and Prejudice _has been\r\nalready alluded to, and it makes a detailed dwelling on their beauties\r\ndifficult in any space, and impossible in this. Mrs. Bennet we have\r\nglanced at, and it is not easy to say whether she is more exquisitely\r\namusing or more horribly true. Much the same may be said of Kitty and\r\nLydia; but it is not every author, even of genius, who would have\r\ndifferentiated with such unerring skill the effects of folly and\r\nvulgarity of intellect and disposition working upon the common\r\nweaknesses of woman at such different ages. With Mary, Miss Austen has\r\ntaken rather less pains, though she has been even more unkind to her;\r\nnot merely in the text, but, as we learn from those interesting\r\ntraditional appendices which Mr. Austen Leigh has given us, in dooming\r\nher privately to marry “one of Mr. Philips’s clerks.” The habits of\r\nfirst copying and then retailing moral sentiments, of playing and\r\nsinging too long in public, are, no doubt, grievous and criminal; but\r\nperhaps poor Mary was rather the scapegoat of the sins of blue stockings\r\nin that Fordyce-belectured generation. It is at any rate difficult not\r\nto extend to her a share of the respect and affection (affection and\r\nrespect of a peculiar kind; doubtless), with which one regards Mr.\r\nCollins, when she draws the moral of Lydia’s fall. I sometimes wish\r\nthat the exigencies of the story had permitted Miss Austen to unite\r\nthese personages, and thus at once achieve a notable mating and soothe\r\npoor Mrs. Bennet’s anguish over the entail._\r\n\r\n_The Bingleys and the Gardiners and the Lucases, Miss Darcy and Miss de\r\nBourgh, Jane, Wickham, and the rest, must pass without special comment,\r\nfurther than the remark that Charlotte Lucas (her egregious papa, though\r\ndelightful, is just a little on the thither side of the line between\r\ncomedy and farce) is a wonderfully clever study in drab of one kind, and\r\nthat Wickham (though something of Miss Austen’s hesitation of touch in\r\ndealing with young men appears) is a not much less notable sketch in\r\ndrab of another. Only genius could have made Charlotte what she is, yet\r\nnot disagreeable; Wickham what he is, without investing him either with\r\na cheap Don Juanish attractiveness or a disgusting rascality."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJRRD3TNE5A6AKAVXSRFT9RC","peer_label":"pride-and-prejudice","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJRRC2C7K6XERRJES8143XGV","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJRRFHPERFHRK8K129N0MT6Y","peer_label":"mrs bennet","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"fictional_character","extracted_at":"2026-03-03T02:30:09.995Z"}},{"peer":"01KJRREYSEG13SVHNKA2ZC2AA1","peer_label":"pride and 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