all—­for it follows the contemporary stage in adopting a conventional lingo which, as we know from private letters as early as Gray’s and Walpole’s, if not even as Chesterfield’s and those of men and women older still, was not the language of well-bred, well-educated, and intelligent persons at any time during the century.  As for the Fourth Estate of the novel—­description—­it had rarely been attempted even by the great masters.  In fact it has been pointed out as perhaps the one unquestionable merit of Mrs. Radcliffe that—­following the taste for the picturesque which, starting from Gray and popularised by Gilpin, was spreading over the country—­she did attempt to introduce this important feature, and did partly, in a rococo way, succeed in introducing it.  As for plot, that has never been our strong point—­we seem to have been contented with Tom Jones as payment in full of that demand.[17]

[17] The frankness of the ingenious creator of Mr. Jorrocks should be imitated by 99 per cent. of English novelists.  “The following story,” says he of Ask Mamma, “does not involve the complication of a plot.  It is a mere continuous narrative.”

Now, this was all changed.  It is doubtful whether if Northanger Abbey had actually appeared in 1796 it would have been appreciated—­Miss Austen, like other writers of genius, had, not exactly as the common but incorrect phrase goes, to create the taste for her own work, but to arouse the long dormant appetite which she was born to satisfy.  Yet, looking back a hundred years, it seems impossible that anybody of wits should have failed at once to discover the range, the perfection, and the variety of the new gift, or set of gifts.  Here all the elements come in:  and something with them that enlivens and intensifies them all.  The plot is not intricate, but there is a plot—­good deal more, perhaps, than is generally noticed, and more than Miss Austen herself sometimes gave, as, for instance, in Mansfield Park.  It is even rather artfully worked out—­the selfish gabble of John Thorpe, who may look to superficial observers like a mere outsider, playing an important part twice in the evolution.  There is not lavish but amply sufficient description and scenery—­the Bath vignettes, especially the Beechencliff prospect; the sketch of the Abbey itself and of Henry’s parsonage, etc.  But it is in the other two constituents that the blowing of the new wind of the spirit is most perceptible.  The character-drawing is simply wonderful, especially in the women—­though the men lack nothing.  John Thorpe has been glanced at—­there had been nothing like him before, save in Fielding and in the very best of the essayists and dramatists.  General Tilney has been found fault with as unnatural and excessive:  but only by people who do not know what “harbitrary gents” fathers of families, who were not only squires and members of parliament, but military men, could be