PREFACE
than in public; as people laugh louder in the house than in the street. Many of her admirers would not expect, perhaps many of her admirers would not admire, the sort of fun to be found in the letter to the young lady "whose feelings were too strong for her judgment," and who remarks incidentally "I murdered my father at a very early period in my life, I have since murdered my mother, and I am now going to murder my sister." Personally, I think it admirable; not the conduct, but the confession. But there is much more than hilarity in the humour, even at this stage of its growth. There is almost everywhere a certain neatness in the nonsense. There is not a little of the true Austen irony. "The noble Youth informed us that his name was Lindsay—for particular reasons, however, I shall conceal it under that of Talbot." Did anyone really desire that to disappear into the waste-paper basket? "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." Is not that something like the first faint line in the figure of Fanny Price? When a loud knocking is heard on the door of the Rustic Cot by the Uske, the heroine's father enquires the nature of the noise, and by cautious steps of inference they are enabled to define it as somebody outside striking the door.
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