Thackeray very nearly as wicked, sophistical and immoral as the
French novels. Even her dislike for children was probably due to the
same irremediable misfortune; for the humors of children are the only
redeeming points amid their general naughtiness and vexing
misbehavior. Mr. Swinburne, guiltless himself of any jocose
tendencies, has made the unique discovery that Charlotte Bronte
strongly resembles Cervantes, and that Paul Emanuel is a modern
counterpart of Don Quixote; and well it is for our poet that the
irascible little professor never heard him hint at such a similarity.
Surely, to use one of Mr. Swinburne's own incomparable expressions,
the parallel is no better than a "subsimious absurdity."

   On the other hand, we are told that Miss Austen owed her lively sense
of humor to her habit of dissociating the follies of mankind from any
rigid standard of right and wrong; which means, I suppose, that she
never dreamed she had a mission. Nowadays, indeed, no writer is
without one. We cannot even read a paper upon gypsies and not become
aware that its author is deeply imbued with a sense of his personal
responsibility for these agreeable rascals whom he insists upon our
taking seriously as if we wanted to have anything to do with them on
such terms! "Since the time of Carlyle," says Mr. Bagehot,
"earnestness has been a favorite virtue in literature"; but Oarlyle,
though sharing largely in that profound melancholy which he declared
to be the basis of every English soul, and though he was unfortunate
enough to think Pickwick sad trash, had nevertheless a grim and
eloquent humor of his own. With him, at least, earnestness never
degenerated into dulness; and while dulness may be, as he
unhesitatingly affirmed, the first requisite for a great and free
people, yet a too heavy percentage of this valuable quality is fatal
to the sprightly grace of literature. "In our times," said an old
Scotchwoman, "there's fully mony modern principles," and the first of
these seems to be the substitution of a serious and critical
discernment for the light-hearted sympathy of former days. Our
grandfathers cried a little and laughed a good deal over their books,
without the smallest sense of anxiety or responsibility in the
matter; but we are called on repeatedly to face problems which we
would rather let alone, to dive dismally into motives, to trace
subtle connections, to analyze uncomfortable sensations, and to
exercise in all cases a discreet and conscientious severity, when
what we really want and need is half an hour's amusement. There is no

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