I am too vain to wish to convince you that
you have praised them beyond their merits. My greatest anxiety at
present is that this fourth work should not disgrace what was good in
the others. But on this point I will do myself the justice to declare
that, whatever may be my wishes for its success, I am strongly haunted
with the idea that to those readers who have preferred "Pride and
Prejudice" it will appear inferior in wit, and to those who have
preferred "Mansfield Park" inferior in good sense. Such as it is,
however, I hope you will do me the favour of accepting a copy. Mr.
Murray will have directions for sending one. I am quite honoured by
your thinking me capable of drawing such a clergyman as you gave the
sketch of in your note of Nov. 16th. But I assure you I am _not_. The
comic part of the character I might be equal to, but not the good, the
enthusiastic, the literary. Such a man's conversation must at times
be on subjects of science and philosophy, of which I know nothing; or
at least be occasionally abundant in quotations and allusions which a
woman who, like me, knows only her own mother tongue, and has read
little in that, would be totally without the power of giving.
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