No, I must keep to my own
style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in
that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.
'I remain, my dear Sir,
'Your very much obliged, and sincere friend,
'J. AUSTEN.
'Chawton, near Alton, April 1, 1816.'
Mr. Clarke should have recollected the warning of the wise man, 'Force
not the course of the river.' If you divert it from the channel in which
nature taught it to flow, and force it into one arbitrarily cut by
yourself, you will lose its grace and beauty.
But when his free course is not hindered,
He makes sweet music with the enamelled stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage:
And so by many winding nooks he strays
With willing sport.
All writers of fiction, who have genius strong enough to work out a
course of their own, resist every attempt to interfere with its
direction. No two writers could be more unlike each other than Jane
Austen and Charlotte Bronte; so much so that the latter was unable to
understand why the former was admired, and confessed that she herself
'should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their
elegant but confined houses;' but each writer equally resisted
interference with her own natural style of composition.
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