SIR WALTER AND NAPOLEON
StR,—It should surely not be forgotten that Scott, in his Waterloo (1815) and Paul's Letters to His Kinsfolk, showed deep interest in the climax of the Napoleonic War. Also that Jane Austen requested John Murray, her publisher and Scott's, to lend these works to her convalescent brother Henry, when doubtless, according to the Austens' custom, they would be read aloud in the family circle.
It is remarkable how few eighteenth-century novelists made the
war of their day a background for their fiction. Perhaps their public demanded " escapist " literature; perhaps their own imagina- tions were insufficiently kindled by the tardy and meagre news they received from the Continent ; perhaps—more patient and artistic than the present generation—they felt that contemporary events and personages could not be viewed in their true perspective. Scott in his description of defensive preparations in The Antiquary, and Jane Austen in her use of the Camp at Brighton as the very pivot of the plot of Pride and Prejudice, and in her numerous references to the work of the Navy in Persuasion, were, in fact, exceptions to the rule. In an article in the Contemporary Review of last Novem- ber I attempted to refute the oft-repeated dictum of her critics that she was not interested in public events.—Yours truly,
LAURA M. RAGG.
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