GREAT CHARACTERS IN FICTION.
[To TEE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR,'] have read with mach interest and pleasure the re- marks in your article on Great Characters of Fiction," in the Spectator of July 1st, and I thoroughly agree to what is said in the abstract of the really great charac- ters in fiction; but I should like, in justice to my col- leagues, to mention one or two facts. " Miss " M. E. Townsend is really Mrs. Townsend, the founder of the Girls' Friendly Society, and the title "Great Characters of Fiction." is misleading, and challenges the attention of critics to the real literary value of the characters. We were originally asked to write papers that might direct the reading of the large class of girls of the shopkeeping order to the interest of the higher and better-written novels. And thus the selection of characters was made rather with a view to what was good for them than with an idea of the power displayed. When I was asked to write, most of the superior books had already been chosen, and my own copy of "Persuasion" was for the time out of my reach, though I ought to have known better than to add the " t " or to follow the Scottish fashion with the Musgraves." But I never saw the proofs, except those for the magazine where they first appeared. I thought of Anne Elliot more as an example than as a literary success. If I had chosen Miss Austen's ablest sketches, they would have been Emma and Mrs. Norton. I chose Hilda as a figure whose beauty had dwelt with me for many years.
Of course, if I had been free to choose great characters as great and able delineations, through the whole range of fiction, I should have taken Don Quixote, the Antiquary, the Baron of Bradwardine, and Padre Cristoforo in Manzoni's "Promessi Sposi,"—adding, perhaps, Mr. Peggotty, and certainly Jeanie Deans. But the difference between the grand educating im- pression of goodness and the actual lifelike delineation as a literary success, is one to be worked out. Cordelia may stand for the one, Dugald Dalgetty for the other.—I am, Sir, &c., Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester. C. M. YONGE.
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