Read it through once

To contend, however, for a moment that the present volume is Miss Austen's greatest, as it was her first published, novel, would be a mere exercise in paradox. There are, who swear by _Persuasion_; there are, who prefer _Emma_ and _Mansfield Park_; there is a large contingent for _Pride and Prejudice_; and there is even a section which advocates the pre-eminence of _Northanger Abbey_. But no one, as far as we can remember, has ever put _Sense and Sensibility_ first, nor can we believe that its author did so herself. And yet it is she herself who has furnished the standard by which we judge it, and it is by comparison with _Pride and Prejudice_, in which the leading characters are also two sisters, that we assess and depress its merit. The Elinor and Marianne of _Sense and Sensibility_ are only inferior when they are contrasted with the Elizabeth and Jane of _Pride and Prejudice_; and even then, it is probably because we personally like the handsome and amiable Jane Bennet rather better than the obsolete survival of the sentimental novel represented by Marianne Dashwood. Darcy and Bingley again are much more 'likeable' (to use Lady Queensberry's word) than the colourless Edward Ferrars and the stiff-jointed Colonel Brandon. Yet it might not unfairly be contended that there is more fidelity to what Mr. Thomas Hardy has termed 'life's little ironies' in Miss Austen's disposal of the two Miss Dashwoods than there is in her disposal of the heroines of _Pride and Prejudice_. Every one does not get a Bingley, or a Darcy (with a park); but a good many sensible girls like Elinor pair off contentedly with poor creatures like Edward Ferrars, while not a few enthusiasts like Marianne decline at last upon middle-aged colonels with flannel waistcoats. George Eliot, we fancy, would have held that the fates of Elinor and Marianne were more probable than the fortunes of Jane and Eliza Bennet. That, of the remaining characters, there is certainly none to rival Mr. Bennet, or Lady Catherine de Bourgh, or the ineffable Mr. Collins, of _Pride and Prejudice_, is true; but we confess to a kindness for vulgar matchmaking Mrs. Jennings with her still-room 'parmaceti for an inward bruise' in the shape of a glass of old Constantia; and for the diluted Squire Western, Sir John Middleton, whose horror of being alone carries him to the point of rejoicing in the acquisition of _two_ to the population of London. Excellent again are Mr. Palmer and his wife; excellent, in their sordid veracity, the self-seeking figures of the Miss Steeles. But the pearls of the book must be allowed to be that egregious amateur in toothpick-cases, Mr. Robert Ferrars (with his excursus in chapter xxxvi. on life in a cottage), and the admirably-matched Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood. Miss Austen herself has never done anything better than the inimitable and oft-quoted chapter wherein is debated between the last-named pair the momentous matter of the amount to be devoted to Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters; while the suggestion in chapters xxxiii. and xxxiv. that the owner of Norland was once within some thousands of having to sell out at a loss, deserves to be remembered with that other memorable escape of Sir Roger de Coverley's ancestor, who was only not killed in the civil wars because 'he was sent out of the field upon a private message, the day before the battle of Worcester.'