Not less happy is the dumbfounded astonishment of Mrs.
Bennet at her toilet, when she hears--to her stupefaction--that her
daughter Elizabeth is to be mistress of Pemberley and ten thousand a
year. This last is a head-piece; and it may be observed, as an
additional difficulty in this group of novels, that, owing to the
circumstances of publication, only in one of the books. _Pride and
Prejudice_, was Mr, Thomson free to decorate the chapters with those
ingenious _entetes_ and _culs-de-lampe_ of which he so eminently
possesses the secret.[32]
Note:
[32] That eloquence of subsidiary detail, which has had so many
exponents in English art from Hogarth onwards, is one of Mr. Thomson's
most striking characteristics. The reader will find it exemplified in
the beautiful book-plate at page 111, which, by the courtesy of its
owner, Mr. Ernest Brown, I am permitted to reproduce.
By this time his reputation had long been firmly established. To the
Jane Austen volumes succeeded other numbers of the so-called "Cranford"
series, to which, in 1894, Mr. Thomson had already added, under the
title of _Coridon's Song and other Verses_, a fresh ingathering of
old-time minstrelsy from the pages of the _English Illustrated_. Many of
the drawings for these, though of necessity reduced for publication in
book form, are in his most delightful and winning manner,--notably
perhaps (if one must choose!) the martial ballad of that "Captain of
Militia, Sir Bilberry Diddle," who
--dreamt, Fame reports, that he cut all the throats
Of the French as they landed in flat-bottomed boats
--or rather were going to land any time during the Seven Years' War.
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