were there till Mr. Austen's death in the spring of 1805, when, after a short residence in lodgings in Gay Street, his widow and daughters left Bath "for good."
Whether the life there had been too full of small bustles for authorship to be easy, or whether the declining health of her parents occupied her too fully for writing, the fact remains that Jane Austen composed nothing of importance while at Bath; perhaps the failure of Northanger Abbey in 1803 disheartened her for a time from further efforts. One story she did begin, but it was never finished, nor even divided into chapters, so that she cannot have thought seriously of publishing it, and it certainly would not have satisfied her in its present state. In 1871 Mr. Austen Leigh, at the earnest request of many friends, published it in the same volume with Lady Susan, and called it The Watsons, as it had not any title. It is not a production to enhance her fame, and, indeed, the fragment is so slight and unfinished in manner and in matter that it shows how she must have polished and re-polished her writings before she gave them to the public.
The leading idea of The Watsons is of a girl of natural refinement early taken away from a vulgar home, and placed among cultivated people. When grown up, unfortunate circumstances compel her to live again with her own family, and their vulgarity becomes painfully obvious to her, especially when they come in contact with the great people of the neighbourhood. These grandees have been accustomed to treat the Watsons with contemptuous familiarity, and now find themselves repelled by the lady-like manners of Emma, whose beauty at the same time attracts universal notice. The first half of the story is chiefly
