] Music, too had a great deal to do with it, I am sure. P&P starts at a gallop,and continues at breakneck speed for the whole of book one- like a merry dance, or rippling scales. S&S is a slower measure, a little more sedate in the speech of Elinor and, rhythmically swinging with Marianne.

Thanks, Lief, for such a wonderful post! Yours and Caroline's musings made me think back to June's MT last year, which was all about JA and music. Although it seems JA wasn't one to exhibit herself musically very often in company, she was a far-more than merely proficient musician. I love to think of music infusing the very structure and tone of all her novels with its rhymical, mathmatical exactness, which compliments her more overt use of music in them. And her Letters too, seem to have staccato, allegro, and sometimes presto tempi to them.