Frances Burney [Madame D’Arblay], 1752–1840. Born, at King’s Lynn, 13 June 1752. Family removed to London, 1760. Mother died, 1761. Father married again, 1766. No regular education. Began early to write stories, plays, poems, etc. First novel published anonymously, Jan. 1778. Intimacy with Mrs. Thrale, Dr. Johnson, Sheridan, Burke, etc. Appointed Second Keeper of Robes to Queen, 17 July 1786. Bad health; retired, 7 July 1791, with pension of £100 a year. Travelled in England. Made acquaintance of Gen. D’Arblay at Mickleham, where her sister lived. Married to him, 31 July 1793. Settled at Bookham, near Norbury. Tragedy, “Edwy and Elvina,” performed at Drury Lane, 21 March 1795; withdrawn after first night. Built a cottage at West Humble, near Mickleham; removed there, 1797. Comedy, “Love and Fashion,” accepted for Covent Garden, but withdrawn before performance, 1800. Husband went to seek employment in France, 1801. In Paris with him, 1802–05; at Passy, 1805–14. Visit to England with son, Aug. 1812. In Paris, 1814–15. In Belgium, March to July, 1815. Returned to England, Oct. 1815. At Bath, Feb. 1816 to June 1817; at Ilfracombe, June to Oct. 1817; at Bath, Oct. 1817 to Sept. 1818. Husband died, 3 May 1818. To London, Oct. 1818. Son died, 19 Jan. 1837. Severe illness, 1839. Died, in London, 6 Jan. 1840. Works: “Evelina” (anon.), 1778; “Cecilia” (anon.), 1782; “Brief Reflections relative to the French Emigrant Clergy” (anon.), 1793; “Camilla,” 1796; “The Wanderer,” 1814; “Memoirs of Dr. Burney,” 1832. Posthumous: “Diary and Letters” (7 vols.), 1842–46.

Personal

  Mrs. Byron, who really loves me, was disgusted at Miss Burney’s carriage to me, who have been such a friend and benefactress to her: not an article of dress, not a ticket for public places, not a thing in the world that she could not command from me: yet always insolent, always pining for home, always preferring the mode of life in St. Martin’s Street to all I could do for her. She is a saucy-spirited little puss, to be sure, but I love her dearly for all that; and I fancy she has a real regard for me, if she did not think it beneath the dignity of a wit, or of what she values more,—the dignity of Dr. Burney’s daughter,—to indulge it. Such dignity! the Lady Louisa of Leicester Square! In good time!

  There are few—I believe I may say fairly there are none at all—that will not find themselves better informed concerning human nature, and their stock of observation enriched, by reading your “Cecilia.”… I might trespass upon your delicacy if I should fill my letter to you with what I fill my conversation to others; I should be troublesome to you alone if I should tell you all I feel and think on the natural vein of humour, the tender pathetic, the comprehensive and noble moral and the sagacious observation, that appear quite throughout this extraordinary performance…. In an age distinguished by producing extraordinary women, I hardly dare to tell where my opinion would place you amongst them.

  Next to the balloon [on exhibition in the Pantheon] Miss Burney is the object of public curiosity; I had the pleasure of meeting her yesterday. She is a very unaffected, modest, sweet, and pleasing young lady: but you, now I think of it, are a Goth, and have not read “Cecilia.” Read, read it, for shame!

  At last Madame D’Arblay arrived. I was very glad to see her again. She is wonderfully improved in good looks in ten years, which have usually a very different effect at an age when people begin to fall off. Her face has acquired expression and a charm which it never had before. She has gained an embompoint very advantageous to her face. We did not talk much about France; but with her intelligence there was a great deal she could tell, and much she could not, having a husband and a French establishment, to which she was to return after the winter.

  Was introduced by Rogers to Mad. D’Arblay, the celebrated authoress of “Evelina” and “Cecilia”—an elderly lady, with no remains of personal beauty, but with a simple and gentle manner, a pleasing expression of countenance, and apparently quick feelings. She told me she had wished to see two persons—myself, of course, being one, the other George Canning. This was really a compliment to be pleased with—a nice little handsome pat of butter, made up by a “neat-handed Phillis” of a dairy-maid, instead of the grease, fit only for cart-wheels, which one is dosed with by the pound. Mad. D’Arblay told us that the common story of Dr. Burney, her father, having brought home her own first work, and recommended it to her perusal, was erroneous. Her father was in the secret of “Evelina” being printed. But the following circumstance may have given rise to the story:—Dr. Burney was at Streatham soon after the publication, where he found Mrs. Thrale recovering from her confinement, low at the moment, and out of spirits. While they were talking together, Johnson, who sat beside in a kind of reverie, suddenly broke out, “You should read this new work, madam—you should read ‘Evelina;’ every one says it is excellent, and they are right.” The delighted father obtained a commission from Mrs. Thrale to purchase his daughter’s work and retired the happiest of men. Madame D’Arblay said she was wild with joy at this decisive evidence of her literary success, and that she could only give vent to her rapture by dancing and skipping round a mulberry-tree in the garden. She was very young at this time.

  The Queen was persuaded to appoint Miss Burney, Mrs. Delany and Mr. Smelt having deceived themselves into believing her capable of adapting herself to her place, and of performing her now duties satisfactorily; their earnest desire to insure Miss Burney a certain salary instead of the precarious income arising from her works, having blinded their better judgment. Miss Burney was elated to such a degree by the appointment that she gradually lost all consciousness of her actual or relative position. She lived in an ideal world of which she was, in her own imagination, the centre. She believed herself possessed of a spell which fascinated all those she approached. She became convinced that all the equerries were in love with her, although she was continually the object of their ridicule, as they discovered her weaknesses and played upon her credulity for their own amusement. Many entertaining anecdotes might be collected of the ludicrous effect produced by Miss Burney’s far-fetched expressions when she desired to be especially eloquent, and particularly courtly.

  I attended her during the last twenty years of her long life…. She lived in almost total seclusion from all but a few members of her own family; changed her lodgings more frequently than her dresses and occupied herself laboriously in composing those later works which retain so little of the charm of her earlier writings. Mr. Rogers was the only literary man who seemed to know of her existence.

  For a considerable time the income on which she, her husband, and her child subsisted, did not exceed £125 a year. They were too independent in spirit to accept assistance from friends; too upright to rely on contingencies; and Madame D’Arblay pursued, in all the minutiæ of domestic life, a course of self-denial such as she wrote to her Susanna, “would make you laugh to see, though perhaps cry to hear.” With all this, her mind and thoughts were never shut up in her economy. It was at this period that she originated the invitation sent by her and M. D’Arblay to his friend the Comte de Narbonne, to make their cottage his home; and it was also during these straitened circumstances that she withdrew her comedy of “Love and Fashion” from rehearsal, in dutiful compliance with the wishes of her father; although the management of Covent Garden had promised her £400 for the manuscript. Queen Charlotte’s expression, that she was “true as gold,” was abundantly verified in her friendship.

  Consider the brilliant and instantaneous success of Frances Burney. Think of the excitement she aroused, and honors heaped thick and fast upon her. A woman of twenty-six when she wrote “Evelina” she was able, by dint of short stature and childish ways, to pass for a girl of seventeen, which increased amazingly the popular interest in her novel. Sheridan swore he could not believe so young a thing could manifest such genius, and begged her to write him a comedy on the spot. Sir Joshua Reynolds professed actual fear of such keen wit and relentless observation. Dr. Johnson vowed that Richardson had written nothing finer, and Fielding nothing so fine as “Evelina,” and playfully protested he was too proud to eat cold mutton for dinner when he sat by Miss Burney’s side. Posterity, it is true, while preserving “Evelina” with great pride, has declined to place it by the side of “Tom Jones” or “Clarissa Harlowe,” but if we had our choice between the praise of posterity which was Miss Austen’s portion, and the praise of contemporaries which was Miss Burney’s lot, I doubt not we should be wise enough to take our applause off-hand,—“dashed in our faces, sounded in our ears,” as Johnson said of Garrick, and leave the future to look after itself.

  The fame of Miss Burney declined pretty rapidly after the publication of her third novel. This did not appear till fourteen years after “Cecilia”—namely, in 1796. But her publishers, from whom she is said to have received a large sum of money for “Camilla,” on the strength, it is to be supposed, of her previous reputation, must have burnt their fingers by the venture. It failed to hit the public taste—failed as completely as Miss Burney’s subsequent memoirs of her father, and, indeed, as everything else that she subsequently wrote. She seems, in fact, to have been the “Miss Betty” of the literary world; and it is as difficult to understand in these days that she could ever have been the admiration of a lettered coterie, as it must have been for the friends of the “Young Roscius’” later years to realise in the person of that stout, middle-aged, respectable gentleman the juvenile prodigy for whom the playgoing public had for the time deserted all the great actors of their day.

Evelina, 1778

  This year was ushered in by a grand and most important event! At the latter end of January, the literary world was favored with the first publication of the ingenious, learned, and most profound Fanny Burney!… This admirable authoress has named her most elaborate performance, “Evelina; or, a Young Lady’s Entrance into the world.” Perhaps this may seem a rather bold attempt and title for a female whose knowledge of the world is very confined, and whose inclinations, as well as situation, incline her to a private and domestic life. All I can urge is, that I have only presumed to trace the accidents and adventures to which a “young woman” is liable; I have not pretended to shew the world what it actually is, but what it appears to a girl of seventeen: and so far as that, surely, any girl who is past seventeen may safely do?

  “Evelina” seems a work that should result from long experience, a deep and intimate knowledge with the world: yet it has been written without either. Miss Burney is a real wonder. What she is, she is intuitively. Dr. Burney told me she had the fewest advantages of any of his daughters, from some peculiar circumstances. And such has been her timidity, that he himself had not any suspicion of her powers…. Modesty with her is neither pretense nor decorum; it is an ingredient of her nature; for she who could part with such a work for twenty pounds, could know so little of its worth or of her own, as to leave no possible doubt of her humility.

  The early works of Madame D’Arblay, in spite of the lapse of years, in spite of the change of manners, in spite of the popularity deservedly obtained by some of her rivals, continued to hold a high place in the public esteem. She lived to be a classic. Time set on her fame, before she went hence, that seal which is seldom set except on the fame of the departed. Like Sir Condy Rackrent in the tale, she survived her own wake, and overheard the judgment of posterity.

  Now here was a novel which riveted Burke and Sir Joshua; threw Johnson, old, sad, and hypochondriac as he was, into fits of admiration and laughter; made Sheridan dread a rival in the field; and extorted honest compliments from Gibbon, in the full flush of his own reputation. Its phrases became catchwords among the wits and blues; its characters were accepted as real types, and their names affixed to originals in all sorts of societies. The Miss Palmers told Miss Burney, and Miss Reynolds confirmed the story, how Sir Joshua, who began the book one day when he was too much engaged to go on with it, was so much caught that he could think of nothing else, and was quite absent all the day, not knowing a word that was said to him; and when he took it up again, found himself so much interested in it, that he sat up all night to finish it.

  The publication of “Evelina,” in 1778, made a sensation which the merits of the work fully justified…. “Evelina” fully deserved the praise and interest which it then obtained and still excites…. This novel presents to the reader a variety of social scenes which gives it a value possessed by no other work of fiction of the eighteenth century. No novelist has described so well or so fully the aspect of the theatres, of Vauxhall and Ranelagh, of Bath in the season, of the ridottos and assemblies of the London fashionable world. The shops, the amusements and the manners of the middle classes are made familiar to Evelina by her association with the Brangtons, and add greatly to the breadth of this valuable picture of metropolitan life. With a feminine attention to detail, and a quick perception of salient characteristics, Miss Burney described the world about her so faithfully and picturesquely as to deserve the thanks of every student of social history…. In the painting of manners Miss Burney was eminently successful. But she was hardly less so in a point in which excellence could not have been expected in so youthful a writer. The plot of “Evelina” is constructed with a skill worthy of a veteran. Fielding alone, of the eighteenth century novelists, can be said to surpass Miss Burney in this respect…. In regard to her sketches of character, it may be objected that Miss Burney lacked breadth of treatment, that she dwelt on one distinctive characteristic at the expense of the others. But still, Lord Orville, though somewhat too much of a model, and Mrs. Selwyn, though somewhat too habitually a wit, are vivid and life-like characters. The Brangtons and Sir Clement Willougby are nature itself, and the girlish nature of Evelina is betrayed in her letters with great felicity.

  She had observed the droll and farcical side of life with great acumen, and the frank laughter which her pages provoked was indescribably welcome after the tear-inspiring episodes of the Sensibility school. It is to be desired that Miss Burney had remained the author of one book. Her “Cecilia” is only read because it is by the creator of “Evelina,” and her “Camilla” is never read at all.

  Evelina is perhaps rather the principal character of a celebrated story than a great character herself; yet she has in her more of the elements of a great character than her timidity would at first lead us to suppose. She is, when introduced to us, a lovely, but simple and timid girl, well brought up in a retired home; and her good sense and high principle only emerge gradually from a fog of overpowering shyness…. The tale is long, and every incident is most minutely described, but it is well worth reading, and if our readers like to ask for it at old bookstalls, they may perhaps obtain it for a modest sum. The characters are broadly drawn; the extremes of fantastic luxury, and of coarse vulgarity, meet in one picture in a way which seems strange to our more educated age, when good manners are the rule in all but the lowest class. But our Evelina moves among them all, simple, right minded, though unwise sometimes from extreme timidity, but coming out safely from many awkward situations by the protecting force of her own inner purity. That which strikes us most in the book is its vivacious style, and the marked contrast between a few refined and delicate-minded women, and the rough practical jokes which were apparently not out of favour in that day even in the highest circles.

  Miss Burney is no less caustic than Miss Austen; the Holborn beau, Mr. Smith, with his “fine varnish of low politeness,” and the two giggling Misses Braughton with their innocently gross confidences and grosser reticences, are as vulgar as anything to be found in the pages of her greater successor. But she is less detached and impersonal,—she cannot smile as Miss Austen smiles over the rabbit-warren of human littlenesses; at times she seems on the point of forgetting that there is nothing tragic in offence given to a peer’s sense of propriety—so warmly does she espouse Evelina’s grievances. Social miseries, in all their intensity and variety—some of them, by an odd repetition, undergone by herself years later at Windsor—surely never had a more enthusiastic recorder. The tortures Evelina suffers have the vividness of a nightmare; they are not exaggerated in representation, but they are so completely isolated, kept so far from the wash of the larger passions and interests of life, that what might have been a dull discomfort becomes a frightful incubus.

  It was the masterly natural freshness of the character-drawing, the clear, unencumbered vivacity of the incidents, the frankness of the humour,—in a word, the originality, the absence of literary artificiality,—that signalized “Evelina” asa work of genius, and set everybody talking about the new writer. Miss Burney was not the first woman novelist, but she was the first with a distinct vein of her own who wrote with her eyes on the subject, and not on any established model of approved style.

  You should read that story—whatever you may do with “Cecilia” and other later ones—if only to see how good and cleanly a piece of work in the way of society novel can come out of those broiling times, when “Humphrey Clinker” and “Tom Jones” and the prurient and sentimental langours of Richardson were on the toilette tables of the clever and the honest. The book of “Evelina” is, all over, Miss Burney; that gives it the rarest and best sort of realism. Through all her work indeed, we have this over-jubilant and gushing, yet timid and diffident young lady, writing her stories—with all her timidities and large, unspoken hopes, tumbling and twittering in the bosoms of her heroines: if my lady has the fidgets, the fidgets come into her books; and you can always chase back the tremors that smite from time to time the fair Evelina, to the kindred tremors that afflict the clever and sensitive daughter of old Dr. Burney.

  The novel, as we know, was reported, before its author’s name was known, to be the work of a girl of seventeen, and perhaps some part of its extraordinary vogue may have been due to this flattering mistake. But the main element in its success must surely, I should think, be sought in the fact that it was the first “novel of manners,” in the later sense of the word, that had ever been offered to the public. It was a picture of life in London, life at Bath, life at the Bristol Hot Wells, in the later eighteenth century—principally, indeed, of modish life, but with just so much of a side glance at the gaieties and affectations of the middle class as would give it additional piquancy to the taste of the superiors whom they strove to imitate…. No tenderness towards this subject of a hundred-years-old nine-days’ wonder ought to induce a candid critic of to-day to conceal his conviction that “Evelina” is a very crude performance.

Cecilia, 1782

  Oh! it beats every other book, even your own other volumes, for “Evelina” was a baby to it…. Such a novel! Indeed, I am seriously and sensibly touched by it, and am proud of her friendship who so knows the human heart.

  I am sure you are acquainted with the novel entitled “Cecilia,” much admired for its good sense, variety of character, delicacy of sentiment, etc., etc. There is nothing good, amiable, and agreeable mentioned in the book, that is not possessed by the author of it, Miss Burney. I have now been acquainted with her three years: her extreme diffidence of herself, notwithstanding her great genius and the applause she has met with, adds lustre to all her excellences, and all improve on acquaintance.

  Though the world saw and heard little of Madame D’Arblay during the last forty years of her life, and though that little did not add to her fame, there were thousands, we believe, who felt a singular emotion when they learned that she was no longer among us. The news of her death carried the minds of men back at one leap, clear over two generations, to the time when her first literary triumphs were won. All those whom we had been accustomed to revere as intellectual patriarchs, seemed children when compared with her; for Burke had sat up all night to read her writings, and Johnson had pronounced her superior to Fielding when Rogers was still a school-boy, and Southey still in petticoats. Yet more strange did it seem that we should just have lost one whose name had been widely celebrated before anybody had heard of some illustrious men who, twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, were, after a long and splendid career, borne with honour to the grave. Yet so it was. Frances Burney was at the height of fame and popularity before Cowper had published his first volume, before Porson had gone up to college, before Pitt had taken his seat in the House of Commons, before the voice of Erskine had been once heard in Westminster Hall. Since the appearance of her first work, sixty-two years had passed; and this interval had been crowded, not only with political, but also with intellectual revolutions.

  She wrote “Cecilia” because the world told her it was amused by her, and that she could make her fortune by going on amusing it. But even in this second book there were indications that the natural spring was pretty nearly exhausted, while a deterioration of style betrayed the fact that her mastery of the means of literary expression was not sufficient to keep her works up to the mark when the vivacity of the first spontaneous impulse should be spent.

Camilla, 1796

  How I like “Camilla?” I do not care to say how little. Alas! she has reversed experience, which I have long thought reverses its own utility by coming at the wrong end of our life when we do not want it. This author (Miss Burney) knew the world and penetrated characters before she had stepped over the threshold; and, now she has seen so much of it, she has little or no insight at all: perhaps she apprehended having seen too much, and kept the bags of foul air that she brought from the Caves of Tempests too closely tied.

  Critics have differed about the merits of “Camilla.” A small but by no means ill-judging minority prefer it to the author’s earlier works. In plot, development of character, and natural pathos it seems to us not inferior to “Evelina” and “Cecilia;” but the style is less easy and flowing, betraying the first symptoms of that falling off which afterwards became so apparent.

  The real talent of the authoress shows forth in “Camilla,” the least extolled, but certainly the best of her novels. Camilla’s character is charming: impulsive, erring, endearing, the old uncle, the spoiled Indiana, the deformed sister, the indulgent pitying father, are perfect. The story is touching and interesting—there are points in it which one can hardly remember without tears; and if we condemn the hard and lofty virtue of the hero, we must admit that it stands in relief to the infirm purpose, and gentle failings of the other characters.

The Wanderer, 1814

  Betrayed a terrible contrast to her earlier and happier style, and was in every way unworthy of her name.

Diary and Letters

  Our conjectures are now too fully verified: the interest is indeed much less than we anticipated, but in all the rest—the diffuseness—the pomposity—the prolixity—the false colouring—the factitious details—and, above all, the personal affectation and vanity of the author, this book exceeds our worst apprehensions…. We really have never met anything more curious, nor, if it were not repeated ad nauseam, more comical, than the elaborate ingenuity with which—as the ancients used to say that all roads led to Rome—every topic, from whatsoever quarter it may start, is ultimately brought home to Miss Burney…. The result of all is that we are conscientiously obliged to pronounce these three volumes to be—considering their bulk and pretensions—nearly the most worthless we have ever waded through, and that we do not remember in all our experience to have laid down an unfinished work with less desire for its continuation. That it may not mend as it proceeds, we cannot—where there is such room for improvement—venture to pronounce; and there is thus much to be said for it, that it can hardly grow worse.

  This is believed to be the only published, perhaps the only existing, record of the life of an English girl, written by herself, in a century before that which is now in its wane. Such a portrayal of a young Englishwoman, and her times, would be interesting even if the girl had not been (as was this one) a born author, who lived among men and women more or less distinguished, herself became famous, and was admired by the admired, as well as praised by the common voice; whose brilliant reputation as a novelist was revived, some fifty years ago, by her fresh and still greater renown as a chronicler of English social and court-life, during many and marked years of the long reign of George the Third. The novelist and the chronicler are shown in these still earlier diaries which are now for the first time published, as developing from year to year. Sketches revealing the future “character-monger” alternate here with innocent, tender, and generous thoughts, and feelings of affection to kinsfolk and friends, more than commonly lasting, as well as warm; with traits of a disposition very mobile, but singularly steady; very lively, but very sweet; discreet, and considerate almost to moral precocity.

  The greater part of this latter work (“Diary and Letters”) has the charm of contemporary narrative written without the primary intention of publication, and inspired by affection and the certainty of meeting with sympathy and interest in the intended recipient of their confidences. Such writings may be full of egotism and trivial detail; but they do not deceive and they do not weary. We come to know thoroughly, to like or dislike naturally, the persons described. We find, as we read, that we are getting new insight into the characters of men and women famous in other ways; and that we are learning something new from the sayings and doings of men and women who have never been famous at all.

General

  She is a quick, lively, and accurate observer of persons and things; but she always looks at them with a consciousness of her sex, and in that point of view in which it is the particular business and interest of women to observe them. There is little in her works of passion or character, or even manners, in the most extended sense of the word, as implying the sum-total of our habits and pursuits; her forte is in describing the absurdities and affectations of external behaviour, or the manners of people in company…. In one of her novels, for example, a lady appears regularly every ten pages, to get a lesson in music for nothing. She never appears for any other purpose; this is all you know of her; and in this the whole wit and humour of the character consists. Meadows is the same, who has always the cue of being tired, without any other idea. It has been said of Shakspeare, that you may always assign his speeches to the proper characters; and you may infallibly do the same thing with Madame D’Arblay’s, for they always say the same thing. The Braughtons are the best. Mr. Smith is an exquisite city portrait. “Evelina” is also her best novel, because it is the shortest; that is, it has all the liveliness in the sketches of character, and smartness of comic dialogue and repartee, without the tediousness of the story, and endless affectation of sentiment which disfigures the others…. There is little other power in Madame D’Arblay’s novels than that of immediate observation; her characters, whether of refinement or vulgarity, are equally superficial and confined.

  Her works are deficient in original vigour of conception, and her characters in depth and nature. She has considered so anxiously the figured silks and tamboured muslins which flutter about society, that she has made the throbbings of the hearts which they cover a secondary consideration…. Fashion passes away, and the manners of the great are unstable, but natural emotion belongs to immortality.

  Miss Burney did for the English novel what Jeremy Collier did for the English drama; and she did it in a better way. She first showed that a tale might be written in which both the fashionable and the vulgar life of London might be exhibited with great force, and with broad comic humour, and which yet should not contain a single line inconsistent with rigid morality, or even with virgin delicacy. She took away the reproach which lay on a most useful and delightful species of composition. She vindicated the right of her sex to an equal share in a fair and noble province of letters. Several accomplished women have followed in her track. At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honourably distinguished by fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling. Several among the successors of Madame D’Arblay have equalled her; two, we think, have surpassed her. But the fact that she has been surpassed gives her an additional claim to our respect and gratitude; for in truth we owe to her, not only Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla, but also Mansfield Park and the Absentee.

  Notwithstanding their egotism and prolixity, certainly these volumes are among the most delightful in the language! To the mere novel-reader they are charming; to the student of literary history and English manners, invaluable.

  Fanny Burney’s novels were considered immensely humorous and diverting in their day. Burke complimented her on “her natural vein of humor,” and another eminent critic speaks of “her sarcasm, drollery, and humor;” but it would be almost impossible to find a passage for quotation that would now satisfy on these points.

  Deriving her inspiration in part from Richardson, she heads the roll of those female novelists whose works form a considerable part of English literature. The purity of her writings first made the circulating library respectable. “We owe to her,” says Macaulay very justly, “not only ‘Evelina,’ ‘Cecilia,’ and ‘Camilla,’ but ‘Mansfield Park’ and the ‘Absentee.’”

  Unfortunately Miss Burney neither restrained her own early simplicity, nor did she adhere to that measured formality which she had learnt from Johnson. By whatever aberration of taste, or under whatever stress of circumstance—it may well be, as Macaulay surmises, by association with the French refugees and her subsequent residence in France—she fell into a style the most intricate, the most laboured, and the most affected that could be conceived. Her later novels had no qualities that could enable them to take their place with “Evelina” and “Cecilia;” but even if their other merits had been greater they would have been crushed into oblivion under the weight of such a style as is seen in the “Wanderer” and in the “Memoirs of Dr. Burney.”

  Fanny Burney is one of the best examples of what has been called the originality of ignorance. She was positively illiterate…. Quick observation, quick fancy, were her chief gifts. A little more study of the writings of others, a few more ideas, would have stifled her genius. Had she had a spark of imagination with her limited intellect, she would probably have been unable to write at all; but the absence of any transcendental quality made her fearless and successful in paths where more distinguished abilities dared not tread.

  The most difficult figure to fit in to any progressive scheme of English fiction is Frances Burney, who was actually alive with Samuel Richardson and with Mr. George Meredith. She wrote seldom, and published at long intervals; her best novels, founded on a judicious study of Marivaux and Rosseau, implanted on a strictly British soil, were produced a little earlier than the moment we have now reached. Yet the “Wanderer” was published simultaneously with “Waverley.” She is a social satirist of a very sprightly order, whose early “Evelina” and “Cecilia” were written with an ease which she afterwards unluckily abandoned for an aping of the pomposity of her favourite lexicographer. Miss Burney was a delightful novelist in her youth, but she took no part in the progressive development of English literature.