eloquence and Attic wit has left us a forcible and touching description
of the misery of a man of letters, who, lured by hopes similar to those
of Frances, had entered the service of one of the magnates of Rome.
“Unhappy that I am,” cries the victim of his own childish ambition:
“would nothing content me but that I must leave mine old pursuits and
mine old companions, and the life which was without care, and the sleep
which had no limit save mine own pleasure, and the walks which I was
free to take where I listed, and fling myself into the lowest pit of
a dungeon like this? And, O God! for what? Was there no way by which I
might have enjoyed in freedom comforts even greater than those which I
now earn by servitude? Like a lion which has been made so tame that men
may lead him about by a thread, I am dragged up and down, with broken
and humbled spirit, at the heels of those to whom, in mine own domain, I
should have been an object of awe and wonder. And, worst of all, I feel
that here I gain no credit, that here I give no pleasure. The talents
and accomplishments, which charmed a far different circle, are here out
of place. I am rude in the arts of palaces, and can ill bear comparison
with those whose calling, from their youth up, has been to flatter and
to sue. Have I, then, two lives, that, after I have wasted one in the
service of others, there may yet remain to me a second, which I may live
unto myself?”
Now and then, indeed, events occurred which disturbed the wretched
monotony of Frances Burney’s life. The Court moved from Kew to Windsor,
and from Windsor back to Kew. One dull colonel went out of waiting, and
another dull colonel came into waiting. An impertinent servant made a
blunder about tea, and caused a misunderstanding between the gentlemen
and the ladies. A half-witted French Protestant minister talked oddly
about conjugal fidelity. An unlucky member of the household mentioned
a passage in the Morning Herald, reflecting on the Queen; and forthwith
Madame Schwellenberg began to storm in bad English, and told him that he
made her “what you call perspire!”
A more important occurrence was the King’s visit to Oxford. Miss Burney
went in the royal train to Nuneham, was utterly neglected there in the
crowd, and could with difficulty find a servant to show the way to her
bedroom, or a hairdresser to arrange her curls. She had the honour of
entering Oxford in the last of a long string of carriages which formed
the royal procession, of walking after the Queen all day through
refectories and chapels, and of standing, half dead with fatigue and
hunger, while her august mistress was seated at an excellent cold
collation. At Magdalen College, Frances was left for a moment in a
parlour, where she sank down on a chair. A good-natured equerry saw that
she was exhausted, and shared with her some apricots and bread, which
he had wisely put into his pockets. At that moment the door opened; the
Queen entered; the wearied attendants sprang up; the bread and fruit
were hastily concealed. “I found,” says poor Miss Burney, “that our
appetites were to be supposed annihilated, at the same moment that our
strength was to be invincible.”
Yet Oxford, seen even under such disadvantages, “revived in her,” to use
her own words, “a consciousness to pleasure which had long lain nearly
dormant.” She forgot, during one moment, that she was a waiting-maid,
and felt as a woman of true genius might be expected to feel
amidst venerable remains of antiquity, beautiful works of art, vast
repositories of knowledge, and memorials of the illustrious dead. Had
she still been what she was before her father induced her to take the
most fatal step of her life, we can easily imagine what pleasure she
would have derived from a visit to the noblest of English cities. She
might, indeed, have been forced to travel in a hack chaise, and might
not have worn so fine a gown of Chambery gauze as that in which she
tottered after the royal party; but with what delight would she have
then paced the cloisters of Magdalen, compared the antique gloom of
Merton with the splendour of Christ Church, and looked down from the
dome of the Ratcliffe Library on the magnificent sea of turrets and
battlements below! How gladly would learned men have laid aside for a
few hours Pindar’s Odes and Aristotle’s Ethics to escort the author of
Cecilia from college to college! What neat little banquets would she
have found set out in their monastic cells! With what eagerness would
pictures, medals, and illuminated missals have been brought forth from
the most mysterious cabinets for her amusement! How much she would have
had to hear and to tell about Johnson, as she walked over Pembroke, and
about Reynolds, in the antechapel of New College! But these indulgences
were not for one who had sold herself into bondage.
About eighteen months after the visit to Oxford, another event
diversified the wearisome life which Frances led at Court. Warren
Hastings was brought to the bar of the House of Peers. The Queen and
Princesses were present when the trial commenced, and Miss Burney was
permitted to attend. During the subsequent proceedings a day rule for
the same purpose was occasionally granted to her; for the Queen took the
strongest interest in the trial, and when she could not go herself to
Westminster Hall, liked to receive a report of what had passed from
a person of singular powers of observation, and who was, moreover,
acquainted with some of the most distinguished managers. The portion
of the Diary which relates to this celebrated proceeding is lively and
picturesque. Yet we read it, we own, with pain; for it seems to us to
prove that the fine understanding of Frances Burney was beginning to
feel the pernicious influence of a mode of life which is as incompatible
with health of mind as the air of the Pomptine marshes with health
of body. From the first day she espouses the cause of Hastings with a
presumptuous vehemence and acrimony quite inconsistent with the modesty
and suavity of her ordinary deportment. She shudders when Burke enters
the Hall at the head of the Commons. She pronounces him the cruel
oppressor of an innocent man. She is at a loss to conceive how the
managers can look at the defendant, and not blush. Windham comes to her
from the manager’s box, to offer her refreshment. “But,” says she, “I
could not break bread with him.” Then, again, she exclaims, “Ah, Mr.
Windham, how can you ever engage in so cruel, so unjust a cause?” “Mr.
Burke saw me,” she says, “and he bowed with the most marked civility
of manner.” This, be it observed, was just after his opening speech,
a speech which had produced a mighty effect, and which, certainly,
no other orator that ever lived, could have made. “My curtsy,” she
continues, “was the most ungrateful, distant and cold; I could not do
otherwise; so hurt I felt to see him the head of such a cause.” Now, not
only had Burke treated her with constant kindness, but the very last
act which he performed on the day on which he was turned out of the
Pay Office, about four years before this trial, was to make Dr. Burney
organist of Chelsea Hospital. When, at the Westminster election, Dr.
Burney was divided between his gratitude for this favour and his Tory
opinions, Burke in the noblest manner disclaimed all right to exact a
sacrifice of principle. “You have little or no obligations to me,” he
wrote; “but if you had as many as I really wish it were in my power, as
it is certainly in my desire, to lay on you, I hope you do not think
me capable of conferring them, in order to subject your mind or your
affairs to a painful and mischievous servitude.” Was this a man to be
uncivilly treated by a daughter of Dr. Burney, because she chose to
differ from him respecting a vast and most complicated question, which
he had studied deeply during many years, and which she had never studied
at all? It is clear, from Miss Burney’s own narrative, that when she
behaved so unkindly to Mr. Burke, she did not even know of what Hastings
was accused. One thing, however, she must have known, that Burke had
been able to convince a House of Commons, bitterly prejudiced against
himself, that the charges were well founded, and that Pitt and Dundas
had concurred with Fox and Sheridan, in supporting the impeachment.
Surely a woman of far inferior abilities to Miss Burney might have been
expected to see that this never could have happened unless there had
been a strong case against the late Governor-General. And there was, as
all reasonable men now admit, a strong case against him. That there
were great public services to be set off against his great crimes is
perfectly true. But his services and his crimes were equally unknown to
the lady who so confidently asserted his perfect innocence, and imputed
to his accusers, that is to say, to all the greatest men of all parties
in the State, not merely error, but gross injustice and barbarity.
She had, it is true, occasionally seen Mr. Hastings, and had found his
manners and conversation agreeable. But surely she could not be so weak
as to infer from the gentleness of his deportment in a drawing-room,
that he was incapable of committing a great State crime, under the
influence of ambition and revenge. A silly Miss, fresh from a boarding
school, might fall into such a mistake; but the woman who had drawn the
character of Mr. Monckton should have known better.
The truth is that she had been too long at Court. She was sinking into
a slavery worse than that of the body. The iron was beginning to enter
into the soul. Accustomed during many months to watch the eye of a
mistress, to receive with boundless gratitude the slightest mark
of royal condescension, to feel wretched at every symptom of royal
displeasure, to associate only with spirits long tamed and broken in,
she was degenerating into something fit for her place. Queen Charlotte
was a violent partisan of Hastings, had received presents from him,
and had so far departed from the severity of her virtue as to lend
her countenance to his wife, whose conduct had certainly been as
reprehensible as that of any of the frail beauties who were then rigidly
excluded from the English Court. The King, it was well known, took the
same side. To the King and Queen all the members of the household looked
submissively for guidance. The impeachment, therefore, was an atrocious
persecution; the managers were rascals; the defendant was the most
deserving and the worst used man in the kingdom. This was the cant of
the whole palace, from Gold Stick in Waiting, down to the Table-Deckers
and Yeoman of the Silver Scullery; and Miss Burney canted like the rest,
though in livelier tones, and with less bitter feelings.
The account which she has given of the King’s illness contains much
excellent narrative and description, and will, we think, be as much
valued by the historians of a future age as any equal portion of Pepys’s
or Evelyn’s Diaries. That account shows also how affectionate and
compassionate her nature was. But it shows also, we must say, that her
way of life was rapidly impairing her powers of reasoning and her sense
of justice. We do not mean to discuss, in this place, the question,
whether the views of Mr. Pitt or those of Mr. Fox respecting the regency
were the more correct. It is, indeed, quite needless to discuss that
question: for the censure of Miss Burney falls alike on Pitt and Fox,
on majority and minority. She is angry with the House of Commons for
presuming to inquire whether the King was mad or not, and whether there
was a chance of his recovering his senses. “A melancholy day,” she
writes; “news bad both at home and, abroad. At home the dear unhappy
king still worse; abroad new examinations voted of the physicians. Good
heavens! what an insult does this seem from Parliamentary power, to
investigate and bring forth to the world every circumstance of such a
malady as is ever held sacred to secrecy in the most private families!
How indignant we all feel here, no words can say.” It is proper to
observe, that the motion which roused all this indignation at Kew was
made by Mr. Pitt himself. We see, therefore, that the loyalty of the
Minister, who was then generally regarded as the most heroic champion
of his Prince, was lukewarm indeed when compared with the boiling
zeal which filled the pages of the backstairs and the women of the
bedchamber. Of the Regency Bill, Pitt’s own bill, Miss Burney speaks
with horror. “I shuddered,” she says, “to hear it named.” And again,
“Oh, how dreadful will be the day when that unhappy bill takes place!
I cannot approve the plan of it.” The truth is that Mr. Pitt, whether a
wise and upright statesman or not, was a statesman; and whatever motives
he might have for imposing restrictions on the regent, felt that in some
way or other there must be some provision made for the execution of some
part of the kingly office, or that no government would be left in the
country. But this was a matter of which the household never thought. It
never occurred, as far as we can see, to the Exons and Keepers of the
Robes, that it was necessary that there should be somewhere or other a
power in the State to pass laws, to preserve order, to pardon criminals,
to fill up offices, to negotiate with foreign governments, to command
the army and navy. Nay, these enlightened politicians, and Miss Burney
among the rest, seem to have thought that any person who considered the
subject with reference to the public interest, showed himself to be a
bad-hearted man. Nobody wonders at this in a gentleman usher; but it is
melancholy to see genius sinking into such debasement.
During more than two years after the King’s recovery, Frances dragged
on a miserable existence at the palace. The consolations which had for a
time mitigated the wretchedness of servitude were one by one withdrawn.
Mrs. Delany, whose society had been a great resource when the Court
was at Windsor, was now dead. One of the gentlemen of the royal
establishment, Colonel Digby, appears to have been a man of sense,
of taste, of some reading, and of prepossessing manners. Agreeable
associates were scarce in the prison house, and he and Miss Burney
therefore naturally became attached to each other. She owns that she
valued him as a friend; and it would not have been strange if his
attentions had led her to entertain for him a sentiment warmer than
friendship. He quitted the Court, and married in a way which astonished
Miss Burney greatly, and which evidently wounded her feelings, and
lowered him in her esteem. The palace grew duller and duller; Madame
Schwellenberg became more and more savage and insolent; and now the
health of poor Frances began to give way; and all who saw her pale face,
her emaciated figure, and her feeble walk, predicted that her sufferings
would soon be over.
Frances uniformly speaks of her royal mistress, and of the princesses,
with respect and affection. The princesses seem to have well deserved
all the praise which is bestowed on them in the Diary. They were,
we doubt not, most amiable women. But “the sweet Queen,” as she is
constantly called in these volumes, is not by any means an object of
admiration to us. She had undoubtedly sense enough to know what kind of
deportment suited her high station, and self-command enough to maintain
that deportment invariably. She was, in her intercourse with Miss
Burney, generally gracious and affable, sometimes, when displeased,
cold and reserved, but never, under any circumstances, rude, peevish,
or violent. She knew how to dispense, gracefully and skilfully, those
little civilities which, when paid by a sovereign, are prized at many
times their intrinsic value; how to pay a compliment; how to lend a
book; how to ask after a relation. But she seems to have been utterly
regardless of the comfort, the health, the life of her attendants, when
her own convenience was concerned. Weak, feverish, hardly able to stand,
Frances had still to rise before seven, in order to dress the sweet
Queen, and to sit up till midnight, in order to undress the sweet Queen.
The indisposition of the handmaid could not, and did not, escape the
notice of her royal mistress. But the established doctrine of the Court
was, that all sickness was to be considered as a pretence until it
proved fatal. The only way in which the invalid could clear herself from
the suspicion of malingering, as it is called in the army, was to go on
lacing and unlacing till she fell down dead at the royal feet. “This,”
Miss Burney wrote, when she was suffering cruelly from sickness,
watching, and labour, “is by no means from hardness of heart; far
otherwise. There is no hardness of heart in any one of them; but it is
prejudice, and want of personal experience.”
Many strangers sympathised with the bodily and mental sufferings of this
distinguished woman. All who saw her saw that her frame was sinking,
that her heart was breaking. The last, it should seem, to observe the
change was her father. At length, in spite of himself, his eyes were
opened. In May 1790, his daughter had an interview of three hours with
him, the only long interview which they had had since he took her to
Windsor in 1786. She told him that she was miserable, that she was worn
with attendance and want of sleep, that she had no comfort in life,
nothing to love, nothing to hope, that her family and her friends
were to her as though they were not, and were remembered by her as men
remember the dead. From daybreak to midnight the same killing labour,
the same recreations, more hateful than labour itself, followed each
other without variety, without any interval of liberty and repose.
The Doctor was greatly dejected by this news; but was too good-natured
a man not to say that, if she wished to resign, his house and arms were
open to her. Still, however, he could not bear to remove her from the
Court. His veneration for royalty amounted in truth to idolatry. It can
be compared only to the grovelling superstition of those Syrian devotees
who made their children pass through the fire to Moloch. When he induced
his daughter to accept the place of keeper of the robes, he entertained,
as she tells us, a hope that some worldly advantage or other, not set
down in the contract of service, would be the result of her connection
with the Court. What advantage he expected we do not know, nor did
he probably know himself. But, whatever he expected, he certainly got
nothing. Miss Burney had been hired for board, lodging, and two hundred
a year. Board, lodging, and two hundred a year, she had duly received.
We have looked carefully through the Diary, in the hope of finding some
trace of those extraordinary benefactions on which the Doctor reckoned.
But we can discover only a promise, never performed, of a gown: and for
this promise Miss Burney was expected to return thanks, such as might
have suited the beggar with whom Saint Martin, in the legend, divided
his cloak. The experience of four years was, however, insufficient to
dispel the illusion which had taken possession of the Doctor’s mind; and
between the dear father and the sweet Queen, there seemed to be little
doubt that some day or other Frances would drop down a corpse. Six
months had elapsed since the interview between the parent and the
daughter. The resignation was not sent in. The sufferer grew worse and
worse. She took bark; but it soon ceased to produce a beneficial effect.
She was stimulated with wine; she was soothed with opium; but in vain.
Her breath began to fail. The whisper that she was in a decline spread
through the Court. The pains in her side became so severe that she was
forced to crawl from the card-table of the old Fury to whom she was
tethered, three or four times in an evening for the purpose of taking
hartshorn. Had she been a negro slave, a humane planter would have
excused her from work. But her Majesty showed no mercy. Thrice a day
the accursed bell still rang; the Queen was still to be dressed for
the morning at seven, and to be dressed for the day at noon, and to be
undressed at midnight. But there had arisen, in literary and fashionable
society, a general feeling of compassion for Miss Burney, and of
indignation against both her father and the Queen. “Is it possible,”
said a great French lady to the Doctor, “that your daughter is in a
situation where she is never allowed a holiday?” Horace Walpole wrote
to Frances, to express his sympathy. Boswell, boiling over with
good-natured rage, almost forced an entrance into the palace to see her.
“My dear ma’am, why do you stay? It won’t do, ma’am; you must resign. We
can put up with it no longer. Some very violent measures, I assure
you, will be taken. We shall address Dr. Burney in a body.” Burke and
Reynolds, though less noisy, were zealous in the same cause. Windham
spoke to Dr. Burney; but found him still irresolute. “I will set the
club upon him,” cried Windham; “Miss Burney has some very true admirers
there, and I am sure they will eagerly assist.” Indeed the Burney family
seem to have been apprehensive that some public affront such as the
Doctor’s unpardonable folly, to use the mildest term, had richly
deserved, would be put upon him. The medical men spoke out, and plainly
told him that his daughter must resign or die.
At last paternal affection, medical authority, and the voice of all
London crying shame, triumphed over Dr. Burney’s love of courts. He
determined that Frances should write a letter of resignation. It was
with difficulty that, though her life was at stake, she mustered spirit
to put the paper into the Queen’s hands. “I could not,” so runs the
Diary, “summon courage to present my memorial; my heart always failed
me from seeing the Queen’s entire freedom from such an expectation.
For though I was frequently so ill in her presence that I could hardly
stand, I saw she concluded me, while life remained, inevitably hers.”
At last with a trembling hand the paper was delivered. Then came the
storm. Juno, as in the Aeneid, delegated the work of vengeance to
Alecto. The Queen was calm and gentle; but Madame Schwellenberg raved
like a maniac in the incurable ward of Bedlam! Such insolence! Such
ingratitude! Such folly! Would Miss Burney bring utter destruction on
herself and her family? Would she throw away the inestimable advantage
of royal protection? Would she part with privileges which, once
relinquished, could never be regained? It was idle to talk of health and
life. If people could not live in the palace, the best thing that could
befall them was to die in it. The resignation was not accepted. The
language of the medical men became stronger and stronger. Dr. Burney’s
parental fears were fully roused; and he explicitly declared, in a
letter meant to be shown to the Queen, that his daughter must retire.
The Schwellenberg raged like a wild cat. “A scene almost horrible
ensued,” says Miss Burney. “She was too much enraged for disguise,
and uttered the most furious expressions of indignant contempt at our
proceedings. I am sure she would gladly have confined us both in the
Bastile, had England such a misery, as a fit place to bring us to
ourselves, from a daring so outrageous against imperial wishes.” This
passage deserves notice, as being the only one in the Diary, so far as
we have observed, which shows Miss Burney to have been aware that she
was a native of a free country, that she could not be pressed for a
waiting-maid against her will, and that she had just as good a right to
live, if she chose, in Saint Martin’s Street, as Queen Charlotte had to
live at Saint James’s.
The Queen promised that, after the next birthday, Miss Burney should
be set at liberty. But the promise was ill kept; and her Majesty showed
displeasure at being reminded of it. At length Frances was informed that
in a fortnight her attendance should cease. “I heard this,” she says,
“with a fearful presentiment I should surely never go through another
fortnight, in so weak and languishing and painful a state of health. .
. . As the time of separation approached, the Queen’s cordiality rather
diminished, and traces of internal displeasure appeared sometimes,
arising from an opinion I ought rather to have struggled on, live or
die, than to quit her. Yet I am sure she saw how poor was my own chance,
except by a change in the mode of life, and at least ceased to wonder,
though she could not approve.” Sweet Queen! What noble candour, to
admit that the undutifulness of people, who did not think the honour
of adjusting her tuckers worth the sacrifice of their own lives, was,
though highly criminal, not altogether unnatural!
We perfectly understand her Majesty’s contempt for the lives of others
where her own pleasure was concerned. But what pleasure she can have
found in having Miss Burney about her, it is not so easy to comprehend.
That Miss Burney was an eminently skilful keeper of the robes is not
very probable. Few women, indeed, had paid less attention to dress. Now
and then, in the course of five years, she had been asked to read aloud
or to write a copy of verses. But better readers might easily have been
found: and her verses were worse than even the Poet Laureate’s
Birthday Odes. Perhaps that economy, which was among her Majesty’s
most conspicuous virtues, had something to do with her conduct on this
occasion. Miss Burney had never hinted that she expected a retiring
pension; and indeed would gladly have given the little that she had for
freedom. But her Majesty knew what the public thought, and what
became her own dignity. She could not for very shame suffer a woman of
distinguished genius, who had quitted a lucrative career to wait on
her, who had served her faithfully for a pittance during five years, and
whose constitution had been impaired by labour and watching, to leave
the Courts without some mark of royal liberality. George the Third, who,
on all occasions where Miss Burney was concerned, seems to have behaved
like an honest, good-natured gentleman, felt this, and said plainly that
she was entitled to a provision. At length, in return for all the misery
which she had undergone, and for the health which she had sacrificed,
an annuity of one hundred pounds was granted to her, dependent on the
Queen’s pleasure.
Then the prison was opened, and Frances was free once more. Johnson,
as Burke observed, might have added a striking page to his poem on the
Vanity of Human Wishes, if he had lived to see his little Burney as she
went into the palace and as she came out of it.
The pleasures, so long untasted, of liberty, of friendship, of domestic
affection, were almost too acute for her shattered frame. But happy days
and tranquil nights soon restored the health which the Queen’s toilette
and Madame Schwellenberg’s card-table had impaired. Kind and anxious
faces surrounded the invalid. Conversation the most polished and
brilliant revived her spirits. Travelling was recommended to her; and
she rambled by easy journeys from cathedral to cathedral, and from
watering-place to watering-place. She crossed the New Forest, and
visited Stonehenge and Wilton, the cliffs of Lyme, and the beautiful
valley of Sidmouth. Thence she journeyed by Powderham Castle, and by the
ruins of Glastonbury Abbey to Bath, and from Bath, when the winter was
approaching, returned well and cheerful to London. There she visited
her old dungeon, and found her successor already far on the way to
the grave, and kept to strict duty, from morning till midnight, with a
sprained ankle and a nervous fever.
At this time England swarmed with French exiles, driven from their
country by the Revolution. A colony of these refugees settled at Juniper
Hall, in Surrey, not far from Norbury Park, where Mr. Lock, an intimate
friend of the Burney family, resided. Frances visited Norbury, and was
introduced to the strangers. She had strong prejudices against them; for
her Toryism was far beyond, we do not say that of Mr. Pitt, but that
of Mr. Reeves; and the inmates of Juniper Hall were all attached to the
constitution of 1791, and were therefore more detested by the royalists
of the first emigration than Petion or Marat. But such a woman as Miss
Burney could not long resist the fascination of that remarkable society.
She had lived with Johnson and Windham, with Mrs. Montague and Mrs.
Thrale. Yet she was forced to own that she had never heard conversation
before. The most animated eloquence, the keenest observation, the most
sparkling wit, the most courtly grace, were united to charm her. For
Madame de Stael was there, and M. de Talleyrand. There too was M. de
Narbonne, a noble representative of French aristocracy; and with M. de
Narbonne was his friend and follower General D’Arblay, an honourable and
amiable man, with a handsome person, frank soldierlike manners, and some
taste for letters.
The prejudices which Frances had conceived against the constitutional
royalists of France rapidly vanished. She listened with rapture to
Talleyrand and Madame de Stael, joined with M. D’Arblay in execrating
the Jacobins and in weeping for the unhappy Bourbons, took French
lessons from him, fell in love with him, and married him on no better
provision than a precarious annuity of one hundred pounds.
Here the Diary stops for the present. We will, therefore, bring our
narrative to a speedy close, by rapidly recounting the most important
events which we know to have befallen Madame D’Arblay during the latter
part of her life.
M. D’Arblay’s fortune had perished in the general wreck of the French
Revolution; and in a foreign country his talents, whatever they may have
been, could scarcely make him rich. The task of providing for the family
devolved on his wife. In the year 1796, she published by subscription
her third novel, Camilla. It was impatiently expected by the public; and
the sum which she obtained for it was, we believe, greater than had ever
at that time been received for a novel. We have heard that she cleared
more than three thousand guineas. But we give this merely as a rumour.
Camilla, however, never attained popularity like that which Evelina and
Cecilia had enjoyed; and it must be allowed that there was a perceptible
falling off, not indeed in humour or in power of portraying character,
but in grace and in purity of style.
We have heard that, about this time, a tragedy by Madame D’Arblay was
performed without success. We do not know whether it was ever printed;
nor indeed have we had time to make any researches into its history or
merits.
During the short truce which followed the treaty of Amiens, M. D’Arblay
visited France. Lauriston and La Fayette represented his claims to the
French Government, and obtained a promise that he should be reinstated
in his military rank. M. D’Arblay, however, insisted that he should
never be required to serve against the countrymen of his wife. The First
Consul, of course, would not hear of such a condition, and ordered the
general’s commission to be instantly revoked.
Madame D’Arblay joined her husband in Paris, a short time before the war
of 1803 broke out, and remained in France ten years, cut off from almost
all intercourse with the land of her birth. At length, when Napoleon
was on his march to Moscow, she with great difficulty obtained from his
Ministers permission to visit her own country, in company with her son,
who was a native of England. She returned in time to receive the last
blessing of her father, who died in his eighty-seventh year. In 1814 she
published her last novel, the Wanderer, a book which no judicious friend
to her memory will attempt to draw from the oblivion into which it has
justly fallen. In the same year her son Alexander was sent to Cambridge.
He obtained an honourable place among the wranglers of his year, and
was elected a fellow of Christ’s College. But his reputation at the
University was higher than might be inferred from his success in
academical contests. His French education had not fitted him for the
examinations of the Senate House; but, in pure mathematics, we have been
assured by some of his competitors that he had very few equals. He went
into the Church, and it was thought likely that he would attain high
eminence as a preacher; but he died before his mother. All that we have
heard of him leads us to believe that he was a son as such a mother
deserved to have. In 1832, Madame D’Arblay published the Memoirs of
her father; and on the sixth of January, 1840, she died in her
eighty-eighth year.
We now turn from the life of Madame D’Arblay to her writings. There can,
we apprehend, be little difference of opinion as to the nature of
her merit, whatever differences may exist as to its degree. She was
emphatically what Johnson called her, a character-monger. It was in the
exhibition of human passions and whims that her strength lay; and in
this department of art she had, we think, very distinguished skill.
But, in order that we may, according to our duty as kings at arms,
versed in the laws of literary precedence, marshal her to the exact
scat to which she is entitled, we must carry our examination somewhat
further.
There is, in one respect, a remarkable analogy between the faces and
the minds of men. No two faces are alike; and yet very few faces
deviate very widely from the common standard. Among the eighteen hundred
thousand human beings who inhabit London, there is not one who could be
taken by his acquaintance for another; yet we may walk from Paddington
to Mile End without seeing one person in whom any feature is so
overcharged that we turn round to stare at it. An infinite number
of varieties lies between limits which are not very far asunder. The
specimens which pass those limits on either side, form a very small
minority.
It is the same with the characters of men. Here, too, the variety passes
all enumeration. But the cases in which the deviation from the common
standing is striking and grotesque, are very few. In one mind avarice
predominates; in another, pride; in a third, love of pleasure; just as
in one countenance the nose is the most marked feature, while in others
the chief expression lies in the brow, or in the lines of the mouth. But
there are very few countenances in which nose, brow, and mouth do not
contribute, though in unequal degrees, to the general effect; and so
there are very few characters in which one overgrown propensity makes
all others utterly insignificant.
It is evident that a portrait painter, who was able only to represent
faces and figures such as those which we pay money to see at fairs,
would not, however spirited his execution might be, take rank among the
highest artists. He must always be placed below those who have skill to
seize peculiarities which do not amount to deformity. The slighter those
peculiarities, the greater is the merit of the limner who can catch them
and transfer them to his canvas. To paint Daniel Lambert or the living
skeleton, the pig-faced lady or the Siamese twins, so that nobody
can mistake them, is an exploit within the reach of a sign-painter. A
third-rate artist might give us the squint of Wilkes, and the depressed
nose and protuberant cheeks of Gibbon. It would require a much higher
degree of skill to paint two such men as Mr. Canning and Sir Thomas
Lawrence, so that nobody who had ever seen them could for a moment
hesitate to assign each picture to its original. Here the mere
caricaturist would be quite at fault. He would find in neither face
anything on which he could lay hold for the purpose of making a
distinction. Two ample bald foreheads, two regular profiles, two full
faces of the same oval form, would baffle his art; and he would be
reduced to the miserable shift of writing their names at the foot of
his picture. Yet there was a great difference; and a person who had seen
them once would no more have mistaken one of them for the other than
he would have mistaken Mr. Pitt for Mr. Fox. But the difference lay in
delicate lineaments and shades, reserved for pencils of a rare order.
This distinction runs through all the imitative arts. Foote’s mimicry
was exquisitely ludicrous, but it was all caricature. He could take off
only some strange peculiarity, a stammer or a lisp, a Northumbrian burr
or an Irish brogue, a stoop or a shuffle. “If a man,” said Johnson,
“hops on one leg, Foote can hop on one leg.” Garrick, on the other hand,
could seize those differences of manner and pronunciation, which, though
highly characteristic, are yet too slight to be described. Foote, we
have no doubt, could have made the Haymarket theatre shake with laughter
by imitating a conversation between a Scotchman and a Somersetshireman.
But Garrick could have imitated a conversation between two fashionable
men, both models of the best breeding, Lord Chesterfield, for example,
and Lord Albemarle, so that no person could doubt which was which,
although no person could say that, in any point, either Lord
Chesterfield or Lord Albemarle spoke or moved otherwise than in
conformity with the usages of the best society.
The same distinction is found in the drama and in fictitious narrative.
Highest among those who have exhibited human nature by means of
dialogue, stands Shakspeare. His variety is like the variety of nature,
endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity. The characters of which he
has given us an impression, as vivid as that which we receive from the
characters of our own associates, are to be reckoned by scores. Yet
in all these scores hardly one character is to be found which deviates
widely from the common standard, and which we should call very eccentric
if we met it in real life. The silly notion that every man has one
ruling passion, and that this clue, once known, unravels all the
mysteries of his conduct, finds no countenance in the plays of
Shakspeare. There man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions,
which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn. What
is Hamlet’s ruling passion? Or Othello’s? Or Harry the Fifth’s? Or
Wolsey’s? Or Lear’s? Or Shylock’s? Or Benedick’s? Or Macbeth’s? Or that
of Cassius? Or that of Falconbridge? But we might go on for ever. Take
a single example, Shylock. Is he so eager for money as to be indifferent
to revenge? Or so eager for revenge as to be indifferent to money? Or so
bent on both together as to be indifferent to the honour of his nation
and the law of Moses? All his propensities are mingled with each other,
so that, in trying to apportion to each its proper part, we find the
same difficulty which constantly meets us in real life. A superficial
critic may say, that hatred is Shylock’s ruling passion. But how many
passions have amalgamated to form that hatred? It is partly the result
of wounded pride: Antonio has called him dog. It is partly the result
of covetousness: Antonio has hindered him of half a million; and, when
Antonio is gone, there will be no limit to the gains of usury. It is
partly the result of national and religious feeling: Antonio has spit
on the Jewish gaberdine; and the oath of revenge has been sworn by the
Jewish Sabbath. We might go through all the characters which we have
mentioned, and through fifty more in the same way; for it is the
constant manner of Shakspeare to represent the human mind as lying,
not under the absolute dominion of one despotic propensity, but under
a mixed government, in which a hundred powers balance each other.
Admirable as he was in all parts of his art, we most admire him for
this, that while he has left us a greater number of striking portraits
than all other dramatists put together, he has scarcely left us a single
caricature.
Shakspeare has had neither equal nor second. But among the writers
who, in the point which we have noticed, have approached nearest to
the manner of the great master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane
Austen, a woman of whom England is justly proud. She has given us a
multitude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace, all such
as we meet every day. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from
each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings. There
are, for example, four clergymen, none of whom we should be surprised
to find in any parsonage in the kingdom, Mr. Edward Ferrers, Mr. Henry
Tilney, Mr. Edmund Bertram, and Mr. Elton. They are all specimens of the
upper part of the middle class. They have all been liberally educated.
They all lie under the restraints of the same sacred profession. They
are all young. They are all in love. Not one of them has any hobbyhorse,
to use the phrase of Sterne. Not one has a ruling passion, such as
we read of in Pope. Who would not have expected them to be insipid
likenesses of each other? No such thing. Harpagun is not more unlike
to Jourdain, Joseph Surface is not more unlike to Sir Lucius O’Trigger,
than every one of Miss Austen’s young divines to all his reverend
brethren. And almost all this is done by touches so delicate, that they
elude analysis, that they defy the powers of description, and that
we know them to exist only by the general effect to which they have
contributed.
A line must be drawn, we conceive, between artists of this class, and
those poets and novelists whose skill lies in the exhibiting of what Ben
Jonson called humours. The words of Ben are so much to the purpose that
we will quote them:=
```“When some one peculiar quality
```Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
```All his affects, his spirits, and his powers,
```In their confluxions all to run one way,
```This may be truly said to be a humour.”=
There are undoubtedly persons, in whom humours such as Ben describes
have attained a complete ascendency. The avarice of Elwes, the insane
desire of Sir Egerton Brydges for a barony to which he had no more right
than to the crown of Spain, the malevolence which long meditation
on imaginary wrongs generated in the gloomy mind of Bellingham, are
instances. The feeling which animated Clarkson and other virtuous men
against the slave-trade and slavery, is an instance of a more honourable
kind.
Seeing that such humours exist, we cannot deny that they are proper
subjects for the imitations of art. But we conceive that the imitation
of such humours, however skilful and amusing, is not an achievement
of the highest order; and, as such humours are rare in real life, they
ought, we conceive, to be sparingly introduced into works which profess
to be pictures of real life. Nevertheless, the writer may show so much
genius in the exhibition of these humours as to be fairly entitled to a
distinguished and permanent rank among classics. The chief seats of all,
however, the places on the dais and under the canopy, are reserved for
the few who have excelled in the difficult art of portraying characters
in which no single feature is extravagantly overcharged.
If we have expounded the law soundly, we can have no difficulty in
applying it to the particular case before us. Madame D’Arblay has left
us scarcely anything but humours. Almost every one of her men and women
has some one propensity developed to a morbid degree. In Cecilia, for
example, Mr. Delvile never opens his lips without some allusion to
his own birth and station; or Mr. Briggs, without some allusion to the
hoarding of money; or Mr. Hobson, without betraying the self-indulgence
and self-importance of a purse-proud up start; or Mr. Simkins, without
uttering some sneaking remark for the purpose of currying favour with
his customers; or Mr. Meadows, without expressing apathy and weariness
of life; or Mr. Albany, without declaiming about the vices of the rich
and the misery of the poor; or Mrs. Belfield, without some indelicate
eulogy on her son; or Lady Margaret, without indicating jealousy of her
husband. Morrice is all skipping, officious impertinence, Mr. Gosport
all sarcasm, Lady Honoria all lively prattle, Miss Larolles all silly
prattle. If ever Madame D’Arblay aimed at more, we do not think that she
succeeded well.
We are, therefore, forced to refuse to Madame D’Arblay a place in the
highest rank of art; but we cannot deny that, in the rank to which she
belonged, she had few equals, and scarcely any superior. The variety of
humours which is to be found in her novels is immense; and though the
talk of each person separately is monotonous, the general effect is
not monotony, but a very lively and agreeable diversity. Her plots are
rudely constructed and improbable, if we consider them in themselves.
But they are admirably framed for the purpose of exhibiting striking
groups of eccentric characters, each governed by his own peculiar
whim, each talking his own peculiar jargon, and each bringing out by
opposition the oddities of all the rest. We will give one example out
of many which occur to us. All probability is violated in order to
bring Mr. Delvile, Mr. Briggs, Mr. Hobson, and Mr. Albany into a room
together. But when we have them there, we soon forget probability in the
exquisitely ludicrous effect which is produced by the conflict of four
old fools, each raging with a monomania of his own, each talking a
dialect of his own, and each inflaming all the others anew every time he
opens his mouth.
Madame D’Arblay was most successful in comedy, and indeed in comedy
which bordered on farce. But we are inclined to infer from some
passages, both in Cecilia and Camilla, that she might have attained
equal distinction in the pathetic. We have formed this judgment, less
from those ambitious scenes of distress which lie near the catastrophe
of each of those novels, than from some exquisite strokes of natural
tenderness which take us here and there by surprise. We would mention as
examples, Mrs. Hill’s account of her little boy’s death in Cecilia,
and the parting of Sir Hugh Tyrold and Camilla, when the honest baronet
thinks himself dying.
It is melancholy to think that the whole fame of Madame D’Arblay rests
on what she did during the earlier half of her life, and that everything
which she published during the forty-three years which preceded her
death, lowered her reputation. Yet we have no reason to think that at
the time when her faculties ought to have been in their maturity, they
were smitten with any blight. In the Wanderer, we catch now and then
a gleam of her genius. Even in the Memoirs of her father, there is no
trace of dotage. They are very bad; but they are so, as it seems to us,
not from a decay of power, but from a total perversion of power.
The truth is, that Madame D’Arblay’s style underwent a gradual and most
pernicious change, a change which, in degree at least, we believe to be
unexampled in literary history, and of which it may be useful to trace
the progress.
When she wrote her letters to Mr. Crisp, her early journals, and her
first novel, her style was not indeed brilliant or energetic; but it was
easy, clear, and free from all offensive faults. When she wrote Cecilia
she aimed higher. She had then lived much in a circle of which
Johnson was the centre; and she was herself one of his most submissive
worshippers. It seems never to have crossed her mind that the style even
of his best writings was by no means faultless, and that even had it
been faultless, it might not be wise in her to imitate it. Phraseology
which is proper in a disquisition on the Unities, or in a preface to a
Dictionary, may be quite out of place in a tale of fashionable life. Old
gentlemen do not criticise the reigning modes, nor do young gentlemen
make love, with the balanced epithets and sonorous cadences which, on
occasions of great dignity, a skilful writer may use with happy effect.
In an evil hour the author of Evelina took the Rambler for her model.
This would not have been wise even if she could have imitated her
pattern as well as Hawkesworth did. But such imitation was beyond her
power. She had her own style. It was a tolerably good one; and might,
without any violent change, have been improved into a very good one.
She determined to throw it away, and to adopt a style in which she could
attain excellence only by achieving an almost miraculous victory over
nature and over habit. She could cease to be Fanny Burney; it was not so
easy to become Samuel Johnson.
In Cecilia the change of manner began to appear. But in Cecilia the
imitation of Johnson, though not always in the best taste, is sometimes
eminently happy; and the passages which are so verbose as to be
positively offensive, are few. There were people who whispered that
Johnson had assisted his young friend, and that the novel owed all its
finest passages to his hand. This was merely the fabrication of envy.
Miss Burney’s real excellences were as much beyond the reach of Johnson,
as his real excellences were beyond her reach. He could no more have
written the Masquerade scene, or the Vauxhall scene, than she could have
written the Life of Cowley or the Review of Soame Jenyns. But we have
not the smallest doubt that he revised Cecilia, and that he retouched
the style of many passages. We know that he was in the habit of giving
assistance of this kind most freely. Goldsmith, Hawkesworth, Boswell,
Lord Hailes, Mrs. Williams, were among those who obtained his help. Nay,
he even corrected the poetry of Mr. Crabbe, whom, we believe, he had
never seen. When Miss Burney thought of writing a comedy, he promised to
give her his best counsel, though he owned that he was not particularly
well qualified to advise on matters relating to the stage. We therefore
think it in the highest degree improbable that his little Fanny, when
living in habits of the most affectionate intercourse with him, would
have brought out an important work without consulting him; and, when
we look into Cecilia, we see such traces of his hand in the grave and
elevated passages as it is impossible to mistake. Before we conclude
this article, we will give two or three examples.
When next Madame D’Arblay appeared before the world as a writer, she was
in a very different situation. She would not content herself with the
simple English in which Evelina had been written. She had no longer the
friend who, we are confident, had polished and strengthened the style of
Cecilia. She had to write in Johnson’s manner without Johnson’s aid.
The consequence was, that in Camilla every passage which she meant to be
fine is detestable; and that the book has been saved from condemnation
only by the admirable spirit and force of those scenes in which she was
content to be familiar.
But there was to be a still deeper descent. After the publication of
Camilla, Madame D’Arblay resided ten years at Paris. During those years
there was scarcely any intercourse between France and England. It was
with difficulty that a short letter could occasionally be transmitted.
All Madame D’Arblay’s companions were French. She must have written,
spoken, thought, in French. Ovid expressed his fear that a shorter exile
might have affected the purity of his Latin. During a shorter exile,
Gibbon unlearned his native English. Madame D’Arblay had carried a bad
style to France. She brought back a style which we are really at a loss
to describe. It is a sort of broken Johnsonese, a barbarous patois,
bearing the same relation to the language of Rasselas, which the
gibberish of the negroes of Jamaica bears to the English of the House of
Lords. Sometimes it reminds us of the finest, that is to say, the vilest
parts, of Mr. Galt’s novels; sometimes of the perorations of Exeter
Hall; sometimes of the leading articles of the Morning Post. But it most
resembles the puffs of Mr. Rowland and Dr. Goss. It matters not what
ideas are clothed in such a style. The genius of Shakspeare and Bacon
united, would not save a work so written from general derision.
It is only by means of specimens that we can enable our readers to judge
how widely Madame D’Arblay’s three styles differed from each other.
The following passage was written before she became intimate with
Johnson. It is from Evelina:
“His son seems weaker in his understanding, and more gay in his temper;
but his gaiety is that of a foolish overgrown schoolboy, whose mirth
consists in noise and disturbance. He disdains his father for his close
attention to business and love of money, though he seems himself to have
no talents, spirit, or generosity to make him superior to either. His
chief delight appears to be in tormenting and ridiculing his sisters,
who in return most cordially despise him. Miss Branghton, the eldest
daughter, is by no means ugly; but looks proud, ill-tempered, and
conceited. She hates the city, though without knowing why; for it is
easy to discover she has lived nowhere else. Miss Polly Branghton is
rather pretty, very foolish, very ignorant, very giddy, and, I believe,
very good-natured.”
This is not a fine style, but simple, perspicuous, and agreeable. We now
come to Cecilia, written during Miss Burney’s intimacy with Johnson; and
we leave it to our readers to judge whether the following passage was
not at least corrected by his hand:
“It is rather an imaginary than an actual evil, and though a deep wound
to pride, no offence to morality. Thus have I laid open to you my whole
heart, confessed my perplexities, acknowledged my vainglory, and exposed
with equal sincerity the sources of my doubts, and the motives of my
decision. But now, indeed, how to proceed I know not. The difficulties
which are yet to encounter I fear to enumerate, and the petition I have
to urge I have scarce courage to mention. My family, mistaking
ambition for honour, and rank for dignity, have long planned a splendid
connection for me, to which, though my invariable repugnance has stopped
any advances, their wishes and their views immoveably adhere. I am but
too certain they will now listen to no other. I dread, therefore, to
make a trial where I despair of success. I know not how to risk a prayer
with those who may silence me by a command.”
Take now a specimen of Madame D’Arblay’s later style. This is the way
in which she tells us that her father, on his journey back from the
Continent, caught the rheumatism.
“He was assaulted, during his precipitated return, by the rudest
fierceness of wintry elemental strife; through which, with bad
accommodations and innumerable accidents, he became a prey to the
merciless pangs of the acutest spasmodic rheumatism, which barely
suffered him to reach his home, ere, long and piteously, it confined
him, a tortured prisoner, to his bed. Such was the cheek that almost
instantly curbed, though it could not subdue, the rising pleasure of his
hopes of entering upon a new species of existence--that of an approved
man of letters; for it was on the bed of sickness, exchanging the light
wines of France, Italy, and Germany, for the black and loathsome potions
of the Apothecaries’ Hall, writhed by darting stitches, and burning with
fiery fever, that he felt the full force of that sublunary equipoise
that seems evermore to hang suspended over the attainment of long-sought
and uncommon felicity, just as it is ripening to burst forth with
enjoyment.”
Here is a second passage from Evelina:
“Mrs. Selwyn is very kind and attentive to me. She is extremely clever.
Her understanding, indeed, may be called masculine; but unfortunately
her manners deserve the same epithet; for, in studying to acquire the
knowledge of the other sex, she has lost all the softness of her own, In
regard to myself, however, as I have neither courage nor inclination
to argue with her, I have never been personally hurt at her want of
gentleness, a virtue which nevertheless seems so essential a part of the
female character, that I find myself more awkward and less at case with
a woman who wants it than I do with a man.”
This is a good style of its kind; and the following passage from Cecilia
is also in a good style, though not in a faultless one. We say with
confidence, either Sam Johnson or the Devil:
“Even the imperious Mr. Delvile was more supportable here than in
London. Secure in his own castle, he looked round him with a pride
of power and possession which softened while it swelled him. His
superiority was undisputed: his will was without control. He was not,
as in the great capital of the kingdom, surrounded by competitors. No
rivalry disturbed his peace; no equality mortified his greatness. All he
saw were either vassals of his power, or guests bending to his pleasure.
He abated, therefore, considerably the stern gloom of his haughtiness,
and soothed his proud mind by the courtesy of condescension.”
We will stake our reputation for critical sagacity on this, that no
such paragraph as that which we have last quoted, can be found in any
of Madame D’Arblay’s works except Cecilia. Compare with it the following
sample of her later style.
“If beneficence be judged by the happiness which it diffuses, whose
claim, by that proof, shall stand higher than that of Mrs. Montagu, from
the munificence with which she celebrated her annual festival for
those hapless artificers who perform the most abject offices, of
any authorised calling, in being the active guardians of our blazing
hearths? Not to vainglory, then, but to kindness of heart, should be
adjudged the publicity of that superb charity which made its jetty
objects, for one bright morning, cease to consider themselves as
degraded outcasts from all society.”
We add one or two shorter samples. Sheridan refused to permit his
lovely wife to sing in public, and was warmly praised on this account by
Johnson.
“The last of men,” says Madame D’Arblay, “was Doctor Johnson to have
abetted squandering the delicacy of integrity by nullifying the labours
of talents.”
The Club, Johnson’s Club, did itself no honour by rejecting on political
grounds two distinguished men, one a Tory, the other a Whig. Madame
D’Arblay tells the story thus: “A similar ebullition of political
rancour with that which so difficultly had been conquered for Mr.
Canning foamed over the ballot box to the exclusion of Mr. Rogers.”
An offence punishable with imprisonment is, in this language, an offence
“which produces incarceration.” To be starved to death is “to sink from
inanition into nonentity.” Sir Isaac Newton is “the developer of the
skies in their embodied movements”; and Mrs. Thrale, when a party of
clever people sat silent, is said to have been “provoked by the dulness
of a taciturnity that, in the midst of such renowned interlocutors,
produced as narcotic a torpor as could have been caused by a dearth the
most barren of all human faculties.” In truth, it is impossible to look
at any page of Madame D’Arblay’s later works without finding flowers of
rhetoric like these. Nothing in the language of those jargonists at whom
Mr. Gosport laughed, nothing in the language of Sir Sedley Clarendel,
approaches this new Euphuism.
It is from no unfriendly feeling to Madame D’Arblay’s memory that we
have expressed ourselves so strongly on the subject of her style. On
the contrary, we conceive that we have really rendered a service to her
reputation. That her later works were complete failures, is a fact
too notorious to be dissembled: and some persons, we believe, have
consequently taken up a notion that she was from the first an overrated
writer, and that she had not the powers which were necessary to maintain
her on the eminence on which good luck and fashion had placed her. We
believe, on the contrary, that her early popularity was no more than the
just reward of distinguished merit, and would never have undergone an
eclipse, if she had only been content to go on writing in her mother
tongue. If she failed when she quitted her own province, and attempted
to occupy one in which she had neither part nor lot, this reproach is
common to her with a crowd of distinguished men. Newton failed when he
turned from the courses of the stars, and the ebb and flow of the ocean,
to apocalyptic seals and vials. Bentley failed when he turned from
Homer and Aristophanes, to edit the Paradise Lost. Inigo failed when he
attempted to rival the Gothic churches of the fourteenth century. Wilkie
failed when he took it into his head that the Blind Fiddler and the
Rent Day were unworthy of his powers, and challenged competition with
Lawrence as a portrait painter. Such failures should be noted for the
instruction of posterity; but they detract little from the permanent
reputation of those who have really done great things.
Yet one word more. It is not only on account of the intrinsic merit
of Madame D’Arblay’s early works that she is entitled to honourable
mention. Her appearance is an important epoch in our literary history.
Evelina was the first tale written by a woman, and purporting to be a
picture of life and manners, that lived or deserved to live. The Female
Quixote is no exception. That work has undoubtedly great merit, when
considered as a wild satirical harlequinade; but, if we consider it as
a picture of life and manners, we must pronounce it more absurd than any
of the romances which it was designed to ridicule.
Indeed, most of the popular novels which preceded Evelina were such as
no lady would have written; and many of them were such as no lady could
without confusion own that she had read. The very name of novel was
held in horror among religious people. In decent families, which did not
profess extraordinary sanctity, there was a strong feeling against all
such works. Sir Anthony Absolute, two or three years before Evelina
appeared, spoke the sense of the great body of sober fathers and
husbands, when he pronounced the circulating library an evergreen tree
of diabolical knowledge. This feeling on the part of the grave and
reflecting, increased the evil from which it had sprung. The novelist
having little character to lose, and having few readers among serious
people, took without scruple liberties which in our generation seem
almost incredible.
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.