_Tuesday, Dec. 20._--1st, summons; 2ndly, entree.
“Miss Burney, have you heard that Boswell is going to publish a life of
your friend Dr. Johnson?”
“No, ma'am.”
“I tell you as I heard. I don't know for the truth of it, and I can't
tell what he will do. He is so extraordinary a man, that perhaps he will
devise something extraordinary. What do you think of Madame de Genlis'
last work?”
“I have not read it, ma'am.”
“Not read it?”
(I believe she knew my copy, which lay on the table.)
I said I had taken it to Norbury, and meant to read it with Mrs. Locke,
but things then prevented.
“Oh! (looking pleased) have you read the last edition of her
'Adele?'”[200]
“No, ma'am.”
“Well, it is much improved; for the passage, you know, Mrs. Delany, of
the untruth, is all altered--fifteen pages are quite new; and she has
altered it very prettily. She has sent it to me. She always sends me her
works; she did it a long while ago, when I did not know there was such a
lady as Madame de Genlis. You have not seen 'Adele,' then?”
“No, ma'am.”
“You would like to see it. But I have it not here. Indeed, I think
sometimes I have no books at all, for they are at Kew, or they are in
town, and they are here; and I don't know which is which. Is Madame de
Genlis about any new work?”
“Yes, ma'am---one which she intends 'pour le peuple.'”
“Ah, that will be a good work. Have you heard of--” (mentioning some
German book, of which I forget the name).
“No, ma'am.”
“O, it will be soon translated; very fine language,--very bad book.
They translate all our worst! And they are so improved in language; they
write so finely now, even for the most silly books, that it makes one
read on, and one cannot help it. O, I am very angry sometimes at that!
Do you like the 'Sorrows of Werter?'”
“I--I have not read it, ma'am, only in part.”
“No? Well, I don't know how it is translated, but it is very finely writ
in German, and I can't bear it.”
“I am very happy to hear that, for what I did look over made me
determine never to read it. It seemed only writ as a deliberate defence
of suicide.”
“Yes; and what is worse, it is done by a bad man for revenge.”
She then mentioned, with praise, another book, saying,
“I wish I knew the translator.”
“I wish the translator knew that.”
“O--it is not--I should not like to give my name, for fear I have judged
ill: I picked it up on a stall. O, it is amazing what good books there
are on stalls.”
“It is amazing to me,” said Mrs. Delany, “to hear that.”
“Why, I don't pick them up myself; but I have a servant very clever; and
if they are not to be had at the booksellers', they are not for me any
more than for another.”
She then spoke of Klopstock's “Messiah,” saying it contained four lines
most perfect on religion.
“How I should like to see it. Is it translated?” asked Mrs. Delany,
turning to me.
“In it,” said her majesty: “there is a story of Lazarus and the
Centurion's daughter; and another young lady, Asyddel, he calls her; and
Lazarus is in love;--a very pretty scene--no stopping;--but it is out
of place;--I was quite angry to read it. And a long conversation between
Christ and Lazarus--very strange!”
“Yet Milton does that.”
“Yes.”