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subject and with a surprising diversity of opinions about it. Frances Burney and her Evelina (xxxx), not to mention her subsequent works and her delightful Diary, have been the subject of a great deal of writing: but though more than a hundred years--more indeed than a century and a quarter--have passed since the book insidiously took London by gradual storm, it may, without too much presumption, be questioned whether either book or author has yet been finally or satisfactorily "placed." The immense advantage of not having a history, positively illustrated once for all in Shakespeare, could hardly be negatively illustrated better than in Madame d'Arblay. She had the curious, and actually very unpleasant, experience of being selected for a position at court on the strength of her literary achievements, of finding it intolerable, of breaking down, and of never doing any really good work after her release, through much more than half of her long life. On this fact critical biography has fastened almost exclusively. Macaulay, in one of his most brilliant and best known essays, represents the
world as having been deprived of unknown quantities of admirable work by the misplaced kindness, and the positive unkindness, of Queen Charlotte. Some have agreed with him, some have differed with him. Some, in one of the natural if uncritical revulsions, have questioned whether even Evelina is a very remarkable book. Some, with human respect for the great names of its early admirers, have passed it over gingerly--not exactly as willing to wound, but as quite afraid or reluctant to strike. Nay, actual critical evaluations of the novel?values of Miss Burney's four attempts in novel?writing are very rare. I dare say there are other people who have read The Wanderer through: but I never met any one who had done so except (to quote Rossetti) myself: and I could not bring myself, even on this occasion, to read it again. I doubt whether very many now living have read Camilla. Even Cecilia requires an effort, and does not repay that effort very well. Only Evelina itself is legible and relegible--for reasons which will be given presently. Yet Cecilia was written shortly after Evelina, under the
same stimulus of abundant and genial society, with no pressure except that of friendly encouragement and perhaps assistance, and long before the supposed blight of royal favour and royal exigences came upon its author. When Camilla was published she had been relieved from these exigences, though not from that favour, for five years: and was a thoroughly happy woman, rejoicing in husband and child. Even when the impossible Wanderer was concocted, she had had ample leisure, had as yet incurred none of her later domestic sorrows, and was assured of lavish recompense for her (it must be said) absolutely worthless labours. Why this steady declension, with which, considering the character of Cecilia, the court sojourn can have had nothing to do? And admitting it, why still uphold, as the present writer does uphold, Evelina as one of the points de repere of the English novel? Both questions shall be answered in their order. Frances Burney must have been, as we see not merely from external testimony, but from the infallible witness of her own diary, a most engaging person to any one who could
get over her shyness and her prudery:[12] but she was only in a very limited sense a gifted one. Macaulay grants her a "fine understanding;" but even his own article contradicts the statement, which is merely one of his exaggerations for the sake of point. She had not a fine understanding: though she was neither silly nor stupid, her sense was altogether inferior to her sensibility. Although living in a most bookish circle she was, as Macaulay himself admits, almost illiterate: and (which he does not say) her comparative critical estimates of books, when she does give them, are merely contemptible. This harsh statement could be freely substantiated: but it is enough to say that, when a girl, she preferred some forgotten rubbish called Henry and Frances to the Vicar of The English Novel 57 Wakefield: and that, when a woman, she deliberately offended Chateaubriand by praising the Itineraire rather than the Genie du Christianisme, or Atala, or Rene, or Les Martyrs. She had very little inventive power; her best novel, Evelina, has no plot worth speaking of. She never wrote really well.
Even the Diary derives its whole charm from the matter and the reportage. Evelina is tolerable style of the kind that has no style; Cecilia is pompous and Johnsonian; Camilla was stigmatised by the competent and affectionate judgment of Mrs. Delany as "Gallicised;" and The Wanderer is in a lingo which suggests the translation of an ill?written French original by a person who does not know English. [12] Also, perhaps, to one who had not yet discovered that intense concentration on herself and her family with which, after their quarrel, Mrs. Thrale, not quite an impartial judge, but a very shrewd one, charged her, and which does appear in the Diary. What then was it in Evelina, and in part in Cecilia (with a faint survival even into Camilla), which turned the heads of such a "town" as Johnson and Burke, Walpole and Windham, and many others--which, to persons who can see it, makes the books attractive to?day, and which should always give their author a secure and distinguished place in the great torch?race of English fiction?writers? It is this--that Miss Burney had a quite marvellous