parish register of Lynn, in Norfolk, that Frances, the second daughter of Charles Burney, was born in the summer of 1752;* and that consequently she was at the time of the publication of Evelina' (1778)-not seventeen, but-between twenty-five and twenty-six years old. This, it is obvious, changes the whole aspect of the affairthe miracle is reduced to a very ordinary fact. Whatever be the merit of the novel, it would not, as the work of a woman of fiveand-twenty, have excited the wonder and enthusiasm that it did, when supposed to be written, in the circumstances stated, by a girl of seventeen: the foregoing dialogue, for instance, between Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale never could have happened, But this is not all. The original story, of the father's utter ignorance of the work, has been essentially modified. It is now admitted that she told him of it, and even obtained his previous sanction to its publication; but still, in order to keep up the original delusion, we are asked to believe that though thus told of the novel and thus sanctioning its publication, he never saw a line of it never inquired its name, and had not even the curiosity to ask whether it had actually been published or not-that this state of things lasted for six months-and that Miss Burney never knew by what means her father discovered the profound secret that the new novel which was making so much noise under the title of Evelina' was in fact that very publication to which he had consented the year before; and which (though anonymously) was dedicated to himself. How or with whom this deception originated, it were now idle to inquire. It perhaps began in some, if not innocent, at least very venial attempt at preserving the author's incognito till the fate of the work should be decided: it then was probably persisted in from vanity; and it was subsequently aided in the eyes of the world by the personal appearance of the heroine, which both in figure and feature continued, long after she had attained womanhood, to be remarkably childish. Even up to 1787 the last date to which these volumes carry us, when she had attained the mature age of 35, we find her still playing off all the little airs and manners of Miss in her Teens.' But whatever may have been the motive or excuse for the original deviation from *See Quarterly Review, vol. xlix., where it is stated from the parish register that she was baptized in July, 1752. In the introduction to the Memoirs her age is (for the first time by her or her friends) stated, and it appears that she was born on the 13th June, 1752. truth, it was followed up by such immediate and important consequences, that neither Miss Burney nor her family could ever extricate themselves from it: it was, as we have said, the main cause of the kind of enthusiasm excited by the book and for its author: it was, as we have just seen, the prominent topic of Johnson's admiration, and of that of the literary world. It was one of the alleged motives of the royal favour subsequently shown to her: in short, it was the foundation of her fame and her fortune; and it must be admitted, in excuse for her perseverance in this false position, that a retreat would have required an exertion of nerve and spirit from which even the sturdiest moralist might have shrunk. We are convinced that this unlucky secret caused her many awkward embarrassments and many anxious moments, and had an injurious effect both on her own personal manners and the style of her subsequent works. It is impossible in reading her journals not to be struck by the everlasting conflict between her inordinate appetite for praise and her professed uneasiness at any mention of her works. Much of this uneasiness was no doubt mere affectation, put on as a kind of cloak, under which she might enjoy her vanity more decently; but there was also probably some real trepidation at bottom. We cannot conceive a more painful catastrophe than if, on one of those numerous occasions where a crowd of eminent admirers were celebrating her precocious talents, the truth had by any accident transpired, and it had appeared that this artless girl and her amiable family had been guilty of so enormous a deception on the public as the subtraction of one-third from her real years. can therefore very well imagine the mixture of fright and vanity with which she must have heard the bold and voluble Mrs. Cholmondeley descanting on her youth, and pronouncing her with such marked emphasis 'not a woman, but a GIRL'—a girl of 27 ! We But though it is possible that this deception began in accident or thoughtlessness, we cannot doubt that the natural predisposition of her mind was towards artifice and manoeuvring. It was early remarked as a prominent defect in her novels that all her heroines were exhibited as the victims of trifling annoyances and imaginary difficulties, from which two words of candour and common-sense would have extricated them. The same error runs through her own memoirs. She represents herself as thrown into confusions, embarrassments, terrors, miseries, and so forth, by the most ordinary occurrences of common life. If she is spoken to, she is in a flutter of modest agitation; if not spoken to, she is still more alarmed at such ominous silence. If complimented, she is inclined to creep under the chair: if not attended to she retreats into indignant seclusion. She is afraid to make tea at an evening party, lest she should appear too obtrusive; and if she does not, she is in still worse agonies, lest she should be thought supercilious. him add, "So, this is Sir Philip's kindness!" and her answer. "I wish you no worse luck!" 'Now, what think you of this? was it not highly insolent?—and from a man who has be haved to me hitherto with the utmost deference, good nature, and civility, and given me a thousand reasons, by every possible opportunity, to think myself very high indeed in his good opinion and good graces? But these rich men think themselves the constant prey of all portionless girls, and are always upon their guard, and suspicious of some design to take them in.' -Vol ii., pp. 24, 25. The most trifling incident-a word or a look-if it concerns her own important We would not justify Mr. Crutchley's self, is treated with all the pomp of history; rudeness in showing in the lady's presence and the idlest and most trivial conversa- any pique at the flattering proposition made tions are registered with more detail and to him; but it might be suggested, in excare than if they were evidence in a court tenuation, that Miss Burney began the fray of justice on some momentous cause. The by drily expressing her own dissatisfacenormous extent of this prolixity will be tion; and it must be observed, moreover, superabundantly shown by the following that the 'portionless girl' was now in her instance. After Mr. Thrale's death, a nine-and-twentieth year, and somewhat oldyoung gentleman, of the name of Crutch- er, we believe, than the reluctant swain. ley, who had been his ward, and was now It seems, however, that the poor man had one of his executors, made a visit to Streat- no swainish thoughts in his head, and was ham, where Miss Burney had previously quite at a loss to guess the cause of the recome to console the widow, who, as it sentment with which Miss Burney visited turned out, did not need much consolation. him-as appears throughout sixteen or sevThis visit produces the following scene-enteen martal pages of such dialogue as 'Sunday morning nobody went to church but Mr. Crutchley, Miss Thrale, and myself; and some time after, when I was sauntering upon the lawn before the house, Mr. Crutchley joined me. We were returning together into the house, when Mrs. Thrale, popping her head out of her dressing-room window, called out, "How nicely these men domesticate among us, Miss Burney! Why, they take to us as natural as life!" "Well, well," cried Mr. Crutchley, "I have sent for my horse, and I shall release you early to-morrow morning. I think yonder comes Sir Philip." Oh! you'll have enough to do with him," cried she, laughing: "he is well prepared to plague you, I assure you." "Is he ?-and what about?" 666 Why, about Miss Burney. He asked me the other day what was my present establishment. Mr. Crutchley and Miss Burney,' I answered. How well those two names go together,' cried he; I think they can't do better than make a match of it: I will consent, I am sure,' he added; and to-day, I dare say, you will hear enough of it." I leave you to judge if I was pleased at this stuff thus communicated; but Mrs. Thrale, with all her excellence, can give up no occasion of making sport, however unseasonable, or even painful. "I am very much obliged to him, indeed!" cried I, drily; and Mr. Crutchley called out, "Thank him!-thank him!" in a voice of pride and of pique that spoke him mortally angry. I instantly came into the house, leaving him to talk it out with Mrs. Thrale, to whom I heard this; 'Not a word. Then again he called to Miss Thrale, "Why, Queeny-why, she's quite in a rage! What have you done to her?" 'I still sulked on, vexed to be teased; but, though with a gaiety that showed he had no suspicion of the cause, he grew more and more urgent, trying every means to make me tell him what was the matter, till at last, much provoked, I said, "I must be strangely in want of a confident indeed, to take you for one!" Then Miss Thrale, stimulated by him, came to inquire if I had really taken anything amiss of her. No, I assured her. 4.66 Is it of me, then?" cried Mr. Crutchley, as if sure I should say no; but I made no other answer than desiring him to desist questioning me. only clear me, "So I will," cried he;" only say it is not me.' on with his questions till, by being quite silent to them, he could no longer doubt who it was. He seemed then wholly amazed, and entreated to know what he had done; but I tried only to avoid him, and keep out of his way. He was presently, however, with us again; and when he came to my side, and found me really trying to talk of other matters with Miss Thrale, and avoid him, he called out,— "Upon my life, this is too bad! Do tell me, Miss Burney, what is the matter? If you won't, I protest I'll call Mrs. Thrale, and make her work at you herself." "I assure you," answered I, "that will be to no purpose; for I must offend myself by telling it, and therefore I shall mention it to nobody." 6.66 But what in the world have I done?" Nothing; you have done nothing." "What have I said, then? Only let me beg your pardon,-only let me know what it is, that I may beg your pardon." He was not, however, to be so dismissed. Again he threatened me with Mrs. Thrale, but again I assured him nothing could less answer to him. "Well, but," cried he; "if you will not let me know my crime, why, I must never speak to you any more." 6.66 Very well, if you please we'll proclaim a mutual silence henceforward." Oh," cried he, you, I suppose, will be ready enough; but to me that would be a loss of very great pleasure. If you would tell me, however, I am sure I could explain it off, because I am sure it has been done undesignedly." No, it does not admit of any explanation; so pray don't mention it any more." 6.66 Only tell me what part of the day it was.' "Whether this unconsciousness was real, or only to draw me in so that he might come to the point, and make his apology with greater ease, I know not; but I assured him it was in vain he asked, and again desired him to puzzle himself with no further recollections. "Oh," cried he; "but I shall think of everything I have ever said to you for this half-year. I am sure, whatever it was, it must have been unmeant and unguarded." That, Sir, I never doubted; and probably you thought me hard enough to hear anything without minding it." "Good Heaven, Miss Burney! why, there is nobody I would not sooner offend,-nobody in the world!" "Well, ma'am, I hope we are now friends?" “And is it all quite over ?" 444 666 Why, then, do, pray," cried he, laughing, "be so good as to let me know what was our quarrel?" No-no, I shan't!" (cried I, laughing too, at the absurdity of quarrelling and seeming not to know what for ;)" it is all over, and that is enough." 666 "No, by no means enough: I must really beg you to tell me; I am uneasy till I know. Was it that silly joke of mine at dinner ?" "No, I assure you, it was no joke!" "But was it at dinner, or before dinner?" "Is it not enough that it is over? I am sorry you knew anything of the matter, and I am obliged to you for taking so much trouble about it; so there let it rest."'-Vol. ii., pp. 27-37. And this kind of stuff is the staple commodity of the whole Diary.' The utter inanity and worthlessness of the greater portion of the dialogues, with which Miss Burney expands her volumes, have a tendency to render us, at first sight, indifferent to what is nevertheless a very serious offence, the unpardonable breach of confidence, in thus stealthily treasuring up for publication every idle word which was uttered in the unsuspicious freedom of private society. She anticipated in her youth faults that more usually accompany a gosiāle, wansiping widowhood.' She was dering about from house to house; and not only idle, but a tattler also, and a busybody, speaking things which she ought not.' We need not here discuss under what peculiar circumstances, or to what limited extent, such a practice might be justifiable, because there are in Miss Burney's case no extenuating circumstances. whatsoever. The parties are all chatting in private intercourse, sometimes on personal subjects, always in the confidence that there is no tale-bearer by to repeat elsewhere anything that may have been said to the annoyance or disparagement of other parties, still less that there is a deliberate spy, who writes it all down, first for the amusement of her own friends, and eventually for publication to all the world. We can call this by no softer name than treachery; and the editor who has thought fit to publish this insipid, yet sometimes, we fear, malicious trash, not only injures the author's character, but, we think, compromises her own. She will probably say in her defence that Madame D'Arblay intended-perhaps directed that it should be published; but even if that be so, her niece should have had more tenderness for her memory than to have obeyed such an injunction. This we say on general principles, and feel ourselves bound not to permit such a breach of good faith to pass uncensured; but we admit that individually there is not much harm done. Miss Burney is in general so absorbed in the merits of Miss Burney, that the faults or foibles of her acquaintance occupy a very secondary place in her thoughts or pages, and her little malice is generally so obscure in its object, and so tedious in its process that, though a few surviving friends of certain parties may be offended, there are but two or three in stances in which we think it worth while to enter a specific protest. These Occur chiefly during the period of Miss Burney's domestication in Queen Charlotte's family, to which we shall now lead our reader's attention. her really below it, and whether from vanity, or ignorance, or shyness, seems to have done it with a mixture of remissness and assump tion which exercised all the indulgence of her gentle and tolerant mistress. These circumstances naturally occasioned Miss Burney was in the summer of 1786 some petty distresses, which her peculiar appointed second Keeper of the Robes to propensity inflates and aggrandizes into the Queen. This appointment she owed such serious calamities that a hasty reader partly, it is said, to her literary reputation, would conclude from her evidence that a but much more, we believe, to the friend- court life, even under the best of sovereigns, ship of the venerable Mrs. Delany, with is one of intolerable mortification and misewhom, after Mrs. Thrale's miserable més- ry. The fact may be so abstractedly; but alliance with Piozzi, Miss Burney had be- assuredly Miss Burney's miseries were come very intimate. This good old lady, chiefly of her own manufacture. This, to born in 1700, and the widow of the cele- prevent misapprehension about what is callbrated Dr. Delany, lived in great intimacy ed the Court, deserves some elucidation. with the old Duchess of Portland (grand- First, Miss Burney had officially nothing daughter of Lord Treasurer Oxford, and to do with the Court, properly so called, Prior's Lovely, noble, little Peggy',) and and what she saw of the Court were the through her had become known to their glimpses, through half opened doors and Majesties, who, when the Duchess's death down long passages, of a distant and humdeprived Mrs. Delany of her usual country ble spectator; her place was entirely dovisit to Bulstrode, fitted up and appropriat-mestic-in fact, menial; and, though in ed to her use, as a summer residence, a daily personal attendance, she never was small house belonging to the King, close admitted for a moment into the private soto the gate of Windsor Castle, where theyciety of the Sovereign-not even to stand often made her morning visits, and whence in an outer room to listen to the evening she was frequently invited to the domestic music, nor, when Mrs. Siddons was once evenings of the royal family. The elegant and considerate benevolence of their Majesties to this venerable relique of the days of Addison, Pope, and Swift, was made more generally known about twenty years ago by the publication of Mrs. Delany's let ters; and the best part of the present work is its minute corroboration of the amiable feelings and unaffected urbanity and condescension of those illustrious personages and their whole family, not merely to Mrs. Delany but indeed to every one who entered or approached their domestic circle ;--but more of this hereafter. At Mrs. Delany's their Majesties saw Miss Burney, and on a vacancy in the office of Keeper of the Robes, caused by the retirement to her own country of a Mrs. Haggerdorn, who had originally accompanied the Queen to England, Miss Burney was appointed assistant, or, as she would have had it, colleague of Mrs. Schwellenberg-a name preserved in that lively satire, the Heroic Epistle,' and bespattered in the filthy and forgotten libels of Peter Pindar. The main object of the selection of Miss Burney for the place the satisfaction of Mrs. Delany, and the facilitating her intercourse with her royal friends-was no doubt accomplished, but in all other respects the choice seems not to have been very fortunate. Miss Burney thought herself above her business, though we rather suspect that she was invited to the Castle to read a play, could Miss Burney find out a convenient adjoining room' where she might overhear the recital: though that favour was granted to Mrs. Schwellenberg (iii. 427.) Her real position was that which in ordinary life would be called lady's maid; and, though such menial offices about the person of the Sovereign do not derogate from, but indeed rather confirm, the character of gentility in the holders, yet they exclude them from the royal circle, either in public or in private. There is a well-known instance in which a lady of rank, appointed by special favour to a very profitable sinecure of this class, found to her great mortification, that she could no longer go to Court, as her birth entitled her, and as she had done during all her previous life. This inferior position was evidently a great grievance to Miss Burney, who was marvellously discomposed at finding that there was a bell in her room by which the Queen could ring for her, and who represents herself as blushing when the Treasurer of the Household paid her her salary, the Treasurer himself, as Miss Burney fancied, blushing also at having to offer such an indignity to the author of Evelina.' One is, at first, somewhat surprised at finding that the Queen, having attached a literary lady to her service, appears to have talked so little to her on literary subjects. This, as we shall see presently, was a great disappointment to Miss Burney; but there are two evident reasons for it-first, her appointed station and duties were not easily reconcilable with literary topics, and the Queen's good sense had a tendency to keep every person and thing in their proper places-but, secondly, some little advances made by the Queen in that direction were discouraged by Miss Burney's own mala dresse. It is remarkable how little of literature Miss Burney seems herself to have had-how little, at least, the memoirs show. She hardly ever alludes to a book except 'Evelina' and 'Cecilia !' She appears not to have read Cumberland's Observera work in which she herself, and most of her friends, are alluded to-till the Queen read some passages to her, and afterwards lent her the volumes. The first she seems to have heard of Hawkins' Life of Johnson'—which we would have supposed she would have been most impatient to read was from the King, who talked it over with great candour and openness.' One night that the Queen was explaining to Mrs. Schwellenberg a passage in Cowper's Task' published about two years before, she turned to Miss Burney, and asked her if she knew the poem? Only by character,' was the answer. Her taste for Shakspeare may be gathered from the following eulogy on Hamlet :— 'How noble a play it is, considered in parts; how wild and how improbable taken as a whole! But there are speeches, from time to time, of such exquisite beauty of language, sentiment, and pathos, that I could wade through the most thorny of roads to arrive at them, especially when, in meeting with them, I meet at the same time with a sympathy like Mrs. Delany's in feeling and enjoying them.'-Vol. iii., p. 238. To complain of the wildness and improbability of a romantic drama, of which two mad people and a ghost are the chief ingredients, seems somewhat hypercritical; and the thorny roads' through which one is to 'wade' (with the help of Mrs. Delany's sympathy,) to certain speech es in Hamlet, look to us like a confusion of ideas as well as of metaphors. Now and then she makes literary blunders, slight in themselves, but rather strange in a professed author. Living within ten yards of St. George's Chapel, she calls it a Cathedral.' A lively allusion made by one of Jacob Bryant's friends to his antediluvian studies, she thus mystifies :- Bryant is a good scholar, and knows all things whatever up to Noah, but not a single thing beyond the Flood.' This sounds like the very re verse of what was intended; namely that Bryant knew everything from the creation of the world down to the deluge, but nothing since.' The Queen, she says, lent her 'An old Scotch ballad to read, that had lately been printed in Germany, with an introductory essay upon the resemblance still subsisting between the German and Scotch languages. The ballad is entitled the Gaberlunzie Man.' It had to me no recommendation, save its curiosity in a vocabulary and glossary, that pointed out the similitude of the two languages. — Vol. iii., p. 164. Most persons who had never before seen 'The Gaberlunzie Man' would have probably been struck with its happy though not very delicate humour, its very clear versification, and the curiosity of such a ballad having been written by a king-James V. of Scotland. But as to the German pamphlet which the Queen showed her, it had been printed to illustrate a philological fact and it satisfied even Miss Burney as to that fact-yet she complains that it did not do something else we know not what! In short her general literature seems to have been very slight; but she had been so fêtée and flattered as a first-rate author, that we are not at all surprised to find that she expected that the Queen intended to make her a kind of literary aide-de-camp : 'Wednesday, August 17th.-From the time that the Queen condescended to desire to place me in immediate attendance upon her own person, I had always secretly concluded she meant me for her English Reader; since the real duties of my office would have had a far greater than by myself. This idea had made the prospect promise of being fulfilled by thousands of others of reading to her extremely awful to me: an exhibition, at any rate, is painful to me, but one in which I considered Her Majesty as a judge, interested for herself in the sentence she should ing to its tenour-this was an exhibition formidpronounce, and gratified or disappointed accordable indeed, and must have been considered as such by anybody in similar circumstances. 'Not a book, not a pamphlet, not a news paper, had I ever seen near the Queen, for the first week, without feeling a panic; I always expected to be called upon. She frequently bid be the worst reading I could have, because full me give her the papers; I felt that they would of danger, in matter as well as manner: however, she always read them herself. · To-day [17th Aug.] after she was dressed, Mrs. Schwellenberg went to her own room; and the Queen, instead of leaving me, as usual, to go to mine, desired me to follow her to her sithelping her to arrange her work, which is chairting dressing-room. She then employed me in covers done in ribbon; and then told me to fetch her a volume of the Spectator. I obeyed with perfect tranquillity. She let me stand by her a |