MISS BURNEY'S CECILIA.* IN his Diary written in London in

1826, Sir Walter Scott records an interview with Madame d'Arblay. The passage is worth

quoting, for the author of Evelina describing the triumph of her youth presents a pleasing picture :— "Madame d'Arblay told us that the common story of Dr. Barney, her father, having brought home her own first work and recommended it to her pernsall was erroneous. Her father was in the secret of Et:aline being printed. But the following circumstances may have given rise to the story :—Dr. Barney was at Streatham soon after the publication, where he found Mrs. Thrale recovering from her confinement, low at the moment and out of spirits. While they were talking together, Johnson, who sat beside in a kind of reverie, suddenly broke out,—' You should read this new work, Madam, you should read Bodine, every one says it is excellent, and they are right.' The delighted father obtained a commission from Mrs. Thrale to purchase his daughter's work, and retired the happiest of men. Madame d'Arblay said she was wild with joy at this decisive evidence her literary success, and that she could only give vent to her rap- ture by dancing and skipping round a mulberry-tree in the garden."

Evelina, though not an elaborately constructed story, like Cecilia, has a freshness about it which we look for in vain in the later novel. The style is better, and the

characters are less laboured. As the work of a young woman of twenty-five, it is indeed a remarkable pro- duction, but the praise it received. from Fanny Burney's con- temporaries will probably excite the surprise of the modern reader. Dr. Johnson's admiration of the tale seems to have

been unbounded, and Cecilia equally delighted him. "Sir," he said to Boswell, with an air of animated satisfaction," Sir, if you talk of Cecilia, talk on." He loved the woman, too, as

well as her novels, called her his sweet Fanny, talked to her, to apply Swift's phrase, in the "little language" of endearment, and spoke of her to the last with the tenderest affection. The praise Fanny Burney won in those days, and the folly of her proud father in promoting her to the dignity of a waiting-maid to Queen Charlotte, spoilt her for literature. Her style was

* Bohn's Nordista' Library: "Cecilia; or, Memoirs of an Heiress." By Prances Barney. With a Preface and Notes by Annie Rains Kllis. 2 vols. London: Bell and Bons. 1882. never a good one, and it grew worse as she grew famous. Dr. Johnson, despite Macaulay's assertion, gave her no assistance in Cecilia, for he states that he never saw a word of the "little rogue's" book before it was printed. Evelina, as we all know, was written without his knowledge, and yet both these novels abound with passages that show the influence of the Great Chain of letters. In the earliest chapters of Evelina we meet

with sentences like the following A youthful mind is seldom totally free from ambition; to curb that is the first step te contentment, since to diminish expectation is to increase enjoy- ment." And again,—" Their regard may be mutually useful, since much is to be expected from emulation, where nothing is to be feared from envy."

As pictures of manners, Evelina and Cecilia have not lost their interest. Fanny Burney, as Miss Ellis suggests, in her admirable preface, probably learnt more from reading and seeing plays than from reading novels. She failed, as Scott failed, when she attempted to write a play ; but her situations are dramatic and her characters are more true, perhaps, in some respects, to the stage of the eighteenth century than to the town life of that period. The incidents she frequently depicts have the vulgarity of the plays which amused the groundlings a century ago. Her style of writing borders upon farce, and her characters, unlike Miss Austen's, with which they have been absurdly compared, are distinctly " stagey." The incon- gruity that exists between the conduct of her dramatic per- sonce, and the positions in which they are placed, is astounding. Something must be allowed for the story, and in Evelina the coarse effrontery and selfishness of the Branghtons may pass for a true picture ; but that a girl brought up as a lady and with a lady's instincts should be introduced to such scenes as she witnessed at Ranelagli, Marylebone, and Vauxhall, and that a rake like Sir Clement Willoughby should have belonged to the set in which Mrs. Mirvan moved, is incredible. Evelina is more than once in real danger from his advances, yet she declares that though his style of gallantry is disagreeable, no man can "make more fine speeches, while his language, though too flowery, is always that of a gentleman." But Sir Clement is a more natural character than Madame Duval, while that grossly vulgar woman is not so much lacking in verisimilitude as Captain Mirvan. And, the farce, for such the story frequently becomes, instead of exciting laughter, creates a feeling of annoy- ance, if not of disgust. Witness, for instance, the scene in which Captain Mirvan and Sir Clement Willoughby unite in frighten- ing Madame Duval out of her wits, and in spoiling her fine attire to boot, at the time she is a guest in the Captain's house. Brutal tomfoolery of that kind would not have been tolerated by Miss Austen, whose sense even of broad humour is more humane, while her humour generally is infinitely more subtle.

Lord Macaulay has said that Fanny Burney first showed how a tale might be written "in which both the fashionable and the vulgar life of London might be exhibited with great force, and which yet should not contain a single line inconsistent with rigid morality, or even with virgin delicacy." Some exception must be made to this statement. To say that Miss Burney is ever an immoral writer would be ridiculous. She is, indeed, far more moral in purpose than many of the novelists of her sex whose tales are in demand at Madie's. But the scenes she de- scribes show, to say the least, a familiarity with the evil side of London life and an acquaintance with some forms of vice which, while far from being incompatible with rigid morality, seem a trifle inconsistent with virgin delicacy. This is most apparent in Evelina, a girl whose mind has been formed by Mr. Villain, a country clergyman. She is, he says, as innocent as an angel, and artless as purity herself; yet to her guardian she does not hesitate to relate the conversation of town rakes, as well as their actions. The accounts of the evenings at Vaux- hall and at Marylebone Gardens, familiar to every one who has read the story, whatever may be their merit, do not exhibit the special virtue insisted on by the essayist. Another point strikes us in Evelina. The girl is more ashamed of associating with her vulgar relatives, the Branghtons, than of her intercourse with Sir Clement, who belongs to the coarsest type of libertine ; and to confess to her lover, Lord Orville, that she is staying in Holborn, instead of in a more aristocratic neighbourhood, is a terrible mortification to her pride !

Illustrations of an age in which the heads of criminala figured on Temple Bar abound in Fanny Barney's pages. Let us give one or two examples. Lord Orville is a hero of the most refined and exalted type. When at Bristol Hot Wells, he drives Evelina and her temporary guardian to their lodgings; and on reaching them Mrs. Selwyn says :—

"'I suppose, my lord, you would have been extremely confused, had we met any gentlemen who have the honour of knowing you.'

If I had,' answered he, gallantly, it would have been from mere compassion at their envy.'—' No, my lord,' answered she, 'it would have been from mere shame, that in an age so daring, you alone should be such a coward as to forbear to frighten worn en.'—' 0!' cried he, laughing, when a man is in a fright for himself, the ladies cannot but be in security, for you have not had half the apprehension for the safety of your persons that I have for that of my heart.' He then alighted, handed us out, took leave, and, again mounting the phaeton, was out of sight in a minute. Certainly,' said Mrs. Selwyn, when he was gone, 'there mast have been some mistake in the birth of that young man ; he was undoubtedly designed for the last age, for he is really polite.'"

Politeness, in Fanny Barney's age, according to her showing, was, indeed, rare among fine gentlemen. One day, when on their way to the pump-room, Evelina relates how they were much incommoded by three gentlemen who were " talking very loud, and lounging so disagreeably that she knew not how to

pass them :"—

" They all three fixed their eyes very boldly upon me, alter nately looking under my hat, and whispering one another. Mrs. Selwyn assumed an air of uncommon sternness, and said, You will please, gentlemen, either to proceed yourselves, or to suffer 0! ma'am,' cried one of them, we will suffer you with the greatest pleasure in life.'—' You will suffer us both,' answered she, or I am much mistaken; you had better, therefore, make way quietly, for I should be sorry to give my servant the trouble of teaching you better manners.' Her commanding air struck them, yet they all chose to laugh ; and one of them wished the fellow would begin his lesson, that he might have the pleasure of rolling him into the Avon; while another, advancing to me with a freedom that made me start, said, 'By my soul, I did not know you, but I am sure I cannot be mis- taken! Had not I the honour of seeing you once at the Pantheon ?' I then recollected the nobleman who at that place had so embarrassed me.

In Cecilia, as in Evelina, the love-making is much of the type with which Sir Charles Grandison once made novel-readers familiar. This is how Delviie parts from his lady-love :— "Farewell, then, most amiable of women, and may every blessing you deserve light on your head ! I leave to you my mother, certain of yonr sympathetic affection for a character so resembling your own. When you, Madam, leave her, may the happy successor in your favour—" He paused, his voice faltered. Cecilia, too, turned away from him ; and uttering a deep sigh, he caught her hand, and pressing it to his lips, exclaimed, 0 great be your felicity, in what- ever way you receive it !—pure as your virtues, and warm as your benevolence ! Oh! too lovely Miss Beverley !—why, why must I quit you ?' Cecilia, though she trusted not her voice to reprove him, forced away her hand, and then, in the utmost perturbation, she rushed out of the room."

We have said that we do not consider Cecilia equal to Myelin% but to say, as a voluminous living writer has said, that it is "as stupid, lethargic, and affected" a story "as can be found in the entire library of fiction," is to betray an ignorance both of fiction and of life. There are affectations of style, no doubt; there is much in it foreign to the taste of our age, and we cannot, as Miss Ellis observes, sympathise " with the tender and elegant ' readers of 1782—from Mrs. Chapone, whose nerves were shattered, even to the loss of sleep for a week, to the Duchess of Portland and Mrs. Delany, who thrice wept their way through the five volumes." On the other hand, the farcical humour of the story, its touches of pathos, its variety of character and incident, its weaknesses even, as well as its strength, are far beyond the mark of a common-place novelist. It has a place, though not a very high place, in literature, and we are glad that the publishers have seen fit to bring out the tale, now a century old, in so readable a shape. The editor has done her part with skill, and with a knowledge that shows no sign of having been acquired for the occasion.