III.

The publication of "Evelina," in 1778, made a sensation which the merits of the work fully justified. The story of Miss Burney's[199] early life, her furtive attempts at fictitious composition, the great variety of artistic and political characters who passed in review before her observant eyes at Dr. Burney's house have been made familiar by her own diary and letters. Petted and admired by Johnson, Mrs. Thrale, and the brilliant literary society of which they formed the centre, she lived sufficiently far into the present century to see the works of her early friends enrolled among the classics or consigned to oblivion, and to recognize that the approval of posterity had been added to the early fame of her own writings. As a very young girl, unnoticed by the distinguished persons who frequented her father's house, she had studied with careful attention the characters and manners of those who talked and moved about her. A strong desire to reproduce the impressions which filled her mind induced Miss Burney in her sixteenth year to devote her stolen hours of seclusion to fictitious composition. Discouraged in her early efforts by her stepmother, her habits of observation remained active, and took form, when the authoress was twenty five years old, in the famous novel of "Evelina." The book was issued secretly and anonymously, the publisher even being ignorant of the writer's true name. But the immediate popularity and admiration which greeted the work soon led to its open acknowledgment by the happy young authoress.

And "Evelina" fully deserved the praise and interest which it obtained and still excites. The aim was to describe the difficulties and sensations of a young girl just entering life. The heroine chosen by Miss Burney was one whose circumstances particularly well suited her to form the centre of a varied collection of characters and of a comprehensive picture of contemporary society. Well connected on her father's side, Evelina moved in fashionable circles with the Mirvan family. On account of the origin of her mother she was brought into close contact with humbler personages, with Madame Duval and the Brangtons. Hence this novel presents to the reader a variety of social scenes which gives it a value possessed by no other work of fiction of the eighteenth century. No novelist has described so well or so fully the aspect of the theatres, of Vauxhall and Ranelagh, of Bath in the season, of the ridottos and assemblies of the London fashionable world. The shops, the amusements and the manners of the middle classes are made familiar to Evelina by her association with the Brangtons, and add greatly to the breadth of this valuable picture of metropolitan life. With a feminine attention to detail, and a quick perception of salient characteristics, Miss Burney described the world about her so faithfully and picturesquely as to deserve the thanks of every student of social history. The novel of "Evelina," the letters of Horace Walpole and Mrs. Delany corroborate each other, and may be appropriately placed on the same shelf in a well-ordered library.

In the painting of manners Miss Burney was eminently successful. But she was hardly less so in a point in which excellence could not have been expected in so youthful a writer. The plot of "Evelina" is constructed with a skill worthy of a veteran. Fielding alone, of the eighteenth century novelists, can be said to surpass Miss Burney in this respect. The whole story of the mischances and misunderstanding of Evelina's intercourse with Lord Orville, the skill with which the various personages are brought into contact with each other and made to contribute to the final _dénoument_, compose a truly artistic success. The introduction of Macartney and his marriage to the supposed daughter of Sir John Belmont form a very happy and effective invention.

In regard to her sketches of character, it may be objected that Miss Burney lacked breadth of treatment, that she dwelt on one distinctive characteristic at the expense of the others. But still, Lord Orville, though somewhat too much of a model, and Mrs. Selwyn, though somewhat too habitually a wit, are vivid and life-like characters. The Brangtons and Sir Clement Willougby are nature itself, and the girlish nature of Evelina is betrayed in her letters with great felicity.

It is no small triumph for Miss Burney, who has had so many and so deserving competitors in the department of literature to which she contributed, that her novels should have remained in active circulation for more than a century after their publication. "Cecilia" has much the same merits which distinguished "Evelina," and the two novels bid fair to hold their own as long as English fiction retains its popularity. Johnson considered Miss Burney equal to Fielding. But although she possessed qualities similar to his--constructive power and picturesqueness--she possessed them in a lesser degree. In the management of the difficulties of the epistolary form of novel-writing, she surpassed Richardson in verisimilitude and concentration.

Some readers of the present day object to Miss Burney's novels that they contain so many references to "delicacy" and "propriety" that an air of affectation is produced. But at the time when "Evelina" was written, a perpetual discretion in actions and words was absolutely necessary to a young woman who did not wish to be subjected to libertine advances. Society is now so much more generally refined that there is far less danger of such misconstruction, and far less need for a young girl to be always on her guard. A sound objection, on the ground of taste, may be made against the excessively prolonged account of Captain Mirvan's brutalities. The effect might have been as well produced in a much shorter space, and the reader spared the uninteresting scenes which now fill so many repulsive pages. For this defect, however, we must blame the times more than the author.

Charlotte Lennox was the daughter of Sir James Ramsay, Lieutenant governor of New York, where she was born in 1720. When fifteen years of age she was sent to London, and there supported herself by her pen. Johnson said that he had "dined at Mrs. Garrick's with Mrs. Carter, Miss Hannah More, and Miss Fanny Burney: three such women are not to be found. I know not where I could find a fourth, except Mrs. Lennox, who is superior to them all." Such high praise was not called forth by Mrs. Lennox's novels, which have little originality or power. "The Female Quixote" is an entertaining satire on the old French romances, but "Sophia," and "Euphemia" are without any special interest.

A writer of more ability, whose name is still remembered by novel-readers, is Mrs. Inchbald. She was overcome in early life by an enthusiasm for the stage; ran away from home to find theatrical employment, and remained for many years a popular London actress. Although possessed of great and durable beauty, and the object of constant attention from aristocratic admirers, it is believed that her reputation continued unsullied. Her poverty, largely caused by a worthless husband, obliged her to perform the most menial labors. She rejoiced on one occasion that the approach of warmer weather released her from the duty of making fires, scouring the grate, sifting the cinders, and of going up and down three pair of long stairs with water or dirt. All this Mrs. Inchbald thought that she could cheerfully bear, but the labor of being a fine lady the remainder of the day was almost too much for her. "Last Thursday," she wrote to a friend, "I finished scouring my bed-chamber, while a coach with a coronet and two footmen waited at the door to take me an airing."

The same courage and industry were carried by Mrs. Inchbald into her literary labors, the profits of which enabled her to live with considerable comfort toward the end of her life. She left a large number of plays, many of which had been acted with success, and two novels, "A Simple Story," published in 1791, and "Nature and Art," published five years later. Neither of these works has much merit from a critical point of view. They are faulty in construction, and give frequent evidence of the authoress' lack of education.

Yet, in her ability to excite the interest and to move the feelings of her reader, Mrs. Inchbald met with great success. Her novels are of the pathetic order, and appeal to the sympathies with a sometimes powerful effect. Maria Edgeworth was deeply moved by the "Simple Story." "Its effect upon my feelings," she said after reading it for the fourth time, "was as powerful as at the first reading; I never read _any_ novel--I except none,--I never read any novel that affected me so strongly, or that so completely possessed me with the belief in the real existence, of all the persons it represents. I never once recollected the author whilst I was reading it; never said or thought, _that's a fine sentiment_,--or, _that is well expressed_--or, _that is well invented_; I believed all to be real, and was affected as I should be by the real scenes, if they had passed before my eyes; it is truly and deeply pathetic."

The sisters, Harriet and Sophia Lee, wrote a number of stories gathered together under the rather unfortunate title of "The Canterbury Tales," which had a long-continued popularity. "The Young Lady's Tale," and "The Clergyman's Tale" were written by Sophia; all the others, together with the novel "Errors of Innocence," belonged to Harriet. These stories have great narrative interest, and contain some powerfully drawn characters. Byron was deeply affected by some of them. Of the "German's Tale," he confessed: "It made a deep impression on me, and may be said to contain the germ of much that I have since written." It not only contained the germ of "Werner," but supplied the whole material for that tragedy. All the characters of the novel are reproduced by Byron except "Ida," whom he added. The plan of Miss Lee's work is exactly followed, as the poet admitted, and even the language is frequently adopted without essential change.

Charlotte Smith was a woman of talent and imagination who was driven to literature for aid in supporting a large family abandoned by their spendthrift father. She was among the most prolific novelists of her time, but only one work, "The Old Manor House," enjoyed more than a passing reputation, or has any claim to particular mention here. The chief merit of Charlotte Smith's novels lies in their descriptions of scenery, an element only just entering into the work of the novelist.

Clara Reeve and the celebrated Mrs. Radcliffe did much to sustain the prominent position which women were taking in fictitious composition, and their works will be commented upon in connection with the romantic revival, to which movement they were eminent contributors.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the number and variety of works of fiction increased with remarkable rapidity. The female sex supplied its full share, both in amount and in excellence of work. But those who desire to see the advent of women into new walks of active life on the ground that their presence and participation add to the purity of every occupation they adopt, can find no illustration of the theory in the connection of women with fictitious composition. Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Heywood, the earliest female novelists, produced the most inflammatory and licentious novels of their time. At a later period, during the eighteenth century, although some female writers exhibited a very exceptional refinement, the majority showed in this respect no marked superiority to their masculine contemporaries. In our own time, whoever would make a list of those novels which are most evidently immoral in their teachings and licentious in their tone, would be obliged to seek them almost quite as much among the works of female writers, as among those of the rougher sex.

To write a really excellent novel, is among the most difficult of literary feats. But to write a poor one has often been found an easy undertaking. The apparent facility of fictitious composition has deceived great numbers of literary aspirants, and has filled the circulating libraries with a vast collection of thoroughly worthless productions. This unfortunate fecundity, to which the department of fiction is subject, began to be conspicuous at the end of the eighteenth century,[200] and excited much opposition to novels of all kinds. Hannah More, in her essays on female education, inveighed against the evil in terms which are quite as applicable at the present day. "Who are those ever multiplying authors, that with unparalleled fecundity are overstocking the world with their quick-succeeding progeny? They are _novel-writers_; the easiness of whose productions is at once the cause of their own fruitfulness, and of the almost infinitely numerous race of imitators to whom they give birth. Such is the frightful facility of this species of composition, that every raw girl, while she reads, is tempted to fancy that she can also write. And as Alexander, on perusing the Iliad, found by congenial sympathy the image of Achilles stamped on his own ardent soul, and felt himself the hero he was studying; and as Correggio, on first beholding a picture which exhibited the perfection of the graphic art, prophetically felt all his own future greatness, and cried out in rapture: 'And I, too, am a painter!' So a thorough-paced novel-reading miss, at the close of every tissue of hackneyed adventures, feels within herself the stirring impulse of corresponding genius, and triumphantly exclaims: 'And I, too, am an author!' The glutted imagination soon overflows with the redundance of cheap sentiment and plentiful incident, and, by a sort of arithmetical proportion, is enabled by the perusal of any three novels, to produce a fourth; till every fresh production, like the prolific progeny of Banquo, is followed by

'Another, and another, and another!'"

[Footnote 199: Afterward Madame D'Arblay.]

[Footnote 200: See the "Progress of Romance," by Clara Reeve, for the names of many now forgotten novels, for which room cannot be spared here.]