Part 11

"Nay," cried Cecilia, "if it gives no pleasure, at least it takes none away; for, far from being any impediment to conversation, I think everybody talks more during the performance than between the acts. And what is there better you could substitute in its place?"

Cecilia, receiving no answer to this question, again looked round to see if she had been heard; when she observed her new acquaintance, with a very thoughtful air, had turned from her to fix his eyes upon the statue of Britannia.

Very soon after, he hastily arose, and seeming entirely to forget that he had spoken to her, very abruptly walked away.

Mr. Gosport, who was advancing to Cecilia and had watched part of this scene, stopped him as he was retreating, and said, "Why, Meadows, how's this? are you caught at last?"

"Oh, worn to death! worn to a thread!" cried he, stretching himself and yawning; "I have been talking with a young lady to entertain her! oh, such heavy work! I would not go through it again for millions!"

"What, have you talked yourself out of breath?"

"No; but the effort! the effort!--Oh, it has unhinged me for a fortnight!--Entertaining a young lady!--one had better be a galley-slave at once!"

"Well, but did she not pay your toils? She is surely a sweet creature."

"Nothing can pay one for such insufferable exertion! though she's well enough, too--better than the common run--but shy, quite too shy; no drawing her out."

"I thought that was to your taste. You commonly hate much volubility. How have I heard you bemoan yourself when attacked by Miss Larolles!"

"Larolles! Oh, distraction! she talks me into a fever in two minutes. But so it is for ever! nothing but extremes to be met with! common girls are too forward, this lady is too reserved--always some fault! always some drawback! nothing ever perfect!"

"Nay, nay," cried Mr. Gosport, "you do not know her; she is perfect enough, in all conscience."

"Better not know her then," answered he, again yawning, "for she cannot be pleasing. Nothing perfect is natural,--I hate everything out of nature."

MISS BURNEY'S FRIENDS

From the 'Letters'

But Dr. Johnson's approbation!--it almost crazed me with agreeable surprise--it gave me such a flight of spirits that I danced a jig to Mr. Crisp, without any preparation, music, or explanation--to his no small amazement and diversion. I left him, however, to make his own comments upon my friskiness, without affording him the smallest assistance.

Susan also writes me word that when my father went last to Streatham, Dr. Johnson was not there, but Mrs. Thrale told him that when he gave her the first volume of 'Evelina,' which she had lent him, he said, "Why, madam, why, what a charming book you lent me!" and eagerly inquired for the rest. He was particularly pleased with the snow-hill scenes, and said that Mr. Smith's vulgar gentility was admirably portrayed; and when Sir Clement joins them, he said there was a shade of character prodigiously well marked. Well may it be said, that the greatest minds are ever the most candid to the inferior set! I think I should love Dr. Johnson for such lenity to a poor mere worm in literature, even if I were not myself the identical grub he has obliged.

Susan has sent me a little note which has really been less pleasant to me, because it has alarmed me for my future concealment. It is from Mrs. Williams, an exceeding pretty poetess, who has the misfortune to be blind, but who has, to make some amends, the honor of residing in the house of Dr. Johnson; for though he lives almost wholly at Streatham, he always keeps his apartments in town, and this lady acts as mistress of his house.

JULY 25.

"Mrs. Williams sends compliments to Dr. Burney, and begs he will intercede with Miss Burney to do her the favor to lend her the reading of 'Evelina.'"

Though I am frightened at this affair, I am by no means insensible to the honor which I receive from the certainty that Dr. Johnson must have spoken very well of the book, to have induced Mrs. Williams to send to our house for it.

I now come to last Saturday evening, when my beloved father came to Chesington, in full health, charming spirits, and all kindness, openness, and entertainment.

In his way hither he had stopped at Streatham, and he settled with Mrs. Thrale that he would call on her again in his way to town, and carry me with him! and Mrs. Thrale said, "We all long to know her."

I have been in a kind of twitter ever since, for there seems something very formidable in the idea of appearing as an authoress! I ever dreaded it, as it is a title which must raise more expectations than I have any chance of answering. Yet I am highly flattered by her invitation, and highly delighted in the prospect of being introduced to the Streatham society.

She sent me some very serious advice to write for the theatre, as she says I so naturally run into conversations that 'Evelina' absolutely and plainly points out that path to me; and she hinted how much she should be pleased to be "honored with my confidence."

My dear father communicated this intelligence, and a great deal more, with a pleasure that almost surpassed that with which I heard it, and he seems quite eager for me to make another attempt. He desired to take upon himself the communication to my Daddy Crisp; and as it is now in so many hands that it is possible accident might discover it to him, I readily consented.

Sunday evening, as I was going into my father's room, I heard him say, "The variety of characters--the variety of scenes--and the language--why, she has had very little education but what she has given herself--less than any of the others!" and Mr. Crisp exclaimed, "Wonderful!--it's wonderful!"

I now found what was going forward, and therefore deemed it most fitting to decamp.

About an hour after, as I was passing through the hall, I met my daddy [Crisp]. His face was all animation and archness; he doubled his fist at me and would have stopped me, but I ran past him into the parlor.

Before supper, however, I again met him, and he would not suffer me to escape; he caught both my hands and looked as if he would have looked me through, and then exclaimed, "Why, you little hussy--you young devil!--ain't you ashamed to look me in the face, you _Evelina_, you! Why, what a dance have you led me about it! Young friend, indeed! O you little hussy, what tricks have you served me!"

I was obliged to allow of his running on with these gentle appellations for I know not how long, ere he could sufficiently compose himself, after his great surprise, to ask or hear any particulars; and then he broke out every three instants with exclamations of astonishment at how I had found time to write so much unsuspected, and how and where I had picked up such various materials; and not a few times did he with me, as he had with my father, exclaim "Wonderful!"

He has since made me read him all my letters upon this subject. He said Lowndes would have made an estate had he given me £1000 for it, and that he ought not to have given less! "You have nothing to do now," continued he, "but to take your pen in hand; for your fame and reputation are made, and any bookseller will snap at what you write."

I then told him that I could not but really and unaffectedly regret that the affair was spread to Mrs. Williams and her friends.

"Pho," said he: "if those who are proper judges think it right that it should be known, why should you trouble yourself about it? You have not spread it, there can no imputation of vanity fall to your share, and it cannot come out more to your honor than through such a channel as Mrs. Thrale."

* * * * *

LONDON, AUGUST.--I have now to write an account of the most consequential day I have spent since my birth; namely, my Streatham visit.

Our journey to Streatham was the least pleasant part of the day, for the roads were dreadfully dusty, and I was really in the fidgets from thinking what my reception might be, and from fearing they would expect a less awkward and backward kind of person than I was sure they would find.

Mr. Thrale's house is white, and very pleasantly situated in a fine paddock. Mrs. Thrale was strolling about, and came to us as we got out of the chaise.

She then received me, taking both my hands, and with mixed politeness and cordiality welcoming me to Streatham. She led me into the house, and addressed herself almost wholly for a few minutes to my father, as if to give me an assurance she did not mean to regard me as a show, or to distress or frighten me by drawing me out. Afterwards she took me up stairs, and showed me the house, and said she had very much wished to see me at Streatham; and should always think herself much obliged to Dr. Burney for his goodness in bringing me, which she looked upon as a very great favor.

But though we were some time together, and though she was so very civil, she did not _hint_ at my book, and I love her much more than ever for her delicacy in avoiding a subject which she could not but see would have greatly embarrassed me.

When we returned to the music-room, we found Miss Thrale was with my father. Miss Thrale is a very fine girl, about fourteen years of age, but cold and reserved, though full of knowledge and intelligence.

Soon after, Mrs. Thrale took me to the library; she talked a little while upon common topics, and then at last she mentioned 'Evelina.'

"Yesterday at supper," said she, "we talked it all over, and discussed all your characters; but Dr. Johnson's favorite is Mr. Smith. He declares the fine gentleman _manqué_ was never better drawn, and he acted him all the evening, saying 'he was all for the ladies!' He repeated whole scenes by heart. I declare I was astonished at him. Oh, you can't imagine how much he is pleased with the book; he 'could not get rid of the rogue,' he told me. But was it not droll," said she, "that I should recommend it to Dr. Burney? and tease him so innocently to read it?"

I now prevailed upon Mrs. Thrale to let me amuse myself, and she went to dress. I then prowled about to choose some book, and I saw upon the reading-table 'Evelina.' I had just fixed upon a new translation of Cicero's Lælius, when the library door was opened, and Mr. Seward entered. I instantly put away my book because I dreaded being thought studious and affected. He offered his services to find anything for me, and then in the same breath ran on to speak of the book with which I had myself "favored the world"!

The exact words he began with I cannot recollect, for I was actually confounded by the attack; and his abrupt manner of letting me know he was _au fait_ equally astonished and provoked me. How different from the delicacy of Mr. and Mrs. Thrale!

When we were summoned to dinner, Mrs. Thrale made my father and me sit on each side of her. I said that I hoped I did not take Dr. Johnson's place;--for he had not yet appeared.

"No," answered Mrs. Thrale, "he will sit by you, which I am sure will give him great pleasure."

Soon after we were seated, this great man entered. I have so true a veneration for him, that the very sight of him inspires me with delight and reverence, notwithstanding the cruel infirmities to which he is subject; for he has almost perpetual convulsive movements, either of his hands, lips, feet, or knees, and sometimes of all together.

Mrs. Thrale introduced me to him, and he took his place. We had a noble dinner, and a most elegant dessert. Dr. Johnson, in the middle of dinner, asked Mrs. Thrale what was in some little pies that were near him.

"Mutton," answered she, "so I don't ask you to eat any, because I know you despise it!"

"No, madam, no," cried he; "I despise nothing that is good of its sort; but I am too proud now to eat of it. Sitting by Miss Burney makes me very proud to-day!"

"Miss Burney," said Mrs. Thrale, laughing, "you must take great care of your heart if Dr. Johnson attacks it; for I assure you he is not often successless."

"What's that you say, madam?" cried he; "are you making mischief between the young lady and me already?"

A little while after he drank Miss Thrale's health and mine, and then added:--

"'Tis a terrible thing that we cannot wish young ladies well without wishing them to become old women!"

"But some people," said Mr. Seward, "are old and young at the same time, for they wear so well that they never look old."

"No, sir, no," cried the doctor, laughing; "that never yet was: you might as well say they are at the same time tall and short."

ROBERT BURNS

(1759-1796)

BY RICHARD HENRY STODDARD

There have been, there are, and there always will be, poets concerning whose lives it is not necessary that the world should know anything in order to understand their poetry; and there have been, there are, and there always will be, other poets concerning whose lives it is necessary that the world should know all there is to be known, before it can begin to understand their poetry. The difference between these two classes of poets is the difference between a company of accomplished actors, who by virtue of their training and practice are able to project themselves into imaginary characters on the public stage, and the originals of these characters in private personal life; or to put it in other words, the difference between art and nature. It is the privilege of art to dispense with explanations and extenuations; for if it be true to itself it is sufficient in itself, and anything added to it or taken from it is an impertinence or a deformity. When we read 'Hamlet' and 'Lear,' or 'As You Like It' and 'Much Ado About Nothing,' we do not ask ourselves what Shakespeare meant by them,--why some scenes were written in verse and other scenes in prose,--for it is not of Shakespeare that we are thinking as we read, but of his characters, for whom we feel that he is no more responsible than we are, since they move, live, and have their being in a world of their own, above the smoke and stir of this dim spot which men call Earth,--the world of pure, perfect, poetic art. If Shakespeare was conscious of himself when he wrote, he succeeded in concealing himself so thoroughly that it is impossible to discover him in his writing,--as impossible as it is not to discover other poets in their writings; for whatever is absent from the choir of British song, the note of personality is always present there. A low laugh in the gracious mouth of Chaucer, a harsh rebuke on the stern lips of Milton, a modish sneer in the smile of Pope,--it was now a stifled complaint, now an amorous ditty, and now a riotous shout with Burns, who was as much a poet through his personality as through his genius. He put his life into his song; and not to know what his life was, is not to know what his song is,--why it was a consolation to him while he lived, and why after his death it made his--

"One of the few, the immortal names, That were not born to die."

Early in the last half of the eighteenth century a staid and worthy man, named William Burness (as the name Burns was then spelled), a native of Kincardineshire, emigrated to Ayrshire in pursuit of a livelihood. He hired himself as a gardener to the laird of Fairlie, and later to a Mr. Crawford of Doonside, and at length took a lease of seven acres of land on his own account at Alloway on the banks of the Doon. He built a clay cottage there with his own hands, and to this little cottage, in December 1757, he brought a wife, the eldest daughter of a farmer of Carrick. There was a disparity in their ages, for he was about thirty-six and she some eight or nine years younger; and a disparity in their education, for he was an intelligent reader and lover of books, while she, though she had been taught as a child to read the Bible and to repeat the Psalms, was not able to write her name. She had a great respect for her husband, whose occupation was now that of a nurseryman. A little more than a year after their marriage, on the 25th of January, 1759, she bore him a son who was christened Robert, who was followed, as time went on, by brothers and sisters; and before many years were over, what with the guidman, the guidwife, and the bonny bairns, there was not much spare room in the little clay biggin at Alloway.

Poor as they were, the social condition of this Scottish family was superior to the social condition of most English families in the same walk of rustic life; this superiority resulting from certain virtues inherent in the national character,--the virtues of simple appetites and frugal habits, of patience and courage in adversity, and best of all, in affectionate hearts, reverential minds, and a thirst for knowledge which only books could supply. William Burness inherited respect for education from his father, who in his young manhood was instrumental in building a schoolhouse on his farm at Clockenhill. Accordingly, when his son Robert was in his sixth year he sent him to a little school at Alloway Mill, about a mile from his cottage; and not long after he took the lead in hiring a young teacher named Murdoch to instruct him and his younger brother Gilbert at some place near at hand. Their school-books consisted of the Shorter Catechism, the Bible, the spelling-book, and Fisher's 'English Grammar.' Robert was a better scholar than Gilbert, especially in grammar, in which he acquired some proficiency. The only book which he is known to have read outside of his primitive curriculum was a 'Life of Hannibal,' which was loaned him by his teacher. When he was seven the family removed to a small upland farm called Mount Oliphant, about two miles from Alloway, to and from which the boys plodded daily in pursuit of learning. At the end of two years the teacher obtained a better situation in Carrick; the school was broken up, and from that time onward William Burness took upon himself the education of his lads and lassies, whom he treated as if they were men and women, conversing with them on serious topics as they accompanied him in his labors on the farm, and borrowing for their edification, from a Book Society in Ayr, solid works like Derham's 'Physico- and Astro-Theology' and Ray's 'Wisdom of God in the Creation.' This course of heavy reading was lightened by the 'History of Sir William Wallace,' which was loaned to Robert by a blacksmith named Kilpatrick, and which forced a hot flood of Scottish feeling through his boyish veins. His next literary benefactor was a brother of his mother, who while living for a time with the family had learned some arithmetic by their winter evening's candle. He went one day into a bookseller's shop in Ayr to purchase a Ready Reckoner and a Complete Letter-Writer, but procured by mistake in place of the latter a small collection of 'Letters by Eminent Wits,' which proved of more advantage (or disadvantage) to his nephew than to himself, for it inspired the lad with a desire to excel in epistolary writing. Not long after this Robert's early tutor Murdoch returned to Ayr, and lent him Pope's Works; a bookish friend of his father's obtained for him the reading of two volumes of Richardson's 'Pamela' and another friendly soul the reading of Smollett's 'Ferdinand Count Fathom,' and 'Peregrine Pickle.' The book which most delighted him, however, was a collection of English songs called 'The Lark.'

[Illustration: ROBERT BURNS.]

Mount Oliphant taxed the industry and endurance of William Burness to the utmost; and what with the sterility of the soil, which was the poorest in the parish, and the loss of cattle by accidents and disease, it was with great difficulty that he managed to support his family. They lived so sparingly that butcher's meat was for years a stranger in the house, and they labored, children and all, from morning to night. Robert, at the age of thirteen, assisted in threshing the crop of corn, and at fifteen he was the principal laborer on the farm, for they could not afford a hired hand. That he was constantly afflicted with a dull headache in the evenings was not to be wondered at; nor that the sight and thought of his gray-haired father, who was turned fifty, should depress his spirits and impart a tinge of gloom to his musings. It was under circumstances like these that he composed his first song, the inspiration of which was a daughter of the blacksmith who had loaned him the 'History of Sir William Wallace.' It was the custom of the country to couple a man and woman together in the labors of harvest; and on this occasion his partner was Nelly Kilpatrick, with whom, boy-like,--for he was in his seventeenth year and she a year younger,--he liked to lurk behind the rest of the hands when they returned from their labors in the evening, and who made his pulse beat furiously when he fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. She sang sweetly, and among her songs there was one which was said to be composed by a small laird's son about one of his father's maids, with whom he was in love; and Robert saw no reason why he should not rhyme as well as he, for the author had no more school-craft than himself. Writing of this song a few years later, he called it puerile and silly; and his verdict as a poetical one was correct. Still, considered as a song, this artless effusion possessed one merit of which he himself was probably not conscious: it was inspired by his feeling and not by his reading, by the warmth and purity of his love of Nelly Kilpatrick, and not by his admiration of any amorous ditty in his collection of English songs. It was a poor thing, but it was certainly his own, and nowhere more so than in its recognition of the womanly personality of its heroine:--

"And then there's something in her gait Gars ony dress look weel."

This touch of nature, which no modish artist would have attempted, marked the hand of one who painted from the life.