money as to be indifferent to revenge? | Ferrars, Mr. Henry Tilney, Mr Ed-
Or so eager for revenge as to be indif-mund Bertram, and Mr. Elton. They
ferent to money? Or so bent on both are all specimens of the upper part of
together as to be indifferent to the the middle class. They have all been
honour of his nation and the law of liberally educated. They all lie under
Moses? All his propensities are the restraints of the same sacred pro-
mingled with each other, so that, in fession. They are all young. They
trying to apportion to each its proper are all in love. Not one of them has
part, we find the same difficulty which any hobbyhorse, to use the phrase of
constantly meets us in real life. A Sterne. Not one has a ruling passion,
superficial critic may say, that hatred such as we read of in Pope. Who
is Shylock's ruling passion. But how would not have expected them to be
many passions have amalgamated to insipid likenesses of each other? No
form that hatred? It is partly the such thing. Harpagon is not more un-
result of wounded pride: Antonio has like to Jourdain, Joseph Surface is not
called him dog. It is partly the result more unlike to Sir Lucius O'Trigger,
of covetousness: Antonio has hindered than every one of Miss Austen's young
him of half a million; and, when An- divines to all his reverend brethren.
tonio is gone, there will be no limit to And almost all this is done by touches
the gains of usury. It is partly the so delicate, that they elude analysis,
result of national and religious feeling: that they defy the powers of descrip-
Antonio has spit on the Jewish gaber- tion, and that we know them to exist
dine;
and the oath of revenge has been only by the general effect to which
sworn by the Jewish Sabbath. We they have contributed.
might go through all the characters
which we have mentioned, and through
fifty more in the same way; for it is
the constant manner of Shakspeare to
represent the human mind as lying,
not under the absolute dominion of one
despotic propensity, but under a mixed
government, in which a hundred powers
balance each other. Admirable as he
was in all parts of his art, we most
admire him for this, that while he has
left us a greater number of striking
portraits than all other dramatists put
together, he has scarcely left us a single
caricature.

À line must be drawn, we conceive, between artists of this class, and those poets and novelists whose skill lies in the exhibiting of what Ben Jonson called humours. The words of Ben are so much to the purpose that we will quote them:

When some one peculiar quality

Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluxions all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a humour."

The

There are undoubtedly persons, in whom humours such as Ben describes have attained a complete ascendency. Shakspeare has had neither equal The avarice of Elwes, the insane desire nor second. But among the writers of Sir Egerton Brydges for a barony who, in the point which we have no-to which he had no more right than to ticed, have approached nearest to the the crown of Spain, the malevolence manner of the great master, we have which long meditation on imaginary no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, wrongs generated in the gloomy mind a woman of whom England is justly of Bellingham, are instances. proud. She has given us a multitude feeling which animated Clarkson and of characters, all, in a certain sense, other virtuous men against the slave commonplace, all such as we meet trade and slavery, is an instance of a every day. Yet they are all as per- more honourable kind. fectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings. There are, for example, four clergymen, none of whom we should be surprised to find in any parsonage in the kingdom, Mr. Edward

Seeing that such humours exist, we cannot deny that they are proper subjects for the imitations of art. But we conceive that the imitation of such humours, however skilful and amusing, is not an achievement of the highest

9

C

order; and, as such humours are rare | tonous, the general effect is not mo in real life, they ought, we conceive, to notony, but a very lively and agreeable be sparingly introduced into works diversity. Her plots are rudely conwhich profess to be pictures of real structed and improbable, if we consider life. Nevertheless, a writer may show them in themselves. But they are adso much genius in the exhibition of mirably framed for the purpose of exthese humours as to be fairly entitled hibiting striking groups of eccentric to a distinguished and permanent rank characters, each governed by his own among classics. The chief seats of all, peculiar whim, each talking his own however, the places on the dais and peculiar jargon, and each bringing out under the canopy, are reserved for the by opposition the oddities of all the few who have excelled in the difficult rest. We will give one example out of art of portraying characters in which many which occur to us. All probano single feature is extravagantly over- bility is violated in order to bring Mr. charged. Delvile, Mr. Briggs, Mr. Hobson, and If we have expounded the law Mr. Albany into a room together. But soundly, we can have no difficulty in when we have them there, we soon forapplying it to the particular case before get probability in the exquisitely luus. Madame D'Arblay has left us dicrous effect which is produced by the scarcely any thing but humours. Al- conflict of four old fools, each raging most every one of her men and women with a monomania of his own, each has some one propensity developed to talking a dialect of his own, and each a morbid degree. In Cecilia, for ex-inflaming all the others anew every ample, Mr. Delvile never opens his time he opens his mouth.

lips without some allusion to his own Madame D'Arblay was most successbirth and station; or Mr. Briggs, with-ful in comedy, and indeed in comedy out some allusion to the hoarding of which bordered on farce. But we money; or Mr. Hobson, without be- are inclined to infer from some pastraying the selfindulgence and selfim-sages, both in Cecilia and Camilla, that portance of a purseproud upstart; or she might have attained equal disMr. Simkins, without uttering some tinction in the pathetic. We have sneaking remark for the purpose of formed this judgment, less from those currying favour with his customers; or Mr. Meadows, without expressing apathy and weariness of life; or Mr. Albany, without declaiming about the vices of the rich and the misery of the poor; or Mrs. Belfield, without some indelicate eulogy on her son; or Lady Margaret, without indicating jealousy of her husband. Morrice is all skipping, officious impertinence, Mr. Gosport all sarcasm, Lady Honoria all lively prattle, Miss Larolles all silly prattle. If ever Madame D'Arblay aimed at more, we do not think that she succeeded well.

We are, therefore, forced to refuse to Madame D'Arblay a place in the highest rank of art; but we cannot deny that, in the rank to which she belonged, she had few equals, and scarcely any superior. The variety of humours which is to be found in her novels is immense; and though the talk of each person separately is mono

ambitious scenes of distress which lie near the catastrophe of each of those novels, than from some exquisite strokes of natural tenderness which take us here and there by surprise. We would mention as examples, Mrs. Hill's account of her little boy's death in Cecilia, and the parting of Sir Hugh Tyrold and Camilla, when the honest baronet thinks himself dying.

It is melancholy to think that the whole fame of Madame D'Arblay rests on what she did during the earlier half of her life, and that every thing which she published during the forty-three years which preceded her death, lowered her reputation. Yet we have no reason to think that at the time when her faculties ought to have been in their maturity, they were smitten with any blight. In the Wanderer, we catch now and then a gleam of her genius. Even in the Memoirs of her father, there is no trace of dotage. They are very bad;

but they are so, as it seems to us, not | who whispered that Johnson had asfrom a decay of power, but from a sisted his young friend, and that the total perversion of power. novel owed all its finest passages to his hand. This was merely the fabrication of envy. Miss Burney's real excellences were as much beyond the

He

The truth is, that Madame D'Arblay's style underwent a gradual and most pernicious change, a change which, in degree at least, we believe to be uncx-reach of Johnson, as his real excelampled in literary history, and of which it may be useful to trace the progress. When she wrote her letters to Mr. Crisp, her early journals, and her first novel, her style was not indeed brilliant or energetic; but it was easy, clear, and free from all offensive faults. When she wrote Cecilia she aimed higher. She had then lived much in a circle of which Johnson was the centre; and she was herself one of his most submissive worshippers. It seems never to have crossed her mind that the style even of his best writings was by no means faultless, and that even had it been faultless, it might not be wise in her to imitate it. Phraseology which is proper in a disquisition on the Unities, or in a preface to a Dictionary, may be quite out of place in a tale of fashionable life. Old gentlemen do not criticize the reigning modes, nor do young gentlemen make love, with the balanced epithets and sonorous cadences which, on occasions of great dignity, a skilful writer may use with happy effect.

In an evil hour the author of Evelina took the Rambler for her model. This would not have been wise even if she could have imitated her pattern as well as Hawkesworth did. But such imitation was beyond her power. She had her own style. It was a tolerably good one; and might, without any violent change, have been improved into a very good one. She determined to throw it away, and to adopt a style in which she could attain excellence only by achieving an almost miraculous victory over nature and over habit. She could cease to be Fanny Burney; it was not so easy to become Samuel Johnson.

In Cecilia the change of manner began to appear. But in Cecilia the imitation of Johnson, though not always in the best taste, is sometimes eminently happy; and the passages which are so verbose as to be positively offensive, are few. There were people

lences were beyond her reach.
could no more have written the Mas-
querade scene, or the Vauxhall scene,
than she could have written the Life of
Cowley or the Review of Soame Jenyns.
But we have not the smallest doubt
that he revised Cecilia, and that he re-
touched the style of many passages.
We know that he was in the habit of
giving assistance of this kind most
freely. Goldsmith, Hawkesworth, Bos-
well, Lord Hailes, Mrs. Williams, were
among those who obtained his help.
Nay, he even corrected the poetry of
Mr. Crabbe, whom, we believe, he had
never seen. When Miss Burney thought
of writing a comedy, he promised to
give her his best counsel, though he
owned that he was not particularly well
qualified to advise on matters relating
to the stage. We therefore think it in
the highest degree improbable that his
little Fanny, when living in habits of
the most affectionate intercourse with
him, would have brought out an im-
portant work without consulting him ;
and, when we look into Cecilia, we see
such traces of his hand in the grave
and elevated passages as it is impossi-
ble to mistake. Before we conclude
this article, we will give two or three
examples.

When next Madame D'Arblay appeared before the world as a writer, she was in a very different situation. She would not content herself with the simple English in which Evelina had been written. She had no longer the friend who, we are confident, had polished and strengthened the style of Cecilia. She had to write in Johnson's manner without Johnson's aid. consequence was, that in Camilla every passage which she meant to be fine is detestable; and that the book has been saved from condemnation only by the admirable spirit and force of those scenes in which she was content to be familiar.

The

This is not a fine style, but simple, perspicuous, and agreeable. We now come to Cecilia, written during Miss Burney's intimacy with Johnson; and we leave it to our readers to judge whether the following passage was not at least corrected by his hand.

"It is rather an imaginary than an actual evil, and though a deep wound to pride, no offence to morality. Thus have I laid open to you my whole heart, confessed my per exposed with equal sincerity the sources of plexities, acknowledged my vainglory, and my doubts, and the motives of my decision. But now, indeed, how to proceed I know not. The difficulties which are yet to encounter I fear to enumerate, and the petition I have to urge I have scarce courage to mention. My family, mistaking ambition for honour, and rank for dignity, have long planned a splendid connection for me, to which, though my invariable repugnance has stopped any advances, their wishes and their views immoveably adhere. I am but I dread, therefore, to make a trial where I despair of success. I know not how to risk a prayer with those who may silence me by

But there was to be a still deeper descent. After the publication of Camilla, Madame D'Arblay resided ten years at Paris. During those years there was scarcely any intercourse between France and England. It was with difficulty that a short letter could occasionally be transmitted. All Madame D'Arblay's companions were French. She must have written, spoken, thought, in French. Ovid expressed his fear that a shorter exile might have affected the purity of his Latin. During a shorter exile, Gibbon unlearned his native English. Madame D'Arblay had carried a bad style to France. She brought back a style which we are really at a loss to describe. It is a sort of broken Johnsonese, a barbarous patois, bearing the same relation to the language of Rasselas, which the gib-too certain they will now listen to no other. berish of the Negroes of Jamaica bears to the English of the House of Lords. Sometimes it reminds us of the finest, that is to say, the vilest parts, of Mr. Galt's novels; sometimes of the perorations of Exeter Hall; sometimes of the leading articles of the Morning Post. But it most resembles the puffs of Mr. Rowland and Dr. Goss. It matters not what ideas are clothed in such a style. The genius of Shakspeare and Bacon united, would not save a work so written from general derision. It is only by means of specimens that we can enable our readers to judge how widely Madame D'Arblay's three styles differed from each other.

The following passage was written before she became intimate with Johnson. It is from Evelina.

a command."

Take now a specimen of Madame D'Arblay's later style. This is the way in which she tells us that her father, on his journey back from the Continent, caught the rheumatism.

"He was assaulted, during his precipi. tated return, by the rudest fierceness of wintry elemental strife; through which, with bad accommodations and innumerable pangs of the acutest spasmodic rheumatism, accidents, he became a prey to the merciless which barely suffered him to reach his home, ere, long and piteously, it confined him, a tortured prisoner, to his bed. Such was the check that almost instantly curbed, though it could not subdue, the rising pleasure of his hopes of entering upon a new species of existence that of an approved man of letters; for it was on the bed of sickness, ex"His son seems weaker in his under-changing the light wines of France, Italy, standing, and more gay in his temper; but his gaiety is that of a foolish overgrown schoolboy, whose mirth consists in noise and disturbance. He disdains his father for his 'ose attention to business and love of money, though he seems himself to have no talents, spirit, or generosity to make him superior to either. His chief delight appears to be in tormenting and ridiculing his sisters, who in return most cordially despise him. Miss Branghton, the eldest daughter, is by no means ugly; but looks proud, illtempered, and conceited. She hates the city, though without knowing why; for it is easy to discover she has lived nowhere else. Miss Polly Branghton is rather pretty, very foolish, very ignorant, very giddy, and I believe, very goodnatured."

and Germany, for the black and loathsome potions of the Apothecaries' Hall, writhed by darting stitches, and burning with ficry fever, that he felt the full force of that sublunary equipoise that seems evermore to hang suspended over the attainment of long. sought and uncommon felicity, just as it is ripening to burst forth with enjoyment!"

Here is a second passage from Evelina.

"Mrs. Selwyn is very kind and attentive to me. She is extremely clever. Her understanding, indeed, may be called mascu line; but unfortunately her manners de serve the same epithet; for, in studying to acquire the knowledge of the other sex, she

has lost all the softness of her own. In re-grounds two distinguished men, one a gard to myself, however, as I have neither Tory, the other a Whig. Madame courage nor inclination to argue with her, I have never been personally hurt at her want D'Arblay tells the story thus: "A simiof gentleness, a virtue which nevertheless lar ebullition of political rancour with seems so essential a part of the female cha- that which so difficultly had been conracter, that I find myself more awkward and less at ease with a woman who wants it than quered for Mr. Canning foamed over I do with a man." the ballot box to the exclusion of Mr. Rogers."

This is a good style of its kind; and the following passage from Cecilia is also in a good style, though not in a faultless one. We say with confidence, either Sam Johnson or the Devil.

"Even the imperious Mr. Delvile was more supportable here than in London. Secure in his own castle, he looked round him with a pride of power and possession which softened while it swelled him. His superiority was undisputed: his will was without control. He was not, as in the great capital of the kingdom, surrounded by competitors. No rivalry disturbed his peace; no equality mortified his greatness. All he saw were either vassals of his power, or guests bending to his pleasure. He abated, therefore, considerably the stern gloom of his haughtiness, and soothed his proud mind by the courtesy of condescension."

We will stake our reputation for critical sagacity on this, that no such paragraph as that which we have last quoted, can be found in any of Madame D'Arblay's works except Cecilia. Compare with it the following sample of her later style.

"If beneficence be judged by the happiness which it diffuses, whose claim, by that proof, shall stand higher than that of Mrs. Montagu, from the munificence with which she celebrated her annual festival for those hapless artificers who perform the most abject offices of any authorized calling, in being the active guardians of our blazing hearths? Not to vain glory, then, but to kindness of heart, should be adjudged the publicity of that superb charity which made its jetty objects, for one bright morning, cease to consider themselves as degraded outcasts from all society."

An offence punishable with imprisonment is, in this language, an offence "which produces incarceration." To be starved to death is "to sink from inanition into nonentity." Sir Isaac Newton is "the developer of the skies in their embodied movements;" and Mrs. Thrale, when a party of clever people sat silent, is said to have been "provoked by the dulness of a taciturnity that, in the midst of such renowned interlocutors, produced as narcotic a torpor as could have been caused by a dearth the most barren of all human faculties." In truth, it is impossible to look at any page of Madame D'Arblay's later works without finding flowers of rhetoric like these. Nothing in the language of those jargonists at whom Mr. Gosport laughed, nothing in the language of Sir Sedley Clarendel, approaches this new Euphuism.

It is from no unfriendly feeling to Madame D'Arblay's memory that we have expressed ourselves so strongly on the subject of her style. On the contrary, we conceive that we have really rendered a service to her reputation. That her later works were complete failures, is a fact too notorious to be dissembled: and some persons, we believe, have consequently taken up a notion that she was from the first an overrated writer, and that she had not the powers which were necessary to maintain her on the eminence on which good luck and fashion had placed her. We believe, on the contrary, that her early popularity was no more than the just reward of distinguished merit, and would never have undergone an eclipse, if she had only been content to go on writing in her mother tongue. If she failed when she quitted her own province, and attempted to occupy one in The Club, Johnson's Club, did itself which she had neither part nor lot, this no honour by rejecting on political | reproach is common to her with a crowd

We add one or two shorter samples. Sheridan refused to permit his lovely wife to sing in public, and was warmly praised on this account by Johnson.

66

"The last of men," says Madame D'Arblay, was Doctor Johnson to have abetted squandering the delicacy of integrity by nullifying the labours of talents."