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The Fatal Falsehood. She then abandoned writing for the stage, as inconsistent with her Christian character, but, like Racine, produced some sacred dramas, as Belshazzar, Daniel, and numerous poems. She is best known by her Moral Tales and her Contributions to the Cheap Repository Tracts. Among the latter is the famous Shepherd of Salisbury Plain. Among the former is Cœlebs in Search of a Wife. She also wrote several essays, the principal of which are Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, and Hints towards forming the Character of a Young Princess (for Charlotte, Princess of Wales).

"It would be idle in us to dwell here on works so well known as the Thoughts on the Manners of the Great, the Essay on the Religion of the Fashionable World, and so on, which finally established Miss More's name as a great moral writer, possessing a masterly command over the resources of our language, and devoting a keen wit and a lively fancy to the best and noblest of purposes. She did, perhaps, as much real good in her generation as any woman that ever held the pen." - London Quarterly.

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Mrs. Piozzi.

MRS. HESTER LYNCH PIOZZI, 1740-1821, is known by her poem The Three Warnings, and by her Recollections of Dr. Johnson.

Mrs. Piozzi was a native of Wales. Her maiden name was Salusbury; she married Henry Thrale, and, afterwards, in 1781, Gabriel Piozzi, an Italian. During the lifetime of her first husband, Dr. Johnson was an intimate friend of the family. Mrs. Piozzi published a number of fugitive poems, the best known of which is The Three Warnings, and a few miscellaneous works. She is principally known, however, by her Recollections of Dr. Johnson, published in 1796, and her Letters to and from Dr. JohnHer Recollections are pretentious and trifling, but narrate many incidents of interest in the great lexicographer's life.

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Madame D'Arblay.

MADAME FRANCES D'ARBLAY, 1752-1840, daughter and biographer of the great historian of music, Dr. Burney, lived to the extreme age of eighty-eight, which brings her in one sense within the present generation. But her main activity was in the eighteenth century, and she belongs really to the times of Johnson, Burke, Cowper, and Hannah More.

Fanny was a shy, sensitive child, and at the age of eight did not know her letters. Her mother dying when Fanny was ten, and her father from over-indulgence not putting her under the control of a tutor, she grew up into womanhood pretty much “according to her own sweet will." The musical reputation of Dr. Burney made his house the resort of all the great men of letters, Jolinson, Burke, Garrick, and others, and it was the brilliant conversation of these men that first gave a stimulus to the thoughts of the reserved, but all-observing girl.

Evelina, her first work, was written, according to her own account, when she was about seventeen or eighteen. She kept the composition of it entirely to herself for several years, and then sent it anonymously to Dodsley. As he refused to publish it on those conditions, she finally sold him the manuscript for £20. It was at once extremely popular, and gained the applause of the highest critics then known to the nation. "She found herself on the highest pinnacle of fame." Macaulay. Cecilia, which followed almost four years later, did not disappoint the high expectations raised by the first. "It was placed, by general acclamation, among the classical works of England."— Macaulay.

Miss Burney had the ill-fortune, soon after, to be appointed, at her father's request, to the post of the Keeper of Robes to Queen Charlotte. The life to which she was here subjected, was one peculiarly unsuited to her sensitive nature; and though treated with gentle kindness by her royal patrons, she felt the position to be an intolerable bondage. She was married in 1793 to a French officer, Count D'Arblay, and in 1802 she accompanied him to Paris, where she remained many years. The closing years of her life were spent in England.

Besides the works already mentioned, she published Edwin and Elgitha, a Tragedy; Camilla, which brought her three thousand guineas; and The Wanderer, a Tale, which brought £1500. She wrote also a Memoir of her father, Dr. Burney, in 3 vols. The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay were published after her death, in 7 vols., 8vo, and created considerable sensation on account of the eminent character of the persons among whom she had moved, and the unreserved nature of her observations.

"Miss Burney did for the English novel what Jeremy Collier did for the English drama. She first showed that a tale might be written in which both the fashionable and the vulgar life of London might be exhibited with great force, and with broad comic humor, and which yet should not contain a single line inconsistent with rigid morality, or even with virgin delicacy. She took away the reproach which lay on a most useful and delightful species of composition. She vindicated the right of her sex to have an equal share in a fair and noble promise of letters. Burke had sat up all night to read her writings, and Johnson had pronounced her superior to Fielding, when Rogers was still a school-boy, and Southey still in petticoats."— Macaulay.

Macaulay's judgment is not always equal to his rhetoric. The following estimate probably comes nearer to the truth:

"Her works are deficient in original vigor of conception, and her characters in depth and nature. She has considered so anxiously the figured silks and tamboured muslins which flutter about society, that she has made the throbbings of the heart which they cover a secondary consideration. Fashion passes away, and the manners of the great are unstable, but natural emotion belongs to immortality."- Allan Cunningham.

CHARLES BURNEY, 1726–1814, father of Fanny Burney, already noticed, published in 1773 a History of Music, which is still a standard on the subject of which it treats.

Burney's work was A General History of Music, from the earliest periods down to the time of writing. Dr. Burney (he received from Oxford the unusual degree of Doctor of Music) was eminent as a musician and a writer of music; but gained his chief distinction by becoming the historian of the science. He wrote other things, but this was the chief. "Dr. Burney gave dignity to the character of the modern musician, by joining to it that of the scholar and philosopher."— Sir William Jones.

JAMES BURNEY, 1739-1821, Rear-Admiral of the British Navy, and son of Dr. Burney the Listorian of music, compiled A Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Seas, or Pacific Ocean, with a History of the Buccaneers of America, 5 vols., 4to; A Chronological History of North-Eastern Voyages of Discovery; and other works.

Mrs. Radcliffe.

MRS. ANNA RADCLIFFE, 1764–1823, attained great temporary distinction as a novelist. One of her novels, The Mysteries of Udolpho, is unparalleled in its kind in English literature.

Mrs. Radcliffe travelled a little on the continent, but otherwise seems to have passed her time in country retirement. Even after she had become famous as a novelist, she did not suffer herself to be attracted by the society of London.

Few writers afford a more signal instance of the untrustworthiness of the adage, vox populi vox Dei. About the beginning of this century Mrs. Radcliffe was one of the bright stars of the literary firmament, admired not merely by the vulgar worshippers of the novel, but by men of unquestioned genius. Sir Walter Scott, Talfourd, Dr. Warren, Byron, were among her enthusiastic readers. Yet so completely has the popular fancy changed, and the love of the unnatural and horrible been replaced by a taste for what is healthier, at least more life-like, that Mrs. Radcliffe is scarcely known to the public except by name, and scarcely read except by the professional student of literature. Her truly great contemporaries have waxed more and more in brightness, while she herself has waned into the obscurity of the upper shelves of the circulating library.

Mrs. Radcliffe's first work, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbane, 1789, was not successful. It was followed by A Sicilian Romance, and The Romance of the Forest, which established her fame. Her greatest work, however, and that by which she is almost exclusively known, is The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794. Her next novel was The Italian, a story of the confessional. Gaston de Blondeville, and one or two other pieces, were published posthumously, in 1826, by Talfourd. Her poems also were collected and published at the same time.

"Her descriptions of scenery are vague and wordy to the last degree; they are neither like Salvator nor Claude, nor nature nor art; her characters are insipid,- the shadows of a shade, continued on, under different names, through all her novels; her story comes to nothing. But in harrowing up the soul with imaginary horrors, and making the flesh creep and the nerves thrill with fond hopes and fears, she is unrivalled among her fair countrywomen. Her great power lies in describing the indefinable, and embodying a phantom. . . . She has all the poetry of Romance, all that is obscure, visionary, and objectless in the imagination.". -Hazlitt

MRS. CHARLOTte Lennox, 1720–1804, was a native of New York, daughter of Col. James Ramsay, Lieutenant-Governor of that city. She was sent to London for her education, and remained there, main、 taining herself by the use of her pen. She was on friendly terms with the novelist Richardson, with Dr. Johnson, and other celebrities. Dr. Johnson ranked her with Hannah More and Fanny Burney, which was evidently an overestimate.

The following are Mrs. Lennox's principal productions: The Female Quixote, 2 vols.; Henrietta, a Novel, 2 vols.; Sophia, a Novel, 2 vols.; Euphemia, a Novel, 4 vols.; Memoir of Harriet Stuart; Memoir of Henry Lennox; Shakespeare Illustrated, 3 vols.; Philander, a Dramatic Pastoral; The Sisters, a Comedy; Old City Manners, a Comedy; Poems. She translated also from the French, Father Brumoy's Greek Theatre, 3 vols., 4to; The Duke of Sully's Memoirs, 3 vols., 4to; and the Memoirs of Madame Maintenon, and of the Countess of Berci, etc.

ELIZABETH HAMILTON, 1758-1816, was a writer of great celebrity about the beginning of the present century. Sir Walter Scott was a particular admirer of her writings.

The principal works of Mrs. Hamilton are the following: Letters of a Hindoo Rajah; Memoirs of Modern Philosophers; Letters on Education; Letters on the Moral and Religious Principle; The Cottagers of Glenburnie. The last named is considered her best.

"We have not met with anything nearly so good as this, since we read Castle Rackrent and the Popular Tales of Miss Edgeworth. This contains as admirable a picture of the Scottish peasantry as do those of the Irish; and rivals them not only in the general truth of the delineations, and in the cheerfulness and practical good sense of the lessons they convey, but in the nice discrimination of national character, and the skill with which a dramatic representation of humble life is saved from caricature and absurdity."— Sir Walter Scott.

MRS. CHARLOTTE SMITH, 1749-1806, wrote a large number of works, of which the one now best known is The Old Manor House.

She was married at the early age of fifteen to Mr. Benjamin Smith, a merchant engaged in the West India trade. The improvident speculations and extravagance of Mr. Smith threw upon Mrs. Smith the support of herself and her children, twelve in number, and this she undertook, as many other mothers have done, by the use of her pen. Mrs. Smith, her writings and her fortunes, figure in Walter Scott's Lives of the Novelists, Leigh Hunt's Men, Women, and Books, Julia Kavanagh's English Women of Letters, and many other works of a like kind.

Mrs. Smith wrote the following works: Emmeline, the Orphan of the Castle, Ethelinda, the Ruler of the Lake, Celestina, Desmond, Montalbert, Marchmant, The Young Philosopher, The Banished Man, and The Old Manor House. The last named is considered her best.

She published several volumes of poetry: Elegiac Sonnets and other Essays; The Emigrants; and Beachy Head, etc. Other works of hers are Romance and Real Life, a collection of interesting and well authenticated facts; Rural Works; Minor Morals, with Sketches of Natural History; Conversations on Natural History; Natural History of Birds, etc.

LADY ELEANOR FENN, 1744-1813, wrote numerous educational works, under the assumed name of Mrs. Lovechild: The Child's Grammar; The Mother's Grammar; Parsing Lessons for Elder Pupils: Grammatical Amusements; Sunday Miscellany; Short Sermons for Young Persons, etc.

SIR JOHN FENN, 1739-1794, an antiquary, made a collection of original Letters, written by members of the Paston family, during the reigns of Henry VI., Edward IV.,

Richard III., and Henry VII. These Paston Letters fill 5 vols., 4to, and are considered of great value in elucidating the manners of the people during a most interesting period of history. "I am now reading the Paston Letters, written in the wars of York and Lancaster, and am greatly entertained with them. Their antique air, their unstudied communication of the modes of those old times, with their undoubted authenticity, render them highly interesting, curious, and informing."- - Madame D' Arblay's Diary.

MRS. SARAH TRIMMER, 1741-1810, daughter of Joshua J. Kirby, and wife of Mr. Trimmer, was born at Ipswich. She was the author of a large number of works, chiefly educational and religious. The following are some of them: Teacher's Assistant, 2 vols.; The Economy of Charity; Outline of Ancient History; Outline of Roman History; History of England; Help to the Unlearned in the Study of the Holy Scriptures; Instructive Tales; History of the Robins, etc.

MRS. CATHARINE MACAULAY, 1733-1791, was a writer of some notoriety. She wrote on historical, moral, and political subjects, and was an avowed republican. She was so much of a partisan that her historical writings are regarded as of doubtful credit. She wrote A History of England from the Accession of James II. to that of the Brunswick Line, 8 vols., 4to; A History of England from the Revolution to the Present Time, only one volume finished; Moral Truth, 8vo; Letters on Education, 4to; several political pamphlets. This lady does not appear to have been connected with the great historian of the same name, who in our day has gone over similar historical ground. But in the sharp passage at arms between him and J. Wilson Croker, the latter points his sting in the following style: "Catharine, though now forgotten by an ungrateful public, made quite as much noise in her day as Thomas does in ours."

REV. AULAY MACAULAY,

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1797, a Scotchman, educated at the University of Glasgow, and uncle to Thomas Babington Macaulay, wrote Essays on Various Subjects of Taste and Criticism; Peculiar Advantages of Sunday-Schools, etc.

Mackenzie.

HENRY MACKENZIE, 1745-1831, is well known as a sentimental writer of this period, his Man of Feeling being an acknowledged classic in that line.

Mackenzie was born in Edinburgh, and educated at the University of that city. He practised law, and was appointed Comptroller of Taxes for Scotland. Mackenzie's house was a meeting-place for the select literary and political men of the day. He himself was the author of many works and sketches, which have lost somewhat of their first reputation, but are still read and admired.

Mackenzie's principal works are: The Man of Feeling, the Man of the World, Julia de Roubigné. Besides these larger works, he contributed a great number of papers to The Lounger, The Mirror, and other periodicals. He was also a member of the Committee appointed by the Highland Society to examine into the authenticity of the Ossian Poems. Mackenzie's style resembles closely that of Sterne, and his writings are nearly all of the sentimental order. They are superior to Sterne's in purity of morals, but are decidedly inferior in vigor of invention and play of humor. Mackenzie's short stories are beautifully told.

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