CHAPTER III

And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears.

During her period of distress Henrietta lodged with a milliner. Her landlady showed her a small collection of books and pointed with especial pleasure to her favourite novels: "There is Mrs. Haywood's Novels, did you ever read them? Oh! they are the finest love-sick passionate stories: I assure you, you'll like them vastly." Henrietta, however, choseJoseph Andrewsfor her diversion. Mrs. Eliza Haywood was never admitted into that inner circle of highly respectable English ladies who clustered around Richardson. She was more of an adventuress in the domain of letters. In her first novels she followed the fashion set by Mrs. Manley and supplied the public with scandals in high life.Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to Utopia, published in 1725,The Secret Intrigues of the Count of Caramania, published in 1727, are the highly suggestive titles of two of the most popular of her early works.

After Richardson had made Virtue more popular than Vice, Mrs. Haywood followed the literary fashion which he had set, and in 1751 wroteThe History of Miss Betsey Thoughtless. This has sometimes been called a domestic novel,but that is a misnomer, since the characters are seldom found at home, but rather are met in the various pleasure resorts of London. As was the fashion in the novels of this time, and probably not an uncommon occurrence in the English capital, the heroine was often forced into a chariot by some lawless libertine, but fortunately was always rescued by some more virtuous lover. The whole story is but a new arrangement of the one or two incidents with which Richardson had wrung the heart of the British public. It has one advantage over the most of the novels which had preceded it. There is little told that does not bear directly on the plot, the characters of the sub-plot being important personages in the main story, and the book has a definite conclusion.

None of the characters, however, are pleasing. The hero, Mr. Trueworthy, a combination of Tom Jones and Sir Charles Grandison, is a hypocrite. The other male characters are insignificant. Miss Betsey, the heroine, is almost charming. Conscious of her own innocence, she repeatedly appears in a light that makes her worldly lover, Mr. Trueworthy, suspect her virtue, until at last he begs to be released from his engagement to her. The author of the book stands as a duenna at Miss Betsey's side, and points out by the misfortunes of the heroine how foolish it is for girls to ignore public opinion,and strives to inculcate the lesson that a husband is the best protection for a young girl. We are properly shocked at Miss Betsey's levity, who, although she had arrived at the mature age of fourteen, cared not a straw for any of the gentlemen who sought her hand, but liked to have them about her only because they flattered her vanity or afforded her a subject for mirth. Miss Betsey's gaiety, wit, and generosity would be very attractive—in fact, she is quite an up-to-date young lady—but we see how much better she would "get on" if she had a little more worldly wisdom. She is punished, as she deserves to be, by losing her lover, and marries a man who makes her very unhappy. Mr. Trueworthy, however, learns of her innocence; her husband fortunately dies, and the author takes the bold step of uniting the widow to her former lover, after a year of mourning and passing through much suffering, brought upon herself by her own thoughtlessness. She is rewarded, however, very much as Pamela was rewarded, by marrying a man of honour, who had judged her formerly by his own conduct, being too willing to believe by appearances that she had lost her chastity, or, at least, had sullied her good name.

In this novel, Mrs. Haywood is very near the line that divides the artist from the artisan. Like a young girl with good health and goodspirits, Miss Betsey is ever on the verge of sweeping aside the prejudices of her duenna, and asserting her own individuality, but is constantly held back by the sense of worldly propriety. Had Mrs. Haywood permitted Miss Betsey to carry the plot whither she would without let or hindrance, she would have won for herself an acknowledged place among the heroines of fiction.

The History of Miss Betsey Thoughtlesswas an epoch-making book. The adventures of its heroine in the city of London took possession of the imagination of Fanny Burney, while little more than a child, and led to the story ofEvelina, the forerunner of Jane Austen and her school.

The fashion for weeping heroines was at its height, when, in 1761, Mrs. Francis Sheridan publishedThe Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph. The story is written in the form of letters, in which the heroine reveals to a friend of her own sex all the secrets of her heart. All London rejoiced over the virtues of Sidney Biddulph, and wept over her sorrows. She had been educated "in the strictest principles of virtue; from which she never deviated, through the course of an innocent, though unhappy life." It was so pathetic a story that Dr. Johnson doubted if Mrs. Sheridan had a right to make her characters suffer so much, andCharles James Fox, who sat up all night to read it, pronounced it the best of all novels of his time.

The book, as first written, was in three volumes. The author had brought the story to a most fitting close. Both Sidney's husband and the man whom she had really loved were dead, and the widow could have spent her days in pleasing melancholy, contented with the thought that she had never done a wrong. But the public demanded a continuation of the story. In 1767, two volumes were added, giving the history of Sidney's daughters, who seem to have inherited from their mother the enmity of the fates, for their sufferings were as great as hers.

Authors are prone to draw upon their own history for the emotions they depict. But Mrs. Sheridan's life did not furnish the tragic elements ofSidney Biddulph, although it was not without romance. Before her marriage, she wrote a pamphlet in praise of the conduct of one Thomas Sheridan, the manager of the Theatre Royal in Dublin, during a riot that occurred in the theatre. Sheridan read these words in his praise, sought the acquaintance of their author, and before long married her.

History furnishes a long list of women of talent whose sons were men of genius. Mrs. Sheridan's second son, Richard Brinsley, the author of thelight and sparklingRivals, inherited his mother's talents without her gloom. But Mrs. Sheridan also had some ability as a writer of comedy, and the most famous character of theRivalswas first sketched by her. In a comedy,A Journey to Bath, declined by Garrick, one of the characters was Mrs. Twyford, whom Richard Brinsley Sheridan transformed into that famous blundering coiner of words, Mrs. Malaprop.

Mrs. Sheridan's place in literature rests uponSidney Biddulph. This novel was an innovation in English fiction. Nearly one hundred years earlier, Madame de Lafayette had writtenThe Princess of Clèves, one of the most nearly perfect novels that has ever been written, and the first that depended for its interest, not alone on what was done, but on the subtle workings of the human heart which led to the doing of it. From that time the novels of French women were largely introspective. English women, however, were either less interested in the inner life, or more reserved in laying bare its secrets.Sidney Biddulphwas the first English novel of this kind, and it left no definite trace on fiction, although it was the favourite novel of Charlotte Smith and had some slight effect upon her writings, and Mrs. Inchbald, Mrs. Opie, and Mary Brunton noted the feelings of their characters. Not untilJane Eyrewas published, long after Mrs. Sheridan had beenforgotten, was there any great English novel of the inner life.

In its daySidney Biddulphwas exceedingly popular on the continent of Europe as well as in England. It was translated into German, and an adaptation of it was made in French by the Abbé Prévost, under the title,Memoirs pour servir a l'histoire de la vertu. But after all, Sidney's sorrows were not real, or she herself was not real; and we of to-day smile or yawn over the pages that drew tears from the eyes of the mighty Dr. Johnson.

Notwithstanding the many excellencies of English fiction during the middle of the eighteenth century, it was held in low repute. There had been many writers attempting to portray real life who, without the genius of the greater novelists, could imitate only their faults. In the preface toPolly Honeycomb, which was acted at Drury Lane theatre in 1760, George Colman, the author, gives the titles of about two hundred novels whose names appeared in a circulating library at that time.Amorous Friars, or the Intrigues of a Convent;Beauty put to its Shifts, or the Young Virgin's Rambles;Bubbled Knights, or Successful Contrivances, plainly evincing, in two Familiar Instances lately transacted in this Metropolis, the Folly and Unreasonableness of Parents Laying a Restraint upon their Children'sInclinations in the Affairs of Love and Marriage;The Impetuous Lover, or the Guiltless Parricide; these are the titles of a few of the popular books of that period. Colman in the character of Polly Honeycomb, an earlier Lydia Languish, attempts to show the moral effects of such reading. Her head had been so turned by these books that her father exclaims, "A man might as well turn his daughter loose in Covent-Garden, as trust the cultivation of her mind toA CIRCULATING LIBRARY."

Fiction at this time lacked delicacy and refinement. The characters lived largely in the streets or taverns, and were too much engrossed in the pleasures of active life to give any heed to thoughts or emotions. Though love was the constant theme of these books, as yet no true love story had been written. The fires of home had not been lighted. The refinements, the pure affections, the high ideals which cluster around the domestic hearth had as yet no place in the novel. It needed the feminine element, which, while no broader than that which had previously made the novel, by its own addition gave something new to it and made it truer to life.

While no woman of marked genius had appeared, the number and influence of women novelists continued to increase throughout the eighteenth century. Tim Cropdale in the novelHumphry Clinker, who "had made shift to live many years by writing novels, at the rate of five pounds a volume," complains that "that branch of business is now engrossed by female authors, who publish merely for the propagation of virtue, with so much ease, and spirit, and delicacy, and knowledge of the human heart, and all in the serene tranquillity of high life, that the reader is not only enchanted by their genius, but reformed by their morality." Schlosser in hisHistory of the Eighteenth Centurypays this tribute to the moral influence of the women novelists: "With the increase of the number of writers in England in the course of the eighteenth century, women began to appear as authors instead of educating their children, and their influence upon morals and modes of thinking increased, as that of the clergy diminished."

A noteworthy transformation took place in the English novel during the late years of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth. This change cannot be explained by the great difference in manners only. The mode of life described by the early novelists was in existence sixty years after they wrote scenes typical of the customs and manners of their day, just as the quiet home life described by Miss Austen was to be found in England a hundred years before it graced the pages of a book. This new era in the English novel was due not to a change of environment, but to the new ideals of those who wrote.

In 1778, English fiction was represented by the work of Miss Burney, and for thirty-six years, until 1814, whenWaverleyappeared, this rare plant was preserved and kept alive by a group of women, who trimmed and pruned off many of its rough branches and gave to the wild native fruit a delicacy and fragrance unknown to it before. English women writers didat that time for the English novel what French women had done in the preceding century for the French novel; they made it so pure in thought and expression that Bishop Huet was able to say of the French romances of the seventeenth century, "You'll scarce find an expression or word which may shock chaste ears, or one single action which may give offence to modesty."

This great change in the English novel was inaugurated by a young woman ignorant of the world, whose power lay in her innocent and lively imagination. At his home in Queen Square and later in St. Martin's Street, Charles Burney, the father of Frances, entertained the most illustrious men of his day. Johnson, Reynolds, Garrick, Burke, and Colman were frequent guests, while members of the nobility thronged his parlours to listen to the famous Italian singers who gladly sang for the author of theHistory of Music. Here Fanny, a bashful but observant child, saw life in the drawing-room. But as Dr. Burney gave little heed to the comings and goings of his daughters, they played with the children of a wigmaker next door, where, perhaps, Fanny became acquainted with the vulgar side of London life, which is so humorously depicted inEvelina. She received but little education, nor was she more than a casual reader, but she was familiar withPamela,Betsey Thoughtless,Rasselas, and theVicar of Wakefield.Such was her preparation for becoming a writer of novels.

From her earliest years, she had delighted in writing stories and dramas, although she received little encouragement in this occupation. In her fifteenth year her stepmother proved to her so conclusively the folly of girls' scribbling that Fanny burned all her manuscripts, includingThe History of Caroline Evelyn. She could not, however, banish from her mind the fate of Caroline's infant daughter, born of high rank, but related through her grandmother to the vulgar people of the East End of London. The many embarrassing situations in which she might be placed haunted the imagination of the youthful writer, but it was not until her twenty-sixth year that these situations were described, whenEvelina or a Young Lady's Entrance into the Worldwas published.

The success of the book was instantaneous. The name of the author, which had been withheld even from the publishers, was eagerly demanded. All agreed that only a man conversant with the world could have written such accurate descriptions of life both high and low. The wonder was increased when it was learned that the author was a young woman who had drawn her scenes, not from a knowledge of the world, but from her own intuition and imagination. Miss Burney became at oncean honoured member of the literary circle which Mrs. Thrale had gathered at Streatham, and a favourite of Dr. Johnson, who declared thatEvelinawas superior to anything that Fielding had written, and that some passages were worthy of the pen of Richardson. The book was accorded a place among English classics, which it has retained for over a century. "It was not hard fagging that produced such a work asEvelina," wrote Mr. Crisp to the youthful author. "It was the ebullition of true sterling genius—you wrote it because you could not help it—it came—and so you put it down on paper."

The novel, following the form so common in the eighteenth century, is written in the form of letters. The plot is somewhat time-honoured; there is the nurse's daughter substituted for the real heiress, and a mystery surrounding some of the characters; it is unfolded slowly with a slight strain upon the readers' credulity at the last, but it ends to the satisfaction of all concerned. In many incidents and in some of the characters the story suggestsBetsey Thoughtless, but Miss Burney had greater powers of description than Mrs. Haywood.

The plot of the novel is forgotten, however, in the lively, witty manner in which the characters are drawn and the ludicrous situations in which they are placed. So long had these men and women held the mind of the author that they areintensely real as they are presented to us at assemblies, balls, theatres, and operas, where we watch their oddities with amusement.

Indeed no woman has given so many graphic, droll, and minute descriptions of life as Miss Burney. Her genius in this respect is different from that of other women novelists. She has made a series of snap-shots of people in the most absurd situations and ridicules them while she is taking the picture. Few women writers can resist the temptation of peeping into the hearts of their men and women, and the knowledge thus gained gives them sympathy, while it often detracts from the strong lines of the external picture; a writer will not paint a villain quite so black if he believes he still preserves some remnants of a noble nature. But Miss Burney has no interest in the inner life of her men and women. She saw their peculiarities and was amused by them, and has presented them to the reader with minute descriptions and lively wit.

She also makes fine distinctions between people. Sir Clement Willoughby, the West End snob, and Mr. Smith, the East End beau, are drawn with discrimination. With what wit Miss Burney describes the scene at theridottobetween Evelina and Sir Clement. He had asked her to dance with him. Unwilling to do so, because she wished to dance with another gentleman, if he should ask her, she told Sir Clementshe was engaged for that dance. He did not leave her, however, but remained by her side and speculated as to who the beast was so hostile to his own interests as to forget to come to her; pitied the humiliation a lady must feel in having to wait for a gentleman, and pointed to each old and lame man in the room asking if he were the miscreant; he offered to find him for her and asked what kind of a coat he had on. When Evelina did not know, he became angry with the wretch who dared to address a lady in so insignificant a coat that it was unworthy of her notice. To save herself from further annoyance she danced with him, for she now knew that Sir Clement had seen through her artifice from the beginning.

But the portrait of Mr. Smith, the East End snob, is even better than that of Sir Clement Willoughby. Evelina is visiting her relatives at Snow Hill, when Mr. Smith enters, self-confident and vulgar. His aim in life, as he tells us, is to please the ladies. When Tom Branghton is disputing with his sister about the place where they shall go for amusement, he reprimands Tom for his lack of good breeding.

"O fie, Tom,—dispute with a lady!" cried Mr. Smith. "Now, as for me, I'm for where you will, providing this young lady [meaning Evelina] is of the party; one place is the same as another to me, so that it be but agreeable tothe ladies. I would go anywhere with you, Ma'm, unless, indeed, it were to church;—ha, ha, ha, you'll excuse me, Ma'm, but, really, I never could conquer my fear of a parson;—ha, ha, ha,—really, ladies, I beg your pardon, for being so rude, but I can't help laughing for my life."

Mr. Smith endeavoured to make himself particularly pleasing to Evelina, and for that purpose bought tickets for her and her relatives to attend the Hampstead Assembly. When he observed that Evelina was a little out of sorts, he attributed her low spirits to doubts of his intentions towards her. "To be sure," he told her, "marriage is all in all with the ladies; but with us gentlemen it's quite another thing." He advised her not to be discouraged, saying with a patronising air, "You may very well be proud, for I assure you there is nobody so likely to catch me at last as yourself."

Both Sir Clement Willoughby and Mr. Smith are selfish and conceited; but the former had lived among the gentlemen of Mayfair, the latter among the tradespeople of Snow Hill, and this difference of environment is shown in every speech they utter.

It is the contrast between these two distinct classes of society that saves the book from becoming monotonous. Evelina visits the Pantheon with her West End friends. When Captain Mirvan wonders what people find in sucha place, Mr. Lovel, a fashionable fop, quickly rejoins: "What the ladies may come hither for, Sir, it would ill becomeusto determine; but as to we men, doubtless we can have no other view, than to admire them." At another time Evelina visits the opera with the vulgar Branghtons, who all rejoiced when the curtain dropped, and Mr. Branghton vowed he would never be caught again. The Branghtons at the opera is hardly inferior to Partridge at the play. Tom Branghton is a good representative of his class. He describes with glee the last night at Vauxhall: "There's such squealing and squalling!—and then all the lamps are broke,—and the women skimper scamper;—I declare I would not take five guineas to miss the last night!"

All the characters, even the heroine, take delight, in boisterous mirth. Much of the humour of the book consists rather in ludicrous situations than in any real delicacy of wit. Too often the laugh is at another's discomfiture, and so fails to please the present age with its kindlier feeling towards others. Such are the practical jokes which Captain Mirvan plays upon Madame Duval. In one instance, disguised as a robber, he waylays the lady's coach, and leaves her in a ditch with her feet tied to a tree. The many tricks which the doughty Salt plays upon this lady so much resemble some of the humorous scenes inJoseph Andrews, andTom Jonesthat we may infer the readers of that century found them laughable. The Captain and the French woman are two puppets which serve to introduce much of this horse-play. They are not even caricatures; they are entirely unlike anything in human life. With the exception of these two characters, all the men and women who provoked the mirth of the heroine are well portrayed.

Miss Burney is less felicitous in her descriptions of serious characters. Lord Orville, the same type of man as Sir Charles Grandison, is true only in the sense that Miss Burney announces the truth of the entire book. "I have not pretended to show the world what it actuallyis, but what itappearsto a girl of seventeen," she wrote in the preface toEvelina. Lord Orville, all dignity, nobility, charm, and perfection, is but the ideal of a young girl.

Evelina was a new woman in literature, a revelation to the men of the time of George the Third. The sincerity of the book could not be doubted. "But," they asked, "did Evelina represent the woman's point of view of life? Surely no man ever held like views." The Lovelaces and Tom Joneses are not so attractive as when seen through the eyes of their own sex, and the heroines are not so soft and yielding as a man would create them. Evelina, like all Miss Burney's heroines, is independent, fearless,and witty, with scarcely a trace of the traditional heroine of fiction. Saints and Magdalenes have always appealed to the masculine imagination.La donna dolorosahas occupied a prominent place in the art and literature of man's creation. Here he has revealed his sex egoism in all its nudity: the woman weeping for man, either lover, husband, or son; man the centre of her thoughts, her hopes and fears. This new heroine with a new regard towards man was a revelation to them. Evelina was the first woman to break the spell, to show them woman as woman, in lieu of woman as parasite and adjunct to man. Evelina is not always pleasing; she hasn't always good manners; she sometimes laughs in the faces of the dashing beaux who are addressing her. But she is a woman of real flesh and blood; such women have existed in all time, and, liked many women we meet every day and whom men in all ages have known, Evelina insists on being the centre of every scene.

In July, 1782, Miss Burney's second book,Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress, was published. This novel met with as enthusiastic a reception asEvelina. Gibbon read the whole five volumes in a day; Burke declared they had cost him three days, though he did not part with the story from the time he first opened it, and had sat up a whole night to finish it; and Sir JoshuaReynolds had been fed while reading it, because he refused to quit it at the table.

The book shows more care and effort thanEvelina. That was an outburst of youthful vivacity and spirits, but inCeciliathe author is striving to do her best. This is particularly revealed in the style, which shows the influence of Doctor Johnson, for it has lost the simplicity ofEvelina. The diction is more ambitious, and the sentences are longer, many of them balanced. Even some of the inferior characters from their speech, appear to have received a lesson in English composition from Dr. Johnson.

But the novel owes its place among English classics to the varieties of characters portrayed and the vivid pictures of English life. Here again the gaieties of Vauxhall, Ranelagh, Marylebone and the Pantheon have become immortal, drawn with colours as vivid and enduring as Hogarth used in painting the sadder sides of London life. No other writer has brought these places before our eyes as clearly and as fully as Fanny Burney.

The plot ofCecilia, like that ofEvelina, is so arranged as to present different classes of society.Ceciliahas three guardians, with one of whom she must live during her minority. First she visits Mr. Harrel, a gay, fashionable man, a spendthrift and a gambler, who lives in a fashionable house in Portman Square, where Cecilia, during a constant round of festivities, meets the fashionable people of London. Next she visits Mr. Briggs in the City, "a short thick, sturdy man, with very small keen black eyes, a square face, a dark complexion, and a snub nose." He was so miserly that when Cecilia asked for pen, ink, and a sheet of paper, he gave her a slate and pencil, as he supposed she had nothing of consequence to say. He was as sparing of his words as of his money, and used the same elliptical sentences in his speech as Dickens afterwards put into the mouth of Alfred Jingle, the famous character inPickwick Papers. He thus advises Cecilia in regard to her lovers: "Take care of sharpers; don't trust shoe-buckles, nothing but Bristol stones! tricks in all things. A fine gentleman sharp as another man. Never give your heart to a gold-topped cane, nothing but brass gilt over. Cheats everywhere: fleece you in a year; won't leave you a groat. But one way to be safe,—bring 'em all to me." Lastly she visits Mr. Delvile, her third guardian, a man of family, who despised both the men associated with him as trustees of Cecilia; he lived in such gloomy state in his magnificent old house in St. James's Square that it inspired awe, and repressed all pleasure. Pride in their birth and prejudice against all parvenus were the faults of Mr. and Mrs. Delvile.

Besides these characters, there were many others whose names were for a long time familiar in every household. Sir Robert Floyer was as vain as Mr. Smith. Mr. Meadows was constantly bored to death; it was insufferable exertion to talk to a quiet woman, and a talkative one put him into a fever. At the opera the solos depressed him and the full orchestra fatigued him. He yawned while ladies were talking to him, and after he had begged them to repeat what they had said, forgot to listen. "I am tired to death! tired of everything," was his constant expression.

In his critical essay on Madame D'Arblay, Fanny Burney's married name, under which her later works were published, Macaulay has thus dealt with her treatment of character:

"Madame D'Arblay has left us scarcely anything but humours. Almost every one of her men and women has some one propensity developed to a morbid degree. InCecilia, for example, Mr. Delvile never opens his lips without some allusion to his own birth and station; or Mr. Briggs without some allusion to the hoarding of money; or Mr. Hobson, without betraying the self-indulgence and self-importance of a purse-proud upstart; or Mr. Simkins, without uttering some sneaking remark for the purpose of currying favour with his customers; or Mr. Meadows, without expressingapathy 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, as in the character of Monckton, we do not think that she succeeded well.... The variety of humours which is to be found in her novels is immense; and though the talk of each person separately is monotonous, the general effect is not monotony, but a most lively and agreeable diversity."

While the character of Monckton is not strongly drawn, one or two scenes in which he figures have great power. Mr. Monckton, who had married an aged woman for her money, lived in constant hope of her dissolution. He planned to keep Cecilia from marrying until that happy event, when he schemed to make her his bride, and thus acquire a second fortune. He had used his influence as a family friend to prejudice her lovers in her eyes, and had just succeeded in breaking up an intimacy which he feared: "A weight was removed from his mind which had nearly borne down even his remotest hopes; the object of his eager pursuit seemed stillwithin his reach, and the rival into whose power he had so lately almost beheld her delivered, was totally renounced, and no longer to be dreaded. A revolution such as this, raised expectations more sanguine than ever; and in quitting the house, he exultingly considered himself released from every obstacle to his view,—till, just as he arrived home, he recollected his wife!"

Cecilia, the heroine of the novel, is only Evelina grown a little older, a little sadder, a little more worldly wise. The humour is, too, a little kindlier. The practical jokes so common inEvelinado not mar the pages ofCecilia. At times the latter novel becomes almost tragic. The scene at Vauxhall where Mr. Harrel puts an end to his life of dissipation is dramatic and thrilling. But Miss Burney had lost the buoyancy and lively fancy which made the charm ofEvelina.

Miss Burney's last two novels,Camilla, or a Picture of YouthandThe Wanderer, or Female Difficulties, have no claim to a place among English classics. It is strange that, as she saw more of life, she depicted it with less accuracy. This might seem to show that her first novels owe their excellence to her vivid imagination rather than to her powers of observation. Her weary life at court as second keeper of the robes to Queen Charlotte; her marriage to Monsieur D'Arblay, and the sorrows that came to her asthe wife of a French refugee; all her deeper experiences of life during the fourteen years between the publication ofCeciliaandCamilla—these had completely changed her light, humorous view of externals, and with that loss her power as an artist disappeared.

Camillahas several heroines whose love affairs interest the reader. It thus bears a resemblance to Miss Austen's novels, who speaks of it with admiration and was, perhaps, influenced by it. Eugenia, who has received the education of a man, is pleasing. Clermont Lynmere, like Mr. Smith and Sir Robert Floyer, imagines that all the ladies are in love with him. Sir Hugh Tyrold, with his love for the classics and his regret that he had not been beaten into learning them when he was a boy, his strict ideas of virtue and his desire to make everybody happy, is well conceived, but the outlines are not strong enough to make him a living character.Camillashows more thanCeciliathe style of Dr. Johnson. It is heavy and slow, the words are long, and many of them of Latin derivation.

It was not until the year 1814, the year ofWaverley, that her last novel,The Wanderer, or Female Difficulties, was published, which, following the style ofCamilla, was in five volumes. It was partly founded on incidents arising out of the French Revolution. The book was eagerly awaited; the publishers paid fifteenhundred guineas for it; but even the friendliest critic pronounced it a literary failure.

To sum up, Macaulay in the essay before quoted makes clear Miss Burney's place in fiction:

"Miss Burney did for the English novel what Jeremy Collier did for the English drama; and she did it in a better way. 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 humour, 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 an equal share in a fair and noble province of letters ... we owe to her not onlyEvelina,Cecilia, andCamilla, but alsoMansfield ParkandThe Absentee."

During the time that Dr. Johnson dominated the literary conscience of England, a group of ladies who had wearied of whist and quadrille, the common amusements of fashion, used to meet at the homes of one another to discuss literary and political subjects. They were called in ridicule the "Blue Stocking Club," because Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, who was always present at these gatherings, wore hose of that colour. Among the members distinguished by their wit and talents were Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, the author of anEssay on the Genius of Shakespeare; Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, a poetess and excellent Greek scholar; Mrs. Chapone, whoseLetters to Young Ladiesformed the standard of conduct for young women of two generations; Miss Reynolds, the sister of Sir Joshua; and Mrs. Vesey, noted as a charming hostess. Dr. Johnson, David Garrick, Reynolds, and Burke were frequenters of this club. One may well imagine that the conversation and wit of the BlueStockings were far too rare to be understood by the grosser minds of the mere devotees of fashion, who in consequence threw a ridicule upon them which has always adhered to the name.

Hannah More, who had already become known as a playwright, visited London in 1773, and at once was welcomed by this group. In a poem calledThe Bas Bleu, dedicated to Mrs. Vesey, she thus describes the pleasure of these meetings:

Enlighten'd spirits! You, who knowWhat charms from polish'd converse flow,Speak, for you can, the pure delightWhen kindling sympathies unite;When correspondent tastes impartCommunion sweet from heart to heart;You ne'er the cold gradations needWhich vulgar souls to union lead;No dry discussion to unfoldThe meaning caught ere well 't is told:In taste, in learning, wit, or science,Still kindled souls demand alliance:Each in the other joys to findThe image answering to his mind.

The Blue Stocking Club was composed largely of Tories, so that when all Europe became restless under the influence of the French Revolution, they strongly combated the levelling doctrines of democracy. Hannah More inparticular, who had been conducting schools for the very poor near Bristol, saw how the teachings of the revolutionists affected men already prone to idleness and drink. To offset these influences, she published a little book with the following title-page: "Village Politics. Addressed to all the Mechanics, Journeymen, and Labourers, in Great Britain. By Will Chip, a country Carpenter."

It is not a novel in the strict sense of the word, but in simple language, easily understood, it teaches the labouring people the inconsistent attitude of France, and the strength and safety of the English constitution. It is not a deep book, but has good work-a-day common-sense, such as keeps the world jogging on, ready to endure the ills it has rather than fly to others it knows not of.

The book is in the form of a dialogue between Jack Anvil, the blacksmith, and Tom Hood, the mason.

"Tom.But have you read theRights of Man?

"Jack.No, not I: I had rather by half read theWhole Duty of Man. I have but little time for reading, and such as I should therefore only read a bit of the best."

"Tom.And what dost thou take ademocratto be?

"Jack.One who likes to be governed by a thousand tyrants, and yet can't bear a king."

"Tom.What is it to bean enlightened people?

"Jack.To put out the light of the Gospel, confound right and wrong, and grope about in pitch darkness."

"Tom.And what isbenevolence?

"Jack.Why, in the new-fangled language, it means contempt of religion, aversion to justice, overturning of law, doating on all mankind in general, and hating everybody in particular."

For a long time the authorship of the book remained a secret, and Will Chip became a notable figure. The clergy and the land-owners in particular rejoiced over his homely common-sense, and distributed these pamphlets broadcast over the land. One hundred thousand copies were sold in a short time.Village Politicsis said to have been one of the strongest influences in England to awaken the common people to the dangers which lie in a sudden overthrow of government. The book was timely, for that decade had become intoxicated by the name of Liberty. To-day democracy and equality are no longer feared.

During many years Hannah More worked industriously among the poor of Cheddar andits vicinity. On a visit to the Cliffs of Cheddar she found an ignorant, half-savage people, many of whom dwelt in the caves and fissures of the rocks, and earned a miserable subsistence by selling stalactites and other minerals native to the place, to the travellers who were attracted thither by the beautiful scenery. Among these people Hannah More opened a Sunday-school, and later a day school, where the girls were taught knitting, spinning, and sewing. A girl trained in her school was presented on her marriage day with five shillings, a pair of white stockings, and a new Bible. The teaching in the schools was so practical that within a year schools were opened in nine parishes.

In this missionary work, Miss More became intimately acquainted not only with the very poor, but also with the rich farmers living in the neighbourhood and the prosperous tradespeople of the villages. From these better educated men she met with great opposition. One petty landlord met her request for assistance with the remark: "The lower classes are fated to be poor, ignorant and wicked; and wise as you are, you cannot alter what is decreed." Another man informed her that religion was the worst thing for the poor, it made them so lazy and useless.

But the minds of the people had been awakened by the French Revolution. They were beginning to think. Books and ballads attacking church and constitution were hawked through the country and placed within reach of all. To counteract the influence of these "corrupt and inflammatory publications" Hannah More, between the years 1795-1798, publishedThe Cheap Repository, the first regular issue of this kind. Every month a story, a ballad, and a tract for Sunday were published. Hannah More knew so well the common reasoning and the mental attitude of those for whom she wrote, that she was able to make her lessons most effective. So great was the demand for these chap-books that over two million were sold the first year.[1]

[1]For a complete bibliography of these chap-books, see theCatalogue of English and American Chap-Booksin Harvard College Library, pp. 8-10; compiled in part by Charles Welsh.

These stories were divided into two classes, those for "persons of middle rank" and those for the common people. The former point out the dangers of pride and covetousness; of substituting abstract philosophy for religion; and warn masters not to forget their moral obligations towards their servants. The latter aim to teach neatness, sobriety, regularity in church attendance, and point out the happiness of those who follow these precepts, and the misery of those who neglect them.

Her two best known stories areMr. FantomandThe Shepherd of Salisbury Plain.Mr. Fantom: or the History of the New-Fashioned Philosopher, and his Man Williamwas written to warn masters of the danger of teaching their servants disrespect for the Bible and for civil law. Mr. Fantom was a shallow man, who glided upon the surface of philosophy and culled those precepts which relieved his conscience from any moral obligations. When he was asked to help the poor in his own parish, he refused to consider their wants because his mind was so engrossed by the partition of Poland. Like Mrs. Jellyby of a later time, he was so much troubled by sufferings which he could not see that he neglected his family and servants. When he reprimanded his butler, William, for being intoxicated, the young man replied: "Why, sir, you are a philosopher, you know; and I have often overheard you say to your company, that private vices are public benefits; and so I thought that getting drunk was as pleasant a way of doing good to the public as any, especially when I could oblige my muster at the same time." In course of time William became a thief and a murderer, and expiated his crimes on the scaffold.

In contrast to this isThe Shepherd of Salisbury Plain. This shepherd was contented with his lot, and says: "David was happier when hekept his father's sheep on such a plain as this, and employed in singing some of his own psalms perhaps, than ever he was when he became king of Israel and Judah. And I dare say we should never have had some of the most beautiful texts in all those fine psalms, if he had not been a shepherd, which enabled him to make so many fine comparisons and similitudes, as one may say, from country life, flocks of sheep, hills and valleys, fields of corn, and fountains of water." The shepherd's neat cottage with its simple furnishings, his frugal wife and industrious children are described in simple and convincing language.

In the stories of the poor there are many interesting details of the everyday life of that class that did not blossom into heroes and heroines of romance for nearly half a century. Mrs. Sponge, inThe History of Betty Brown, the St. Giles's Orange Girl, is a character that Dickens might have immortalised. Mrs. Sponge kept a little shop and a kind of eating-house for poor girls near the Seven Dials. She received stolen goods, and made such large profits in her business that she was enabled to become a broker among the poor. She loaned Betty five shillings to set her up in the orange business; she did not ask for the return of her money, but exacted a sixpence a day for its use, and was regarded by Betty, and the other girls whomshe thus befriended, as a benefactor. At last, Betty was rescued from the clutches of Mrs. Sponge. By industry and piety she became mistress of a handsome sausage-shop near the Seven Dials, and married a hackney coachman, the hero of one of Miss More's ballads:

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