STANDARD NOVELS AND ROMANCES
This is ostensibly a review of Madame D’Arblay’s The Wanderer, published in 1814. Nearly the whole of it was incorporated by Hazlitt in his Lecture on the English Novelists. Cf. vol. VIII. pp. 106 et seq. and notes. In his Essay ‘A Farewell to Essay-Writing,’ Hazlitt says that this review was the result of a discussion at Lamb’s, ‘sharply seasoned and well sustained till midnight.’ Though the review cannot be considered as harsh towards Madame D’Arblay, it led to Hazlitt being dropped out of Admiral Burney’s whist parties. See Crabb Robinson’s Diary, chap. xiii. This fact perhaps partly accounts for Hazlitt’s contemptuous reference to the Burneys in his Essay ‘On the Aristocracy of Letters,’ where, after praising Madame D’Arblay, he says, ‘The rest have done nothing, that I know of, but keep up the name.’ See vol. VI. (Table Talk), p. 209.
PAGE [25]. Crebillon. Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (1707–1777), son of the dramatist. The celebrated French philosopher. Hazlitt was perhaps thinking of Diderot’s well-known eulogy of Richardson (Œuvres, V. 212–227). [39]. The Story of Le Febre. See Tristram Shandy, Book VI. chap. vi. et seq.