“I saw Sir Clement bite his lips; and, indeed, so did I mine.
“ ‘Well,’ said Madame Duval, ‘it’s the oddest dress for a general ever I see!’
“ ‘He seems so capital a figure,’ said Sir Clement to Mr. Smith, ‘that I imagine he must be Generalissimo of the whole army.’
“ ‘Yes, Sir, yes,’ answered Mr. Smith, respectfully bowing, and highly delighted at being thus referred to, ‘you are perfectly right;—but I cannot for my life think of his name;—perhaps, Sir, you may remember it?’
“ ‘No, really,’ replied Sir Clement, ‘my acquaintance among the generals is not so extensive.’
“The ironical tone of voice in which Sir Clement spoke, entirely disconcerted Mr. Smith; who again retiring to a humble distance, seemed sensibly mortified at the failure of the attempt to recover his consequence.”
After volume two, we hear little of Mme. Duval or the Branghtons; and Captain Mirvan only appears at the end of the book for the exposure of the fop, Mr. Lovel, which he accomplishes with his customary cruelty. Croker thought this latter part “very tedious,” but his objection was not shared by Miss Burney’s first readers. There are, it is true, no characters in it as broadly drawn as Captain Mirvan and Mme. Duval; but those that are new, have all the trick of the time. Lord Merton and Mr. Coverley are typical examples of the Georgian man of pleasure, and the race of old women by which they settle their wager, could easily, painful as it seemed to the lookers-on, have been paralleled from the annals of the day. Indeed, something of the kind was devised by Garrick for the diversions of his Hampton Villa. Lady Louisa Larpent is an excellent specimen of the die-away, lackadaisical lady of quality who must have abounded at the old watering places, while the remorseless Mrs. Selwyn, secure in her age and independent means, and devoting herself entirely to the reckless gratification of her caustic humour, is again a thoroughly recognisable society type. In fact, these latter personages are truer to the social conditions of the day than even “Madam French” and the Captain, and only failed of equal applause because they were less novel. So far from being tedious, the last volume seems to us the most easily written. The intrigue, slight as it is, is artfully entangled, and the style has the additional freedom which might be expected from the fact that there was now a definite publisher in sight, as soon as the work should be brought to an end.
Prefixed to Evelina is a votive poem of five quatrains, a “Dedication addressed to the Authors of the Monthly and Critical Reviews,” and a Preface. The verses, although headed “To **** *****,” are of course intended for Dr. Burney.
“Oh! of my life at once the source and joy!
If e’er thy eyes these feeble lines survey,