Godwin tells us that, when thinking over "Caleb Williams," he said to himself a thousand times: "I will write a tale, that shall constitute an epoch in the mind of the reader, that no one, after he has read it, shall ever be exactly the same man that he was before." The effort, and straining after effect which this confession implies, are evident throughout the work. The reader's curiosity is continually excited by the promise of new interest and new developments, but he is as continually disappointed. The main idea of the story is certainly a striking one, but it is feebly carried out. The constitution of society cannot be effectively attacked by so improbable and exceptional an illustration of tyranny as the persecution of Caleb Williams.
[189] It would be difficult to find a more bare-faced and impudent literary theft than the case in which Sterne appropriated to himself the remonstrance of Burton ("Anatomy of Melancholy"), against that very plagiarism which he (Sterne) was then committing. Burton said: "As apothecaries, we make new mixtures, every day pour out of one vessel into another * * * We weave the same web, still twist the same rope again and again." Sterne says, with an effrontery all his own: "Shall we forever make new books, as apothecaries make new medicines, by pouring only out of one vessel into another? Are we forever to be twisting and untwisting the same rope—forever in the same track? forever at the same pace?" For Sterne's plagiarism, see Dr. Ferriar's "Essay and Illustrations," also Scott's "Life of Sterne."
[190] "Tristram Shandy," orig. ed., vol. viii, chap. 8.
[191] "Rasselas," chap. xliv. Contrast with Porter on "The Human Intellect," pp. 371-2.
[192] See Scott's "Memoir of Johnson."
[193] "The Reverie," "The History of Arbaces," "The Pilgrim," "The History of John Juniper."
[194] The facts of Brooke's life are taken from the introduction to the "Fool of Quality," by Rev. Charles Kingsley, New York, 1860.
[195] Charles Kingsley, preface to the "Fool of Quality."
[196] Kingsley's preface to "Fool of Quality."
[197] "Alwyn," "Anna St. Ives," "Hugh Trevor," "Bryan Perdue."
[198] Published in 1817, when the author was far advanced in years.
III.
The publication of "Evelina," in 1778, made a sensation which the merits of the work fully justified. The story of Miss Burney's[199] early life, her furtive attempts at fictitious composition, the great variety of artistic and political characters who passed in review before her observant eyes at Dr. Burney's house have been made familiar by her own diary and letters. Petted and admired by Johnson, Mrs. Thrale, and the brilliant literary society of which they formed the centre, she lived sufficiently far into the present century to see the works of her early friends enrolled among the classics or consigned to oblivion, and to recognize that the approval of posterity had been added to the early fame of her own writings. As a very young girl, unnoticed by the distinguished persons who frequented her father's house, she had studied with careful attention the characters and manners of those who talked and moved about her. A strong desire to reproduce the impressions which filled her mind induced Miss Burney in her sixteenth year to devote her stolen hours of seclusion to fictitious composition. Discouraged in her early efforts by her stepmother, her habits of observation remained active, and took form, when the authoress was twenty five years old, in the famous novel of "Evelina." The book was issued secretly and anonymously, the publisher even being ignorant of the writer's true name. But the immediate popularity and admiration which greeted the work soon led to its open acknowledgment by the happy young authoress.
And "Evelina" fully deserved the praise and interest which it obtained and still excites. The aim was to describe the difficulties and sensations of a young girl just entering life. The heroine chosen by Miss Burney was one whose circumstances particularly well suited her to form the centre of a varied collection of characters and of a comprehensive picture of contemporary society. Well connected on her father's side, Evelina moved in fashionable circles with the Mirvan family. On account of the origin of her mother she was brought into close contact with humbler personages, with Madame Duval and the Brangtons. Hence this novel presents to the reader a variety of social scenes which gives it a value possessed by no other work of fiction of the eighteenth century. No novelist has described so well or so fully the aspect of the theatres, of Vauxhall and Ranelagh, of Bath in the season, of the ridottos and assemblies of the London fashionable world. The shops, the amusements and the manners of the middle classes are made familiar to Evelina by her association with the Brangtons, and add greatly to the breadth of this valuable picture of metropolitan life. With a feminine attention to detail, and a quick perception of salient characteristics, Miss Burney described the world about her so faithfully and picturesquely as to deserve the thanks of every student of social history. The novel of "Evelina," the letters of Horace Walpole and Mrs. Delany corroborate each other, and may be appropriately placed on the same shelf in a well-ordered library.
In the painting of manners Miss Burney was eminently successful. But she was hardly less so in a point in which excellence could not have been expected in so youthful a writer. The plot of "Evelina" is constructed with a skill worthy of a veteran. Fielding alone, of the eighteenth century novelists, can be said to surpass Miss Burney in this respect. The whole story of the mischances and misunderstanding of Evelina's intercourse with Lord Orville, the skill with which the various personages are brought into contact with each other and made to contribute to the final dénoument, compose a truly artistic success. The introduction of Macartney and his marriage to the supposed daughter of Sir John Belmont form a very happy and effective invention.
In regard to her sketches of character, it may be objected that Miss Burney lacked breadth of treatment, that she dwelt on one distinctive characteristic at the expense of the others. But still, Lord Orville, though somewhat too much of a model, and Mrs. Selwyn, though somewhat too habitually a wit, are vivid and life-like characters. The Brangtons and Sir Clement Willougby are nature itself, and the girlish nature of Evelina is betrayed in her letters with great felicity.
It is no small triumph for Miss Burney, who has had so many and so deserving competitors in the department of literature to which she contributed, that her novels should have remained in active circulation for more than a century after their publication. "Cecilia" has much the same merits which distinguished "Evelina," and the two novels bid fair to hold their own as long as English fiction retains its popularity. Johnson considered Miss Burney equal to Fielding. But although she possessed qualities similar to his—constructive power and picturesqueness—she possessed them in a lesser degree. In the management of the difficulties of the epistolary form of novel-writing, she surpassed Richardson in verisimilitude and concentration.
Some readers of the present day object to Miss Burney's novels that they contain so many references to "delicacy" and "propriety" that an air of affectation is produced. But at the time when "Evelina" was written, a perpetual discretion in actions and words was absolutely necessary to a young woman who did not wish to be subjected to libertine advances. Society is now so much more generally refined that there is far less danger of such misconstruction, and far less need for a young girl to be always on her guard. A sound objection, on the ground of taste, may be made against the excessively prolonged account of Captain Mirvan's brutalities. The effect might have been as well produced in a much shorter space, and the reader spared the uninteresting scenes which now fill so many repulsive pages. For this defect, however, we must blame the times more than the author.
Charlotte Lennox was the daughter of Sir James Ramsay, Lieutenant governor of New York, where she was born in 1720. When fifteen years of age she was sent to London, and there supported herself by her pen. Johnson said that he had "dined at Mrs. Garrick's with Mrs. Carter, Miss Hannah More, and Miss Fanny Burney: three such women are not to be found. I know not where I could find a fourth, except Mrs. Lennox, who is superior to them all." Such high praise was not called forth by Mrs. Lennox's novels, which have little originality or power. "The Female Quixote" is an entertaining satire on the old French romances, but "Sophia," and "Euphemia" are without any special interest.