Soon, however, afterwards, as if fearing he had become too serious, he rose to help himself to some distant fruit—for all this had passed during the dessert; and then, while standing in the noblest attitude, and with a sudden smile full of radiant ideas, he vivaciously exclaimed, “No imagination—not even the imagination of Miss Burney!—could have invented a character so extraordinary as that of Cardinal Ximenes; no pen—not even the pen of Miss Burney!—could have described it adequately!”
Think of me, my dear Mr. Crisp, at a climax so unexpected! my eyes, at the moment, being openly rivetted upon him; my head bent forward with excess of eagerness; my attention exclusively his own!—but now, by this sudden turn, I myself became the universally absorbing object! for instantaneously, I felt every eye upon my face; and my cheeks tingled as if they were the heated focus of stares that almost burnt them alive!
And yet, you will laugh when I tell you, that though thus struck I had not time to be disconcerted. The whole was momentary; ’twas like a flash of lightning in the evening, which makes every object of a dazzling brightness for a quarter of an instant, and then leaves all again to twilight obscurity.
Mr. Burke, by his delicacy, as much as by his kindness, reminding me of my opening encouragement from Dr. Johnson, looked now everywhere rather than at me; as if he had made the allusion by mere chance; and flew from it with a velocity that quickly drew back again to himself the eyes which he had transitorily employed to see how his superb compliment was taken: though not before I had caught from my kind Sir Joshua, a look of congratulatory sportiveness, conveyed by a comic nod.
My dear Mr. Crisp will be the last to want to be told that I received this speech as the mere effervescence of chivalrous gallantry in Mr. Burke:—yet, to be its object, even in pleasantry,—O, my dear Mr. Crisp, how could I have foreseen such a distinction? My dear father’s eyes glistened—I wish you could have had a glimpse of him!
“There has been,” Mr. Burke then, smilingly, resumed, “an age for all excellence; we have had an age for statesmen; an age for heroes; an age for poets; an age for artists;—but This,” bowing down, with an air of obsequious gallantry, his head almost upon the table cloth, “This is the age for women!”
“A very happy modern improvement!” cried Sir Joshua, laughing; “don’t you think so, Miss Burney?—but that’s not a fair question to put to you; so we won’t make a point of your answering it. However,” continued the dear natural knight, “what Mr. Burke says is very true, now. The women begin to make a figure in every thing. Though I remember, when I first came into the world, it was thought but a poor compliment to say a person did a thing like a lady!”
“Ay, Sir Joshua,” cried my father, “but, like Moliere’s physician, nous avons changé tout cela!”
“Very true, Dr. Burney,” replied the Knight; “but I remember the time—and so, I dare say, do you—when it was thought a slight, if not a sneer, to speak any thing of a lady’s performance: it was only in mockery to talk of painting like a lady; singing like a lady; playing like a lady—”
“But now,” interrupted Mr. Burke, warmly, “to talk of writing like a lady, is the greatest compliment that need be wished for by a man!”