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[ We find it difficult to understand Macaulay's estimate of “The Wanderer.” Later critics appear, in general, to have echoed Macaulay without being at the pains of reading the book. If it has not the naive freshness of “Evelina,” nor the sustained excellence of style of “Cecilia,” “The Wanderer” is inferior to neither in the “exhibition of human passions and whims.” The story is interesting and full of variety; the characters live, as none but the greatest novelists have known how to make them. In Juliet, Fanny has given us one of her most fascinating heroines, while her pictures of the fashionable society of Brighthelmstone are distinguished by a force and vivacity of satire which she has rarely surpassed. It is true that in both “The Wanderer” and “Camilla” we meet with occasional touches of that peculiar extravagance of style which disfigure, the “Memoirs of Dr. Burney,” but these passages, in the novels, are SO comparatively inoffensive, and so nearly forgotten in the general power and charm of the story that we scarcely care to instance them as serious blemishes—ED.]
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[ This criticism of Madame D'Arblay appears to us somewhat too sweeping. It must be remembered that the persons of “one propensity,” instanced by Macaulay, are all to be found among the minor characters in her novels. The circumstances, moreover, under which they are introduced, are frequently such as to render the display of their particular humours not only excusable, but natural. But surely in others of her creations, in her heroines especially, she is justly entitled to the praise of having portrayed “characters in which no single feature is extravagantly overcharged.”—ED.]
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[ This conjecture may be considered as finally disposed of by Dr. Johnson's explicit declaration that he never saw one word of “Cecilia” before it was printed.—ED.]
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[ The above “flowers of rhetoric” are taken from the “Memoirs of Dr. Burney,” published in 1832; but it is scarcely just—indeed, it is wholly unjust—to include “Camilla” and “The Wanderer” under the same censure with that book. The literary style of the “Memoirs” is the more amazing, since we find Madame D'Arblay, in 1815, correcting in her son the very fault which is there indulged to so unfortunate an extent. She writes to him—“I beg you, when you write to me, to let your pen paint Your thoughts as they rise, not as you seek or labour to embellish them. I remember you once wrote me a letter so very fine from Cambridge, that, if it had not made me laugh, it would have made me sick.”—ED.]
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[ “The Female Quixote” is the title of a novel by Charlotte Lenox, published in 1752. It was written as a satire upon the Heroic Romances, so popular in England during the seventeenth century, and the early part of the eighteenth; and scarcely claims to be considered as a picture of life and manners. It is a delightful book however, and the character of the heroine, Arabella, is invested with a charm which never, even in the midst of her wildest extravagancies, fails to make itself felt.—ED.]