A PREFACE. "IT was not hard fagging' that produced such a work as Evelina'! It was the ebullition of true, sterling genius. You wrote it because you could not help it—it came, and you put it down on paper." 6 These words of Mr. Crisp, the fatherlike friend of Miss Burney, bear true witness to the joyous and spontaneous impulse which produced Evelina.' That novel has a girlish, artless story. The only contrivance in it,-that of a letter going astray,—is almost clumsy; and the incidents of a deserted wife, a disowned marriage, and a change of babies by a nurse, must have been nearly as well-worn in 1778, as a fever, a raving scene, and an absence in the West Indies on the part of a husband, or a father, when he was most needed at home, were to become in the fifty years following. 'Evelina' has an affecting situation, which stands in stead of a good plot. 'Cecilia' has both an elaborate plot, and a striking situation. The stage-word, situation, is not inapt for use towards a book composed so much after the manner of the theatre that Mrs. Siddons told Miss Burney there was no part which she had ever so much wished to act as that of 'Cecilia.' It is probable that reading and seeing plays had much more influence upon Miss Burney's method of construction than reading novels. We are not sure that she had read those of Richardson all through; and we know that she only picked her way among pages of Fielding. Playbooks were then much more numerous than novels; and, for the most part, much more interesting and diverting. Those who have inherited libraries formed in the last century, know how large a share in them is held by the dramatists. A hundred years ago, the new plays were as our new novels; and more than they are. 'Evelina' contains characters so lively, and scenes so diverting, that both Sheridan and Murphy thought Miss Burney sure to succeed in a comedy. She wrote one, but her father and Mr. Crisp withheld it from the stage. From it, she took the name of her next heroine, "Cecilia,' and the incident of a loss of fortune. It has been said that in Art, the time best employed is that which is lost. The four years and a half between the bringing out of 'Evelina' and that of Cecilia' were spent by Miss Burney "at school, the great school of the world, where swarms of new ideas and characters continually presented themselves before her." 1 The "blue parties," the "ton parties," the "company at Bath, Brighthelmstone, and Tunbridge-Wells; " the "good talk "2 in the library at Streatham; all ministered to the enlarging and ripening of her faculties. 'Cecilia' is plainly the work of mature power, used to maintain and increase a reputation already so high that a weight is on the writer to be worthy of it. Evelina' stole into print, and if no one had praised it, little would have been suffered, but " a thousand million of fears for her book" troubled Frances Burney when she thought of the hundreds waiting for the publication of 'Cecilia.' 3 66 'Cecilia' was written partly in the house of Mr. Crisp, at Chesington, partly in that of Dr. Burney in St. Martin's Street, but always as if in the presence of Dr. Johnson. Though he never saw the manuscript, he prevails throughout the book. Not merely his balance of words, and of the clauses of sentences, but his way of balancing thoughts, is 1 Mr. Crisp. Sir, we had good talk "-Dr. Johnson to Boswell. 3 The picturesque manor-house of Chesington is, we are told, destroyed; some notice of it may be found in the Life of Dr. Burney.' Dr. Burney lived in what his daughter called “the vulgarly-peopled St. Martin's Street." "Next door" (writes J. T. Smith, author of 'No'lekens and his Times') "to Orange Street Chapel, where I have frequently heard Mr. Toplady preach; and in the very house now standing, No. 36, in which Sir Isaac Newton lived, whose observatory still remains above the attics." This was written in 1829. We are told that two rooms, at least, of this house, namely, the study and the library of Sir Isaac Newton, are now parts of Bertolini's Hotel, at the corner of Orange Street. |