ON MADAME D’ARBLAY

[From The Edinburgh Review, January, 1843]

ART.  IX.—­Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay. 5 vols. 8vo.  London, 1842.

Though the world saw and heard little of Madame D’Arblay during the last forty years of her life, and though that little did not add to her fame, there were thousands, we believe, who felt a singular emotion when they learned that she was no longer among us.  The news of her death carried the minds of men back at one leap, clear over two generations, to the time when her first literary triumphs were won.  All those whom we have been accustomed to revere as intellectual patriarchs, seemed children when compared with her; for Burke had sate up all night to read her writings, and Johnson had pronounced her superior to Fielding, when Rogers was still a schoolboy, and Southey still in petticoats.  Yet more strange did it seem that we should just have lost one whose name had been widely celebrated before any body had heard of some illustrious men who, twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, were, after a long and splendid career, borne with honour to the grave.  Yet so it was.  Frances Burney was at the height of fame and popularity before Cowper had published his first volume, before Person had gone up to college, before Pitt had taken his seat in the House of Commons, before the voice of Erskine had been once heard in Westminster Hall.  Since the appearance of her first work, sixty-two years had passed; and this interval had been crowded, not only with political, but also with intellectual revolutions.  Thousands of reputations had, during that period, sprung up, bloomed, withered, and disappeared.  New kinds of composition had come into fashion, had gone out of fashion, had been derided, had been forgotten.  The fooleries of Della Crusca, and the fooleries of Kotzebue, had for a time bewitched the multitude, but had left no trace behind them; nor had misdirected genius been able to save from decay the once flourishing school of Godwin, of Darwin, and of Radcliffe.  Many books, written for temporary effect, had run through six or seven editions, and had then been gathered to the novels of Afra Behn, and the epic poems of Sir Richard Blackmore.  Yet the early works of Madame D’Arblay, in spite of the lapse of years, in spite of the change of manners, in spite of the popularity deservedly obtained by some of her rivals, continued to hold a high place in the public esteem.  She lived to be a classic.  Time set on her fame, before she went hence, that seal which is seldom set except on the fame of the departed.  Like Sir Condy Rackrent in the tale, she survived her own wake, and overheard the judgment of posterity.