With such illustrious guests as these were mingled all the most remarkable specimens of the race of lions—­a kind of game which is hunted in London every spring with more than Meltonian ardour and perseverance.  Bruce, who had washed down steaks cut from living oxen with water from the fountains of the Nile, came to swagger and talk about his travels.  Omai lisped broken English, and made all the assembled musicians hold their ears by howling Otaheitean love-songs, such as those with which Oberea charmed her Opano.

With the literary and fashionable society which occasionally met under Dr. Burney’s roof, Frances can scarcely be said to have mingled.  She was not a musician, and could therefore bear no part in the concerts.  She was shy almost to awkwardness, and scarcely ever joined in the conversation.  The slightest remark from a stranger disconcerted her; and even the old friends of her father who tried to draw her out could seldom extract more than a Yes or a No.  Her figure was small, her face not distinguished by beauty.  She was therefore suffered to withdraw quietly to the background, and, unobserved herself, to observe all that passed.  Her nearest relations were aware that she had good sense, but seem not to have suspected, that under her demure and bashful deportment were concealed a fertile invention and a keen sense of the ridiculous.  She had not, it is true, an eye for the fine shades of character.  But every marked peculiarity instantly caught her notice and remained engraven on her imagination.  Thus, while still a girl, she had laid up such a store of materials for fiction as few of those who mix much in the world are able to accumulate during a long life.  She had watched and listened to people of every class, from princes and great officers of state down to artists living in garrets, and poets familiar with subterranean cook-shops.  Hundreds of remarkable persons had passed in review before her, English, French, German, Italian, lords and fiddlers, deans of cathedrals and managers of theatres, travellers leading about newly caught savages, and singing women escorted by deputy-husbands.

So strong was the impression made on the mind of Frances by the society which she was in the habit of seeing and hearing, that she began to write little fictitious narratives as soon as she could use her pen with ease, which, as we have said, was not very early.  Her sisters were amused by her stories.  But Dr. Burney knew nothing of their existence; and in another quarter her literary propensities met with serious discouragement.  When she was fifteen, her father took a second wife.  The new Mrs. Burney soon found out that her daughter-in-law was fond of scribbling, and delivered several good-natured lectures on the subject.  The advice no doubt was well-meant, and might have been given by the most judicious friend; for at that time, from causes to which we may hereafter advert, nothing could be more disadvantageous to a young lady than to be known as a novel-writer.  Frances yielded, relinquished her favourite pursuit, and made a bonfire of all her manuscripts.[1]