It is always interesting in the case of a great man to know how he affected the women of his acquaintance.  Women do not usually judge character either so kindly or so soundly as men do, for they lack that knowledge of the ordeals of practical life, which gives both justice and charity to such verdicts.  But they are more susceptible than most men are to devotion and nobility in character.  The little group of the blue-stockings of the day regarded the great master of knowledge and eloquence with mixed feelings.  They felt for Burke the adoring reverence which women offer, with too indiscriminate a trust, to men of commanding power.  In his case it was the moral loftiness of his character that inspired them, as much as the splendour of his ability.  Of Sheridan or of Fox they could not bear to hear; of Burke they could not hear enough.  Hannah More, and Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, the learned translator of Epictetus, and Fanny Burney, the author of Evelina and Cecilia, were all proud of his notice, even while they glowed with anger at his sympathy with American rebels, his unkind words about the king, and his cruel persecution of poor Mr. Hastings.  It was at Mrs. Vesey’s evening parties, given on the Tuesdays on which the Club dined at the “Turk’s Head,” that he often had long chats with Hannah More.  She had to forget what she called his political malefactions, before she could allow herself to admire his high spirits and good humour.  This was after the events of the Coalition, and her Memoirs, like the change in the mind of the Dissenters towards Burke, show what a fall that act of faction was believed to mark in his character.  When he was rejected for Bristol, she moralised on the catastrophe by the quaint reflection, that Providence has wisely contrived to render all its dispensations equal, by making those talents which set one man so much above another, of no esteem in the opinion of those who are without them.

Miss Burney has described her flutter of spirits when she first found herself in company with Burke (1782).  It was at Sir Joshua’s house on the top of Richmond Hill, and she tells, with her usual effusion, how she was impressed by Burke’s noble figure and commanding air, his penetrating and sonorous voice, his eloquent and copious language, the infinite variety and rapidity of his discourse.  Burke had something to say on every subject, from bits of personal gossip, up to the sweet and melting landscape that lay in all its beauty before their windows on the terrace.  He was playful, serious, fantastic, wise.  When they next met, the great man completed his conquest by expressing his admiration of Evelina.  Gibbon assured her that he had read the whole five volumes in a day; but Burke declared the feat was impossible, for he had himself read it through without interruption, and it had cost him three days.  He showed his regard for the authoress in a more substantial way than by compliments and criticism.  His last act, before going out of office, in 1783, was to procure for Dr. Burney the appointment of organist at the chapel of Chelsea.