Parva componere magnis, there is a letter contained in The Early Diary of Frances Burney(ed.  Mrs. A.R.  Ellis, 1889), more completely apocalyptic than anything else of the kind accessible to me.  Its writer was Maria Allen, daughter of Dr. Burney’s second wife, therefore half-sister to the charming Burney girls.  She was a young lady who could let herself go, in act as well as on paper, and withal, as Fanny judged her, “flighty, ridiculous, uncommon, lively, comical, entertaining, frank, and undisguised”—­or because of it—­she did contrive to unfold her panting and abounding young self more thoroughly than the many times more expert.  You have her here in the pangs of a love-affair, of how long standing I don’t know, but now evidently in a bad state of miss-fire.  It was to end in elopement, post-chaise, clandestine marriage, in right eighteenth-century.  Here it is in an earlier state, all mortification, pouting and hunching of the shoulder.  I reproduce it with Maria’s punctuation, which shows it to have proceeded, as no doubt she did herself, in gasps: 

“I was at the Assembly, forced to go entirely against my own Inclination.  But I always have sacrificed my own Inclinations to the will of other people—­could not resist the pressing Importunity of—­Bet Dickens—­to go—­tho’ it proved Horribly stupid.  I drank tea at the—­told old Turner—­I was determined not to dance—­he would not believe me—­a wager ensued—­half a crown provided I followed my own Inclinations—­agreed—­Mr. Audley asked me.  I refused—­sat still—­yet followed my own Inclinations.  But four couple began—­Martin (c’etait Lui) was there—­yet stupid—­n’importe—­quite Indifferent—­on both sides—­Who had I—­to converse with the whole Evening—­not a female friend—­none there—­not an acquaintance—­All Dancing—­who then—­I’ve forgot—­n’importe—­I broke my earring—­how—­heaven knows—­foolishly enough—­one can’t always keep on the Mask of Wisdom—­well n’importe I danced a Minuet a quatre the latter end of the Eve—­with a stupid Wretch—­need I name him—­They danced cotillions almost the whole Night—­two sets—­yet I did not join them—­Miss Jenny Hawkins danced—­with who--can’t you guess--well--n’importe------”

There is more, but my pen is out of breath.  Nobody but Mr. Jingle ever wrote like that; and in so far as Maria Allen may be said to have had a soul, there in its little spasms is the soul of Maria Allen, with all the malentendus of the ballroom and all the surgings of a love-affair at cross-purposes thrown in.

As for Fanny Burney’s early diary, its careful and admirable editor claims that you have in it “the only published, perhaps the only existing record of the life of an English girl, written of herself in the eighteenth century.”  I believe that to be true.  It is a record, and a faithful and very charming record of the externals of such a life.  As such it is, to me, at least, a valuable thing.  If it does not unfold the amiable, brisk, and happy