The book had been admired while it had been ascribed to men of letters long conversant with the world and accustomed to composition.  But when it was known that a reserved, silent young woman had produced the best work of fiction that had appeared since’ the death of Smollett, the acclamations were redoubled.  What she had done was, indeed, extraordinary.  But, as usual, various reports improved the story till it became miraculous.  “Evelina,” it was said, was the work of a girl of seventeen.  Incredible as this tale was, it continued to be repeated down to our own time.  Frances was too honest to confirm it.  Probably she Was too much a woman to contradict it; and it was long before any of her detractors thought of this mode of annoyance.  Yet there was no want of low minds and bad hearts in the generation Page Xxvi

which witnessed her first appearance.  There was the envious Kenrick and the savage Wolcot, the asp George Steevens and the polecat John Williams.  It did not, however, occur to them to search the parish register of Lynn, in order that they might be able to twit a lady with having concealed her age.  That truly chivalrous exploit was reserved for a bad writer(14) of our own time, whose spite she had provoked by not furnishing him with materials for a worthless edition of Boswell’s “Life of Johnson,” some sheets of which our readers have doubtless seen round parcels of better books.

But we must return to our story.  The triumph was complete.  The timid and obscure girl found herself on the highest pinnacle of fame.  Great men, on whom she had gazed at a distance with humble reverence, addressed her with admiration, tempered by the tenderness due to her sex and age.  Burke, Windham, Gibbon, Reynolds, Sheridan, were among her most ardent eulogists.  Cumberland(15) acknowledged her merit, after his fashion, by biting his lips and wriggling in his chair whenever her name was mentioned.  But it was at Streatham that she tasted, in the highest perfection, the sweets of flattery mingled with the sweets of friendship.  Mrs. Thrale, then at the height of prosperity and popularity-with gay spirits, quick wit, showy, though superficial, acquirements, pleasing, though not refined, manners, a singularly amiable temper and a loving heart-felt towards Fanny as towards a younger sister.  With the Thrales, Johnson was domesticated.  He was an old friend of Dr. Burney; but he had probably taken little notice of Dr. Burney’s daughters ; and Fanny, we imagine, had never in her life dared to speak to him, unless to ask whether he wanted a nineteenth or a twentieth cup of tea.  He was charmed by her tale, and preferred it to the novels of Fielding, to whom, indeed, he had always been grossly unjust.  He did not, indeed, carry his partiality so far as to place “Evelina” by the side of “Clarissa” and “Sir Charles Grandison”; yet he said that his little favourite had done enough to have made even Richardson feel uneasy.  With Johnson’s cordial approbation