of the book was mingled a fondness, half gallant, half paternal, for the writer; and this fondness his age and character entitled him to show without restraint.  He began by putting her hand to his lips.  But he soon clasped her in his huge arms, and immediately implored her to be a good girl.  She was his pet, his dear love, his dear little Burney, his little character-monger.  At one time, he broke forth in praise of the good taste of her caps.  At another time, he insisted on teaching her Latin.  That, with all his coarseness and Page xxvii

irritability, he was a man of sterling benevolence, has long been acknowledged.  But how gentle and endearing his deportment could be, was not known till the recollections of Madame.D’Arblay were published.

We have mentioned a few of the most eminent of those who paid their homage to the author of " Evelina.”  The crowd of inferior admirers would require a catalogue as long as that in the second book of the " Iliad.”  In that catalogue would be Mrs. Cholmondeley, the sayer of odd things; and Seward, much given to yawning; and Baretti, who slew the man in the Haymarket ; and Paoli, talking broken English; and Langton, taller by the head than any other member of the club; and Lady Millar, who kept a vase wherein fools were wont to put bad verses ; and Jerningham, who wrote verses fit to be put into the vase of Lady Millar; and Dr. Franklin-not, as some have dreamed, the great Pennsylvanian Dr. Franklin, who could not then have paid his respects to Miss Burney without much risk of being hanged, drawn, and quartered, but Dr. Franklin the less.

A’tag ,uEiwv, ort r6aroC yE 6aoc TEXap6vtoC Atag, i1xx,i rOV JLEi&)V.

It would not have been surprising if such success had turned even a strong head and corrupted even a generous and affectionate nature.  But in the “Diary,” we can find no trace of any feeling inconsistent with a truly modest and amiable disposition.  There is, indeed, abundant proof that Frances enjoyed with an intense, though a troubled, joy, the honours which her genius had won ; but it is equally clear that her happiness sprang from the happiness of her father, her sister, and her dear Daddy Crisp.  While flattered by the great, the opulent and the learned, while followed along the Steyne at Brighton and the Pantiles at Tunbridge Wells by the gaze of admiring crowds, her heart seems to have been still with the little domestic circle in St. Martin’sstreet.  If she recorded with minute diligence all the compliments, delicate and coarse, which she heard wherever she turned, she recorded them for the eyes of two or three persons who had loved her from infancy, who had loved her in obscurity, and to whom her fame gave the purest and most exquisite delight.  Nothing can be more unjust than to confound these outpourings of a kind heart, sure of perfect sympathy, with the egotism of a bluestocking who prates to all who come near her about her own novel or her own volume of sonnets.