“See, see what a flirtation Mr. Burke is beginning with Miss Burney and before my face too!”

These ceremonies over, he sat down by me, and began a conversation which you, my dearest Susy, would be glad to hear, for my sake, word for word; but which I really could not listen to with sufficient ease, from shame at his warm eulogiums, 253

to remember With any accuracy.  The geneial substance, however, take as I recollect it.

After many most eloquent compliments upon the book, too delicate either to shock or sicken the nicest ear, he very empbatically congratulated me upon its most universal success, said, “he was now too late to speak of it, since he could only echo the voice of the whole nation” and added, with a laugh, “I had hoped to have made some merit of my enthusiasm; but the moment I went about to hear what others say, I found myself merely one in a multitude.”

He then told me that, notwithstanding his admiration, he was the man who had dared to find some faults with so favourite and fashionable a work.  I entreated him to tell me what they were, and assured him nothing would make me so happy as to correct them under his direction.  He then enumerated them:  and I will tell you what they are, that you may not conclude I write nothing but the fairer part of my adventures, which I really always relate very honestly, though so fair they are at this time, that it hardly seems possible they should not be dressed up.

The masquerade he thought too long, and that something might be spared from Harrel’s grand assembly; he did not like Morrice’s part of the pantheon; and he wished the conclusion either more happy or more miserable “for in a work of imagination,” said he, “there is no medium.”

I was not easy enough to answer him, or I have much, though perhaps not good for much, to say in defence of following life and nature as much in the conclusion as in the progress of a tale; and when is life and nature completely happy or miserable?

Looking very archly at me, and around him, he said,—­

“Are you sitting here for characters?  Nothing, by the way, struck me more in reading your book than the admirable skill with which your ingenious characters make themselves known by their own words.”

He then went on to tell me that I had done the most wonderful of wonders in pleasing the old wits, particularly the Duchess of Portland and Mrs. Delany, who resisted reading the book till they were teased into it, and, since they began, could do nothing else - and he failed not to point out, with his utmost eloquence, the difficulty Of giving satisfaction to those who piqued themselves upon being past receiving it. 254

“But,” said he, “I have one other fault to find, and a more material one than any I have mentioned.”

“I am the more obliged to you.  What is it?”

“The disposal of this book.  I have much advice to
    offer to you upon that subject.  Why did not you send for
                 your own friend out of the city? he would have
taken care you should not part with it so much below par.”