“O terrible!” cried I, “to make them out fifteen.”

“The reason,” continued she, “I held out so long against reading them, was remembering the cry there was in favour of ‘Clarissa’ and ‘Sir Charles Grandison,’ when they came out, and those I never could read.  I was teased into trying both of them; but I was disgusted with their tediousness, and could not read eleven letters, with all the effort I could make:  so much about my sisters and my brothers, and all my uncles and my aunts!”

“But if your grace had gone on with ‘Clarissa,’” said Mrs. Chapone, “the latter part must certainly have affected you, and charmed you."(176)

“O, I hate any thing so dismal!  Every body that did read it had melancholy faces for a week.  ‘Cecilia’ is as pathetic as I can bear, and more sometimes; yet, in the midst of the sorrow, there is a spirit in the writing, a fire in the whole composition, that keep off that heavy depression given by Richardson.  Cry, to be sure, we did.  Mrs. Delany, shall you ever forget how we cried?  But then we had so much laughter to make us amends, we were never left to sink under our concern.”

I am really ashamed to write on.

“For my part,” said Mrs. Chapone, “when I first read it, I did not cry at all; I was in an agitation that half killed me, that shook all nerves, and made me unable to sleep at nights, from the suspense I was in! but I could not cry, for excess of eagerness.”

“I only wish,” said the duchess, “Miss Burney could have been in some corner, amusing herself with listening to us,

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when Lord Weymouth, and the Bishop of Exeter, and Mr. Lightfoot, and Mrs. Delany, and I, were all discussing the point -of the name.  So earnest we were, she must have been diverted with us.  Nothing, the nearest our own hearts and interests, could have been debated more warmly.  The bishop was quite as eager as any of us; but what cooled us a little, at last, was Mr. Lightfoot’s thinking we were seriously going to quarrel; and while Mrs. Delany and I were disputing about Mrs. Delvile, he very gravely said, ’Why, ladies, this is only a matter of imagination; it is not a fact:  don’t be so earnest.’”

“Ah, ma’am,” said Mrs. Delany, “how hard your grace was upon Mrs. Delvile:  so elegant, so sensible, so judicious, so charming a woman.”

“O, I hate her,” cried the duchess, “resisting that sweet Cecilia; coaxing her, too, all the time, with such hypocritical flattery.”

“I shall never forget,” said Mrs. Delany, “your grace’s earnestness when we came to that part where Mrs. Delvile bursts a blood vessel.  Down dropped the book, and just with the same energy as if your grace had heard some real and important news, You called out, ‘I’m glad of it with all my heart!’”

“What disputes, too,” said Mrs. Chapone, “there are about Briggs.  I was in a room some time ago where somebody said there could be no such character; and a poor little mean city man, who was there, started up and said, ’But there is though, for I’se one myself!’”