young gentlemen make love, with the balanced epithets and sonorous cadences which, on occasions of great dignity, a skilful writer may use with happy effect.

In an evil hour the author of “Evelina,” took “The Rambler” for her model.  This would not have been wise even if she could have imitated her pattern as well as Hawkesworth did.  But such imitation was beyond her power.  She had her own style.  It was a tolerably good one; and might, without any violent change, have been improved into a very good one.  She determined to throw it away, and to adopt a style in which she could attain excellence only by achieving an almost miraculous victory over nature and over habit.  She could cease to be Fanny Burney; it was not so easy to become Samuel Johnson.

In “Cecilia” the change of manner began to appear.  But in “Cecilia” the imitation of Johnson, though not always in the best taste, is sometimes eminently happy; and the passages which are so verbose as to be positively offensive, are few.  There were people who whispered that Johnson had assisted his young friend, and that the novel owed all its finest passages to his hand.  This was merely the fabrication of envy.  Miss Burney’s real excellences were as much beyond the reach of Johnson as his real excellences were beyond her reach, He could no more have written the Masquerade scene or the Vauxhall scene, than she could have written the life of Cowley or the review of Soame jenyns.  But we have not the smallest doubt that he revised “Cecilia,” and that he re-touched the style of many passages.(27) We know that he was in the habit of giving assistance of this kind most freely.  Goldsmith, Hawkesworth, Boswell, Lord Hailes, Mrs. Williams, were among those who obtained his help.  Nay, he even corrected the poetry of Mr. Crabbe, whom, we believe, he had never seen.  When Miss Burney thought of writing a comedy, he promised to give her his best counsel, though he owned that he was not particularly well qualified to advise on matters relating to the stage, We therefore think it in the highest degree improbable that his little Fanny, when living in habits of the most affectionate intercourse with him, would have brought out an important work without consulting him; and, when we look into “Cecilia,” we see such traces of his hand in the grave and elevated passages as it is impossible to mistake.  Before we conclude this article, we will give two or three examples.

When next Madame D’Arblay appeared before the world as a writer, she was in a very different situation.  She would not content herself with the simple English in which “Evelina” had been written.  She had no longer the friend who, we are confident, had polished and strengthened the style of “Cecilia.”  She

page liii had to write in Johnson’s manner without Johnson’s aid.  The consequence was, that in “Camilla” every passage which she meant to be fine is detestable; and that the book has been saved from condemnation only by the admirable spirit and force of those scenes in which she was content to be familiar.