oe so weak as to infer from the gentleness of his deportment in a drawing-room that he was incapable of committing a great state crime, under the influence of ambition and revenge. A silly Miss, fresh from a boarding-school, might fall into such a mistake; but the woman who had drawn the character of Mr. Monckton should have known better. would certainly have been rejected. We ser, therefore, that the loyalty of the minister, who was then generally regarded as the most heroic champion of his prince, was lukewarm, indeed, when compared with the boiling zeal which filled the pages of the back-stairs and the women of the bed-chamber. Of the regency bill, Pitt's own bill, Miss Burney speaks with hor. ror. "I shuddered," she says, "to hear it named." And again-"O, how dreadful will be the day when that unhappy bill takes place' I cannot approve the plan of it." The truth is, that Mr. Pitt, whether a wse and upright statesman or not, was a statesman; and whatever motives he might have for imposing restrictions on the regent, felt that in some way or other there must be some provision made for the execution of some part of the kingly office, or that no government would be left in the country. But this was a matter of which the household never thought. It never occurred, as far as we can see, to the exons and keepers of the robes, that it was necessary that there should be somewhere or other a power in the criminals, to fill up offices, to negotiate with foreign governments, to command the army and navy. Nay, these enlightened politicians, and Miss Burney among the rest, seem to have thought that any person who considered the subject with reference to the public interest, showed himself to be a bad-hearted man. Nobody wonders at this in a gentleman-usher; but it is melancholy to see genius sinking into such debasement. The truth is, that she had been too long at court. She was sinking into a slavery worse than that of the body. The iron was beginning to enter into the soul. Accustomed during many months to watch the eye of a mistress, to receive with boundless gratitude the slightest mark of royal condescension, to feel wretched at every symptom of royal displeasure, to associate only with spirits long tamed and broken in, she was degenerating into something fit for her place. Queen Charlotte was a violent partisan of Hastings; had received presents from him, and had so far departed from the severity of her virtue as to lend her countenance to his wife, whose conduct had certainly been as reprehensible as that of any of the frail beauties who were then rigidly excluded from the Eng-state to pass laws, to preserve order, to pardon lish court. The king, it was well known, took the same side. To the king and queen all the members of the household looked submissively for guidance. The impeachment, therefore, was an atrocious persecution; the managers were rascals; the defendant was the most deserving and the worst used man in the kingdom. This was the cant of the whole palace, from gold stick in waiting, down to the table-deckers and yeomen of the silver scullery; and Miss Burney canted like the rest, though in livelier tones, and with less bitter feelings. During more than two years after the king's recovery, Frances dragged on a miserable existence at the palace. The consolations which The account which she has given of the had for a time mitigated the wretchedness of king's illness, contains much excellent narra- servitude, were one by one withdrawn. Mrs. tive and description, and will, we think, be Delany, whose society had been a great remore valued by the historians of a future age source when the court was at Windsor, was than any equal portion of Pepy's or Evelyn's now dead. One of the gentlemen at the royal Diaries. That account shows, also, how affec- establishment, Colonel Digby, appears to have tionate and compassionate her nature was. been a man of sense, of taste, of some readBut it shows also, we must say, that her waying, and of prepossessing manners. Agreeable of life was rapidly impairing her powers of associates were scarce in the prison-house, and reasoning, and her sense of justice. We do not mean to discuss, in this place, the question, whether the views of Mr. Pitt or those of Mr. Fox respecting the regency were the more correct. It is, indeed, quite needless to discuss that question: for the censure of Miss Burney falls alike on Pitt and Fox, on majority and minority. She is angry with the House of Commons for presuming to inquire whether the king was mad or not, and whether there was a chance of him recovering his senses. A melancholy day," she writes; "news bad both at home and abroad. At home the dear unhappy king still worse; abroad new examinations voted of the physicians. Good heavens! what an insult does this seem from parliamentary power, to investigate and bring forth to the world every circumstance of such a malady as is ever held sacred to secrecy in the most private families! How indignant we all feel here no words can say." It is proper to observe, that the motion which roused all this indignation at Kew was made by Mr. Pitt himself; and that, if withstood by Mr. Pitt, it VOL. V.-74 he and Miss Burney were therefore naturally Frances uniformly speaks of her royal mistress and of the princesses with respect and affection. The princesses seem to have well deserved all the praise which is bestowed on them in the Diary. They were, we doubt not, most amiable women. But "the sweet queen," as she is constantly called in these volumes, is not by any means an object of admiration to us. She had undoubtedly sense enough to know what kind of deportment suited her high | he certainly got nothing. Miss Burney had station, and self-command enough to maintain been hired for board, lodging, and two hundred that deportment invariably. She was, in her a year. Board, lodging, and two hundred a intercourse with Miss Burney, generally gra- year she had duly received. We have looked cious and affable, sometimes, when displeased, carefully through the Diary, in the hope of cold and reserved, but never, under any cir- finding some trace of those extraordinary be cumstances, rude, peevish, or violent. She nefactions on which the doctor reckoned. But knew how to dispense, gracefully and skillfully, we can discover only a promise, never perthose little civilities which, when paid by a formed, of a gown; and for this promise Miss sovereign, are prized at many times their in- Burney was expected to return thanks such as trinsic value; how to pay a compliment; how might have suited the beggar with whom St. to lend a book; how to ask after a relation. Martin, in the legend, divided his cloak. The But she seems to have been utterly regardless experience of four years was, however, insuffiof the comfort, the health, the life of her at- cient to dispel the illusion which had taken tendants, when her own convenience was con- possession of the doctor's mind; and between cerned. Weak, feverish, hardly able to stand, the dear father and the sweet queen there Frances had still to rise before seven, in order seemed to be little doubt that some day or other to dress the sweet queen, and sit up till mid- Frances would drop down a corpse. Six night, in order to undress the sweet queen. months had elapsed since the interview be The indisposition of the handmaid could not, tween the parent and the daughter. The resig and did not, escape the notice of her royal nation was not sent in. The sufferer grew mistress. But the established doctrine of the worse and worse. She took bark; but it soon court was, that all sickness was to be con- ceased to produce a beneficial effect. She was sidered as a pretence until it proved fatal. The stimulated with wine; she was soothed with only way in which the invalid could clear her- opium, but in vain. Her breath began to fail. self from suspicion of malingering, as it is The whisper that she was in a decline spread called in the army, was to go on lacing and through the court. The pains in her side be unlacing till she dropped down dead at the came so severe that she was forced to crawl royal feet. "This," Miss Burney wrote, when from the card-table of the old fury to whom she was suffering cruelly from sickness, watch- she was tethered, three or four times in an ing, and labour, "is by no means from hardness evening, for the purpose of taking hartshorn. of heart; far otherwise. There is no hardness Had she been a negro slave, a humane planter of heart in any one of them; but it is preju- would have excused her from work. But her dice, and want of personal experience." majesty showed no mercy. Thrice a day the accursed bell still rang; the queen was still to be dressed for the morning at seven, and to be dressed for the day at noon, and to be undressed at eleven at night. Many strangers sympathized with the bodily and mental sufferings of this distinguished woman. All who saw her saw that her frame was sinking, that her heart was breaking. The last, it should seem, to observe the change was her father. At length, in spite of himself, his eyes were opened. In May 1790, his daughter had an interview of three hours with him, the only long interview which they had since he took her to Windsor in 1786. She told him that she was miserable, that she was worn with attendance and want of sleep, that she had no comfort in life, nothing to love, nothing to hope, that her family and friends were to her as though they were not, and were remembered by her as men remember the dead. From daybreak to midnight the same killing labour, the same recreations, more hateful than labour itself, followed each other without variety, without any interval of liberty and repose. The doctor was greatly dejected by this news; but was too good-natured a man not to say that, if she wished to resign, his house and arms were open to her. Still, however, he could not bear to remove her from the court. His veneration for royalty amounted, in truth, to idolatry. It can be compared only to the grovelling superstition of those Syrian devotees who made their children pass through the fire to Moloch. When he induced his daughter to accept the place of keeper of the robes, he entertained, as she tells us, a hope that some worldly advantage or other, not set down in the contract of service, would be the result of her connection wit.. the court. What advantage he expected we do not know, nor did he probably know himself. But, whatever he expected, But there had arisen in literary and fashionable society, a general feeling of compassion for Miss Burney, and of indignation both against her father and the queen. "Is it pos sible," said a great French lady to the doctor, " that your daughter is in a situation where she is never allowed a holiday?" Horace Wal pole wrote to Frances to express his sympathy Boswell, boiling over with good-natured rage, almost forced an entrance into the palace to see her. "My dear ma'am, why do you stay?" It won't do, ma'am; you must resign. We can put up with it no longer. Some very vio lent measures, I assure you, will be taken. We shall address Dr. Burney in a body." Burke and Reynolds, though less noisy, were zealous in the same cause. Windham spoke to Dr. Burney; but found him still irresolute. "I will set the Literary Club upon him," cried Windham, "Miss Burney has some very true admirers there, and I am sure they will eagerly assist." Indeed, the Burney family seems to have been apprehensive that some public affront, such as the doctor's unpardonable folly, to use the mildest term, had richly deserved, would be put upon him. The medical men spoke out, and plainly told him that his daughter must resign or die. At last paternal affection, medical authority, and the voice of all London crying shame, triumphed over Dr. Burney's love of courts. He determined that Frances should write a letter of resignation. It was with difficulty .hat, though her life was at stake, she mustered | tempt for the lives of others where her own spirit to put the paper into the queen's hands. pleasure was concerned. But what pleasure "I could not," so runs the Diary, "summon she can have found in having Miss Burney courage to present my memorial-my heart about her, it is not so easy to comprehend. That always failed me from seeing the queen's en- Miss Burney was an eminently skilful keeper tire freedom from such an expectation. For of the robes is not very probable. Few wothough I was frequently so ill in her presence men, indeed, had paid less attention to dress. that I could hardly stand, I saw she concluded Now and then, in the course of five years, she me, while life remained, inevitably hers." had been asked to read aloud or to write a copy of verses. But better readers might easily have been found: and her verses were worse than even the poet-laureate's birth-day odes. Perhaps that economy which was among her majesty's most conspicuous virtues, had something to do with her conduct on this occasion. Miss Burney had never hinted that she expected a retiring pension; and indeed would gladly have given the little that she had for freedom. But her majesty knew what the public thought, and what became her dignity. She could not for very shame suffer a woman of distinguished genius, who had quitted a lucrative career to wait on her, who had served her faithfully for a pittance during five years, and whose constitution had been impaired by labour and watching, to leave the court without some mark of royal liberality. George the Third, who, on all occasions where Miss Burney was concerned, seems to have behaved like an honest, good-natured gentleman, felt this, and said plainly that she was entitled to a provision. At length, in return for all the misery which she had undergone, and for the health which she had sacrificed, an annuity of one hundred pounds was granted to her, de pendent on the queen's pleasure. At last with a trembling hand the paper was delivered. Then came the storm. Juno, as in the Eneid, delegated the work of vengeance to Alecto. The queen was calm and gentle; but Madame Schwellenberg raved like a maniac in the incurable ward of Bedlam. Such insolence! Such ingratitude! Such folly! Would Miss Burney bring utter destruction on herself and her family? Would she throw away the inestimable advantage of royal protection? Would she part with privileges which, once relinquished, could never be regained? It was idle to talk of health and life. If people could not live in the palace, the best thing that could befall them was to die in it. The resignation was not accepted. The language of the medical men became stronger and stronger. Dr. Burney's parental fears were fully roused; and he explicitly declared, in a letter meant to be shown to the queen, that his daughter must retire. The Schwellenberg raged like a wild-cat. "A scene almost horrible ensued," says Miss Burney. "She was too much enraged for disguise, and uttered the most furious expressions of indignant contempt at our proceedings. I am sure she would gladly have confined us both in the Bastile, had England such a misery, as a fit place to bring us to ourselves, from a daring so outrageous against imperial wishes." This passage deserves notice, as being the only one in the Diary, as far as we have observed, which shows Miss Burney to have been aware that she was a native of a free country, that she could not be pressed for a waiting-maid against her will, and that she had just as good a right to live, if she chose, in St. Martin's street, as Queen Charlotte had to live at St. James's. ... The queen promised that, after the next birth-day, Miss Burney should be set at liberty. But the promise was ill kept; and her majesty showed displeasure at being reminded of it. At length Frances was informed that in a fortnight her attendance should cease. "I heard this," she says, "with a fearful presentiment I should surely never go through another fort. night, in so weak and languishing and painful a state of health. . . As the time of separation approached, the queen's cordiality rather diminished, and traces of internal displeasure appeared, sometimes arising from an opinion I ought rather to have struggled on, live or die, than to quit her. Yet I am sure she saw how poor was my own chance, except by a change in the mode of life, and at least ceased to wonder, though she could not approve." Sweet queen! What noble candour to admit that the undutifulness of people who did not think the honour of adjusting her tuckers worth the sacrifice of their own lives, was, though highly eriminal, not altogether unnatural! We perfectly understand her majesty's con Then the prison was opened, and Frances was free once more. Johnson, as Burke observed, might have added a striking page to his poem on the Vanity of Human Wishes, if he had lived to see his little Burney as she went into the palace and as she came out of it. The pleasures, so long untasted, of liberty, of friendship, of domestic affection, were almost too acute for her shattered frame. But happy days and tranquil nights soon restored the health which the queen's toilette and Madame Schwellenberg's card-table had impaired. Kind and anxious faces surrounded the invalid. Conversation the most polished and brilliant revived her spirits. Travelling was recommended to her; and she rambled by easy journeys from cathedral to cathedral, and from watering-place to watering-place. She crossed the New Forest, and visited Stonehenge and Wilton, the cliffs of Lyme, and the beautiful valley of Sidmouth. Thence she journeyed by Powderham Castle, and by the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, to Bath, and from Bath when the winter was approaching, returned well and cheerful to London. There she visited her old dungeon, and found her successor already far on the way to the grave, and kept to strict duty, from morning till midnight, with a sprained ankle and a nervous fever. At this time England swarmed with French exiles, driven from their country by the Revo lution. A colony of these refugees settled a Juniper Hall, in Surrey, not far from Norbury Park, where Mr. Lock, an intimate friend of the Burney family resided. Frances visited Norbury, and was introduced to the strangers. | countrymen of his wife. The First Consul, o course, would not hear of such a condition and ordered the general's commission to be in stantly revoked. She had strong prejudices against them; for her toryism was far beyond, we do not say that of Mr. Pitt, but that of Mr. Reeves; and the inmates of Juniper Hall were all attached to Madame D'Arblay joined her husband at the constitution of 1791, and were therefore Paris a short time before the war of 1803 broke more detested by the royalists of the first emi-out; and remained in France ten years, cut off gration than Petion or Marat. But such a from almost all intercourse with the land of her woman as Miss Burney could not long resist birth. At length, when Napoleon was on his the fascination of that remarkable society. march to Moscow, she with great difficulty ob. She had lived with Johnson and Windham, tained from his ministers permission to visit with Mrs. Montague and Mrs. Thrale. Yet she her own country, in company with her son, was forced to own that she had never heard who was a native of England. She returned conversation before. The most animated in time to receive the last blessing of her father, eloquence, the keenest observation, the most who died in his eighty-seventh year. In 1814 sparkling wit, the most courtly grace, were she published her last novel, The Wanderer, a united to charm her. For Madame de Staël book which no judicious friend to her memory was there, and M. de Talleyrand. There, too, will attempt to draw from the oblivion into was M. de Narbonne, a noble representative of which it has justly fallen. In the same year French aristocracy; and with M. de Narbonne her son Alexander was sent to Cambridge. He was his friend and follower, General D'Arblay, obtained an honourable place among the wran an honourable and amiable man, with a hand-glers of his year, and was elected a fellow of some person, frank, soldier-like manners, and some taste for letters. The prejudices which Frances had conceived against the constitutional royalists of France rapidly vanished. She listened with rapture to Talleyrand and Madame de Staël, joined with M. D'Arblay in execrating the Jacobins, and in weeping for the unhappy Bourbons, took French lessons from him, fell in love with him, and married him on no better provision than a precarious annuity of one hundred pounds. Christ's College. But his reputation at the University was higher than might be inferred from his academical contests. His French education had not fitted him for the examina. tions of the Senate-House; but in pure mathe matics, we have been assured by some of his competitors that he had very few equals. He went into the church, and it was thought likely that he would attain high eminence as a preacher; but he died before his mother. All that we have heard of him leads us to believe that he was such a son as such a mother deserved to have. In 1832, Madame D'Arblay published Here the Diary stops for the present. We will, therefore, bring our narrative to a speedy the "Memoirs of her Father," and, on the oth close, by rapidly recounting the most impor- of January, 1840, she died, in her eighty-eighth fant events which we know to have befallen | year. Madame D'Arblay during the latter part of her life. We now turn from the life of Madame D'Arblay to her writings. There can, we ap prehend, be little difference of opinion as to the nature of her merit, whatever differences may exist as to its degree. She was emphati monger. It was in the exhibition of human passions and whims that her strength lay; and in this department of art she had, we think, very distinguished skill. M. D'Arblay's fortune had perished in the general wreck of the French Revolution; and in a foreign country his talents, whatever they may have been, could scarcely make him rich.cally what Johnson called her, a characterThe task of providing for the family devolved on his wife. In the year 1796, she published by subscription her third novel, Camilla. It was impatiently expected by the public; and the sum which she obtained by it was, we believe, greater than had ever at that time been received for a novel. We have heard that she cleared more than three thousand guineas. But we give this merely as a rumour. la, however, never attained popularity like that which Evelina and Cecilia had enjoyed; and it must be allowed that there was a perceptible falling off, not indeed in humour, or in power of portraying character, but in grace and purity of style. But in order that we may, according to our duty as kings-at-arms, versed in the laws of literary precedence, marshal her to the exact seat in which she is entitled, we must carry our Camil-examination somewhat further. We have heard that, about this time, a tragedy by Madame D'Arblay was performed without 'success. We do not know whether it was ever printed; nor indeed have we had time to make any researches into its history or merits. During the short time which followed the treaty of Amiens, M. D'Arblay visited France. Lauriston and La Fayette represented his claims to the French government, and obtained a promise that he should be reinstated in his military rank. M. D'Arblay, however, insisted that he should never be required to serve against the There is, in one respect, a remarkable ana logy between the faces and the minds of men. No two faces are alike; and yet very few faces deviate very widely from the common standard. Among the eighteen hundred thousand human beings who inhabit London, there is not one who could be taken by his acquaintance for another; yet we may walk from Paddington to Mile-end without seeing one person in whom any feature is so overcharged that we turn around to stare at it. An infinite number of varieties lies between limits which are not very far asunder. The specimens which pass those limits on either side, form a very small mino rity. It is the same with the characters of men. Here, too, the variety passes all enumeration But the cases in which the deviation from the The same distinction is found in the drama zommon standard is striking and grotesque, are very few. In one mind avarice predominates; and in fictitious narrative. Highest among in another, pride; in a third, love of pleasure -just as in one countenance the nose is the most marked feature, while in others the chief expression lies in the brow, or in the lines of the mouth. But there are very few countenances in which nose, brow, and mouth do not contribute, though in unequal degrees, to the general effect; and so there are few characters in which one over-grown propensity makes all others utterly insignificant. those who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue, stands Shakspeare. His variety is like the variety of nature, endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity. The characters of which he has given us an impression as vivid as that which we receive from the characters of our own associates, are to be reckoned by scores. Yet in all these scores hardly one character is to be found which deviates widely from the common standard, and which we should call very eccentric if we met it in real life. It is evident that a portrait-painter, who was able only to represent faces and figures such as those which we pay money to see at fairs, The silly notion that every man has one rulwould not, however spirited his execution ing passion, and that this clue, once known, might be, take rank among the highest artists. unravels all the mysteries of his conduct, finds He must always be placed below those who no countenance in the plays of Shakspeare. have the skill to seize peculiarities which do There man appears as he is, made up of a not amount to deformity. The slighter those crowd of passions, which contend for the maspeculiarities the greater is the merit of the tery over him, and govern him in turn. What limner who can catch them and transfer them is Hamlet's ruling passion? Or Othello's? Or to his canvass. To paint Daniel Lambert or Harry the Fifth's? Or Wolsey's? Or Lear's? the Living Skeleton, the Pig-faced lady or the Or Shylock's? Or Benedick's? Or Macbeth's? Siamese Twins, so that nobody can mistake. Or that of Cassius? Or that of Falconbridge? them, is an exploit within the reach of a sign- But we might go on for ever. Take a single painter. A third-rate artist might give us the example-Shylock. Is he so eager for money squint of Wilkes, and the depressed nose and protuberant cheeks of Gibbon. It would require a much higher degree of skill to paint two such men as Mr. Canning and Sir Thomas Lawrence, so that nobody who had ever seen them could for a moment hesitate to assign each picture to its original. Here the mere caricaturist would be quite at fault. He would find in neither face any thing on which he could lay hold for the purpose of making a distinction. Two ample bald foreheads, two regular profiles, two full faces of the same oval form, would baffle his art; and he would be reduced to the miserable shift of writing their names at the foot of his picture. Yet there was a great difference; and a person who had seen them once, would no more have mistaken one of them for the other than he would have mistaken Mr. Pitt for Mr. Fox. But the difference lay in delicate lineaments and shades, reserved for pencils of a rare order. This distinction runs through all the imitative arts. Foote's mimicry was exquisitely ludicrous, but it was all caricature. He could take off only some strange peculiarity, a stammer or a lisp, a Northumbrian burr or an Irish brogue, a stoop or a shuffle. "If a man," said Johnson, "hops on one leg, Foote can hop on one leg." Garrick, on the other hand, could seize those differences of manner and pronunciation, which, though highly characteristic, are yet too slight to be described. Foote, we have no doubt, could have made the Haymarket theatre shake with laughter by imitating a dialogue between a Scotchman and a Somersetshireman. But Garrick could have imitated a dialogue between two fashionable men, both models of the best breeding, Lord Chesterfield for example, and Lord Albemarle; so that no person could doubt which was which, although no person could say that in any point either Lord Chesterfield or Lord Albemarle spoke or moved otherwise than in conformity with the sages of the best society. as to be indifferent to revenge? Or so eager for revenge as to be indifferent to money? Or so bent on both together as to be indifferent to the honour of his nation and the law of Moses? All his propensities are mingled with each other; so that, in trying to apportion to each its proper part, we find the same difficulty which constantly meets us in real life. A superficial critic may say, that hatred is Shylock's ruling passion. But how many passions have amalgamated to form that hatred? It is partly the result of wounded pride: Antonio has called him dog. It is partly the result of covetousness: Antonio has hindered him of half a mil lion, and, when Antonio is gone, there will be no limit to the gains of usury. It is partly the result of national and religious feeling: Antonio has spit on the Jewish gaberdine; and the oath of revenge has been sworn by the Jewish Sabbath. We might go through all the characters which we have mentioned, and through fifty more in the same way; for it is the con stant manner of Shakspeare to represent the human mind as lying, not under the absolute dominion of one domestic propensity, but under a mixed government, in which a hundred powers balance each other. Admirable as he was in all parts of his art, we most admire him for this, that, while he has left us a greater number of striking portraits than all other dramatists put together, he has scarcely left us a single caricature. Shakspeare has had neither equal nor second But among the writers who, in the point which we have noticed, have approached nearest to the manner of the great master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, a woman of whom England is justly proud. She has given us a multitude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace, all such as we meet every day. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminat ed from each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings. There are, for example, four clergymen, none of whom we |