was, her diary
tells us, the uncontrollable outcome of her exhilaration on learning of
the praise which the great Dr. Johnson bestowed on _Evelina_. 'It gave
me such a flight of spirits,' she says, 'that I danced a jig to Mr.
Crisp, without any preparation, music, or explanation, to his no small
amazement and diversion.' Macaulay declared that Miss Burney did for
the English novel what Jeremy Collier did for the English drama; and
she did it in a better way. 'She first showed that a tale might be
written in which both the fashionable and the vulgar life of London
might be exhibited with great force, and with broad comic humour, and
which should yet contain not a single line inconsistent with rigid
morality, or even with virgin delicacy. She took away the reproach
which lay on a most useful and delightful species of composition.'
Prejudice, however, dies hard; and the same writer tells us in another
essay that seventy years later, some reviewers were still of opinion
that a lady who dares to publish a book renounces by that act the
franchises appertaining to her sex, and can claim no exemption from the
utmost rigour of critical procedure.

But, however strong may have been the prejudice against a woman
becoming captain, and taking her place upon the bridge, nobody could
object to her becoming first mate; and it is as first mate that woman
has rendered the most valuable service. A few, like Fanny Burney and
Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot, may have become
skippers; but we could better afford to lose all the works of such
writers than lose the influence which women have exerted over captains
whom they served in the capacity of first mate. It was a saying of
Emerson's that a man is entitled to credit, not only for what he
himself does, but for all that he inspires others to do. To no subject
does this axiom apply with greater force than to this. It would be a
fatal mistake to suppose that the contribution of women to the republic
of letters begins and ends with the works that bear feminine names upon
their title-pages. Our literature is adorned by a few examples of
acknowledged collaboration between a man and a woman, and only in very
rare instances is the woman the minor contributor. But, in addition to
these, there are innumerable records of men whose names stand in the
foremost rank among our laureates and teachers yet whose work would
have been simply impossible but for the woman in the backg