true woman's
English, clear, natural, and lively. The two works are lying side by
side before us; and we never turn from the Memoirs to the Diary without
a sense of relief. The difference is as great as the difference between
the atmosphere of a perfumer's shop, fetid with lavender water and
jasmine soap, and the air of a heath on a fine morning in May. Both
works ought to be consulted by every person who wishes to be well
acquainted with the history of our literature and our manners. But to
read the Diary is a pleasure; to read the Memoirs will always be a task.

We may, perhaps, afford some harmless amusement to our readers if we
attempt, with the help of these two books, to give them an account of
the most important years of Madame D'Arblay's life.

She was descended from a family which bore the name of Macburney, and
which, though probably of Irish origin, had been long settled in
Shropshire, and was possessed of considerable estates in that county.
Unhappily, many years before her birth, the Macburneys began, as if of
set purpose and in a spirit of determined rivalry, to expose and ruin
themselves. The heir apparent, Mr. James Macburney, offended his father
by making a runaway match with an actress from Goodman's Fields. The old
gentleman could devise no more judicious mode of wreaking vengeance on
his undutiful boy than by marrying the cook. The cook gave birth to a
son named Joseph, who succeeded to all the lands of the family, while
James was cut off with a shilling. The favorite son, however, was so
extravagant that he soon became as poor as his disinherited brother.
Both were forced to earn their bread by their labor. Joseph turned
dancing master, and settled in Norfolk. James struck off the Mac from
the beginning of his name, and set up as a portrait painter at Chester.
Here he had a son named Charles, well known as the author of the History
of Music, and as the father of two remarkable children, of a son
distinguished by learning, and of a daughter still more honorably
distinguished by genius.

Charles early showed a taste for that art, of which, at a later period,
he became the historian. He was apprenticed to a celebrated musician in
London, and applied himself to study with vigor and success. He soon
found a kind and munificent patron in Fulk Greville, a high-born and
high-bred man, who seems to have had in large measure all the
accomplishments and all the follies, all the virtues and all the vices,
wh