as long as that in the second book of the Iliad. In
that catalogue would be Mrs. Cholmondeley, the sayer of odd things, and
Seward, much given to yawning, and Baretti, who slew the man in the
Haymarket, and Paoli, talking broken English, and Langton, taller by the
head than any other member of the club, and Lady Millar, who kept a vase
wherein fools were wont to put bad verses, and Jerningham, who wrote
verses fit to be put into the vase of Lady Millar, and Dr. Franklin,
not, as some have dreamed, the great Pennsylvanian Dr. Franklin, who
could not then have paid his respects to Miss Burney without much risk
of being hanged, drawn, and quartered, but Dr. Franklin the less,
[Greek:
Aias
meion, outi tosos ge hosos Telamonios Aias,
alla poly meion.]
It would not have been surprising if such success had turned even a
strong head, and corrupted even a generous and affectionate nature. But,
in the Diary, we can find no trace of any feeling inconsistent with a
truly modest and amiable disposition. There is, indeed, abundant proof
that Frances enjoyed with an intense, though a troubled, joy the honors
which her genius had won; but it is equally clear that her happiness
sprang from the happiness of her father, her sister, and her dear Daddy
Crisp. While flattered by the great, the opulent, and the learned, while
followed along the Steyne at Brighton, and the Pantiles at Tunbridge
Wells, by the gaze of admiring crowds, her heart seems to have been
still with the little domestic circle in St. Martin's Street. If she
recorded with minute diligence all the compliments, delicate and coarse,
which she heard wherever she turned, she recorded them for the eyes of
two or three persons who had loved her from infancy, who had loved her
in obscurity, and to whom her fame gave the purest and most exquisite
delight. Nothing can be more unjust than to confound these outpourings
of a kind heart, sure of perfect sympathy, with the egotism of a
blue-stocking, who prates to all who come near her about her own novel
or her own volume of sonnets.
It was natural that the triumphant issue of Miss Burney's first venture
should tempt her to try a second. Evelina, though it had raised her
fame, had added nothing to her fortune. Some of her friends urged her to
write for the stage. Johnson promised to give her his advice as to the
composition. Murphy, who was supposed to understand the temper of the
pit as well as
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