n 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 retouched
the style of many passages. 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 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 adm