CONVERSATION. IT has been said that conversational power attains its greatest excellence under despotic systems, such as the ancien régime of France, where the men having nothing to do with politics, devote the whole energies of their mind to the cultivation of the social powers, and thus place themselves more upon a par with the other sex. The subjects of free governments are very often slaves, that they may preserve their liberty. In London party and politics, in the country field-sports and quarter sessions, deprive the fair of their fair influence, and are consequently hostile to social eminence; to say nothing of those still existing though rare bacchanalia, whose smoking and tippling votaries pronounce that talking spoils conversation. Men of the greatest capacity are not always the pleasantest companions, for society is jealous; it requires some degree of equality, and is perhaps the most delightful when it resembles a vacuum, of which all the occupants have the same specific gravity or levity. A prudent esprit fort will, therefore, live as much within his wit as his income, well knowing that a mind of great caliber will only be deemed a great bore, if its capacity be rendered too manifest, and that a man taller than his neighbours only runs the risk of knocking his head against obstructions underneath which others escape. Besides, the general subjects of discussion, in mixed society, are so light and frivolous, that even if a powerful intellect were to put forth all its strength upon them, it might not succeed better than a weak one; for Hercules cannot throw a feather any further than a child. EPITAPHS. PERICLES, in his noble funeral oration for the heroes slain at Marathon, says, "The whole earth is the sepulchre of illustrious men, nor is the epitaph engraven on tombstones in their native land the sole guardian of their fame; but the memory of their actions in other countries forms a more faithful record in the heart than any that human hands can fabricate." The epitaph upon our celebrated Admiral Drake is but an expansion of the same idea: The waves became his winding sheet, the waters were his tomb, In contrast with these grandiose orations and epitaphs we may turn to the shortest, and perhaps the most appropriate upon record—that which is sculptured on the tombstone of an actor, the contemporary of Shakspeare, Exit Burbage! H. CAT LATIN. Why don't you carry your young ones in a bag as I do ?” inquired a Marsupial Animal of one of the feline species. "Non possumus omnes," replied the Cat; "we're not all 'pos sums." MADAME D'ARBLAY'S DIARY AND LETTERS. IF, before we had heard of the existence of The Diary of Madame D'Arblay, a portion of which is now before us, we had been required to name that individual among those distinguished in the English literature of recent times, whose private journal we should most desire to possess, it is probable that, after "much meditating" on all the various phases of the question, we should at last have fixed on the author of "Evelina," "Cecilia," &c. ; for reasons which, if they do not at once occur to the reader, this assuredly is no time or place to allege them; since we are called to the infinitely more grateful and useful office of proving that at least they were" reasons good;" for here is a portion of the very "Diary" that a month or two ago we could have had no hope of compassing but through the aid of Fortunatus's wishing-cap; and we have no hesitation in declaring that, so far as it proceeds, it greatly surpasses, both in immediate interest and entertainment, and in high literary, historical and social value, whatever our utmost expectations could have assigned to it. The truth is, that if the present ample volume (comprising nearly 500 pages) may be accepted as a fair sample of the whole (of which there can be no reason to doubt, since it is printed in chronological order, from the autograph of the writer, verbatim and intact, except as regards the omissions which family and other considerations must necessarily have demanded in a journal evidently written, if ever a journal was so written, without the remotest view or thought of after publicity); if, we say, the present volume may be taken as an average specimen of the six in which this "Diary and Letters" are announced to be comprised, we may look to possess in the whole a work most assuredly not second in value and curiosity to that which has hitherto borne the palm from all others in this class of writing, (we mean of course Boswell's Johnson,) and as certainly quite superior to every other work that has, up to this time, competed with that most popular of all English biographies, auto or otherwise. In fact this delightful volume proves Miss Burney to have possessed all the qualifications for a social annalist which the most ardent admirers of Johnson's biographer would assign to him, without a single one of those manifold errors, weaknesses, and deficiencies, which compel us to smile at Boswell (not seldom contemptuously), even while we are most amused and obliged by him. That the woman who wrote the greater part of "Evelina" long before she was twenty years of age, must have possessed rare penetration to observe, and rare judgment to estimate, human character-that she must have been gifted with the finest moral tact, and the most delicate sense of humour-that she turned to the most high and pure, yet the wisest and kindest account that "learned spirit of human dealing" with which she was gifted perhaps beyond any other woman of the same age that ever lived;—all this, and much more, those who are acquainted with "Evelina" must be fully aware of: and it is, in this first portion of her 66 Diary and Letters," the author of "Evelina" alone that we have to deal with: for none of her other works were written till long after the date (1780) at which the present volume closes. But it remained for the "Diary and Letters" before us to prove that Miss Burney still further owned (in addition to that untiring industry, without man. WO which all her other gifts would have been worthless as regards the present work) a simplicity and singleness of mind and principle, a depth and delicacy of social affections, a feminine softness and sweetness of disposition, an almost infantine innocence of character, and a rare modesty (almost amounting to positive disbelief) as to her own intellectual pretensions that have rarely, if ever before, been united in any one It proves too, that on all these happy attributes, a degree of success and admiration unparalleled in the history of letters, considering who it was that accorded and confirmed them, had no more effect than if they had been conveyed to her in an unknown tongue. At the threshold of this Diary we find the "little Fanny Burney" of her few dear friends, the "our Fanny" of her amiable and happy family, and the "Fannikin" of her dear "Daddy Crisp"-her "second father," as she called and felt him,--rejoicing in a "frolic" she has just brought to a happy conclusion, and therefore seems to have had pretty well enough of; and which conclusion consists in her having, to her own utter and almost incredulous astonishment, received the magnificent sum of twenty pounds for the said "frolic"-in other words, for a "little book" (as big, by the by, as any two ordinary novels of our day) which she has been as it were "playing at" writing during certain stolen hours ("few and far between") of the last two or three years; and which writing, for fear of being laughed at, she has concealed from every member of her family except a favourite sister and brother, up to the hour of its completion and publication to the world. Well-the result of her "frolic" sees the light;-it begins to be talked about by some of her acquaintance, and she gets into all sorts of little scrapes by hearing it praised or dispraised before her face ;-the Monthly and London Reviews come out, and deign to accord it, the one four, and the other about four and twenty vapid lines of patronage and patting on the back;-her father, by the merest accident, finds it out, reads, admires it, and (this is seven months after its publication!) begs her permission to disclose the little secret of its authorship to her mother!-she reluctantly consents,-though, as she says (with an innocence and simplicity that incredulity itself cannot doubt) "I only proposed, like my friends the Miss Branghtons,* a little 'private fun,' and never dreamt of extending my confidence beyond my sisters." In a word, the novel and the name of its author spread-she becomes, first the wonder, then the admiration, and presently the pet and idol of the entire literary and fashionable worldsfeted, flattered, almost worshipped wherever she goes, and compelled by the wide literary connexions of her father, Dr. Burney, to go everywhere. Meantime, Edmund Burke sits up all one night and half another to read her "little book," that has been written for a "frolic"; Dr. Johnson declares it to be superior to anything of Fielding's; Sir Joshua Reynolds offers fifty pounds to know the name of the writer; Sheridan tenders her carte blanche to write a comedy on the strength of it; Cumberland can scarcely keep from poisoning her, out of sheer envy at her popularity ;— and, 66 though last, not least in our dear love," i. e., the littérateurs of this age of trading authorship-her publisher pockets his four or five thousand pounds by his speculation, and is generous enough to send her "six copies" of the book gratis,-over and above the " mag * Characters in "Evelina." And nificent" twenty pounds which he gave her for the copyright! what is the consequence of all this upon the character and temper of its object, by the time we reach the end of this first instalment of her "Diary"-namely, three years from the publication of "Evelina," during all which period she has been daily rising in public popularity, and in private admiration and esteem ?-Why that she is still the simple and blushing "little Fanny Burney" of her old acquaintance-the affectionate and caressing "our Fanny" of her amiable family-and the endearing "Fannikin" of her "Daddy Crisp." The only noticeable change is, that she has (not without a sort of astonished perplexity, which she never gets over to the end of the chapter), grown in her own estimation" nearer to heaven by the altitude of a chopine," in consequence of finding herself the "dear little Burney" of the great autocrat of literature-the all-admired and all-dreaded Dr. Johnson,-whose touching fondness for her was evidently greater than he ever felt for any other human being, and the instances and descriptions of which afford some of the most pathetic and exquisite pictures of the kind that pen ever drew. We must really apologize for this long preamble, which strikes us as being something akin to an usher intercepting an eagerly expected guest, and keeping him waiting outside the door, while he announces those numerous titles to admission which everybody who hears him knows as well as himself. But we could not for the life of us help marking and illustrating our sense of what we hold to be at once the most remarkable personal trait in this charming volume, and that one which must give to every reader the most perfect faith in the verity of its contents-without which faith they would lose the best half of their value. We shall now chiefly confine ourselves to the pleasant task of making the volume speak for itself-merely premising that its materials may be divided into two distinct portions, each comprising living and speaking pictures of English literary and general society as it existed among the higher and middle class in the days of Johnson, Burke, Sheridan, Reynolds, Garrick, Murphy, Cumberland, Franklin, Topham Beauclerk, the Whartons, Bishop Porteus, &c.—also among the brilliant circle of the female wits of the time, Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Chapone, Hannah More, Mrs. Thrale, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Vesey, Mrs. Cholmondeley, Lady Di Beauclerk, &c. &c. In short, one portion places before us, "in their habit as they lived," almost every one of the literary and other celebrities of that day, and in particular all of those above-named; the other includes portraits equally authentic and elaborately finished with the above, and equally like, but of people who (never having heard of them before) come upon us with the air and effect of characters in a new comedy, or novel, at the same time that they impress us with a feeling of truth and vitality which nothing coming before us in a work of fiction can ever convey. At the same time, their recurrence at intervals during the whole volume, as well as that of the historical characters who figure in it so admirably, gives a consecutive interest to the work, equal if not superior to that of the best constructed fiction. As instances of the latter, more forcible, spirited, truthful, and individualized than anything else we are acquainted with, except the principal characters in Miss Burney's own novels, or in those of Fielding or Richardson, yet with the vast advantage over all these, of being actual and literal draughts from nature,—we may point, among others, at the Feb.-VOL. LXIV. NO. CCLIV. T dandy of sixty years ago-the weeping beauty, who had tears at will -the female sceptic and misanthrope-the Bath alderman and his "Folly"-the incomparable and impayable "General"-the fat female Mecanas of the Bath wits-the fastidious "man of refinement," for whom nobody is good enough-and a score more such pictures of London and Bath life sixty years ago; most of whom (as we have said) go through the volume with us, and make it a better thing in its way than the best comedy of Murphy or the best fiction of even Miss Burney herself. It would be doing extreme injustice to this book, and to those readers who wish to gain a specific notion of its contents with a view to its acquirement or otherwise, not to commence our specimens of it with its own opening page (written at the age of fifteen years), describing the writer's objects and motives in recording her thoughts, feelings, and observations in the form before us, and the expedient by means of which she proposes to do so with that perfect freedom from restraint which can alone ensure the desired result. To have some account of my thoughts, acquaintance, and actions, when the hour arrives at which time is more nimble than memory, is the reason which induces me to keep a Journal-a Journal in which I must confess my every thought-must open my whole heart. But a thing of the kind ought to be addressed to somebody-I must imagine myself to be talking-talking to the most intimate of friends-to one in whom I should take delight in confiding, and feel remorse in concealment: but who must this friend be? To make choice of one in whom I can but half rely, would be to frustrate entirely the intention of my plan. The only one I could wholly, totally confide in, lives in the same house with me, and not only never has, but never will, leave me one secret to tell her. To whom, then, must I dedicate my wonderful, surprising, and interesting adventures?-to whom dare 1 reveal my private opinion of my nearest relations? my secret thoughts of my dearest friends? my own hopes, fears, reflections, and dislikes?—Nobody. To NOBODY, then, will I write my Journal!-since to Nobody can I be wholly unreserved, to Nobody can I reveal every thought, every wish of my heart, with the most unlimited confidence, the most unremitting sincerity, to the end of my life! For what chance, what accident, can end my connexions with Nobody? No secret can I conceal from Nobody, and to Nobody can I be ever unreserved. Disagreement cannot stop our affection-time itself has no power to end our friendship. The love, the esteem I entertain for Nobody, Nobody's self has not power to destroy. From Nobody I have nothing to fear. The secrets sacred to friendship Nobody will not reveal; when the affair is doubtful, Nobody will not look towards the side least favourable. We shall now place before the reader a few extracts, taken almost at random, from this delightful collection of literary and social Ana of the latter half of the last century—a period which may be said almost to belong to our own day,-at least for that class of readers who will feel most curiosity and interest in these pages. We shall take our extracts nearly in the chronological order in which they present themselves to us on opening the pages, only classing them where, as in the case of Dr. Johnson, we wish to bring several under one head. We cannot help premising the capital anecdotes we shall give of that illustrious and (with all his faults) truly admirable and excellent man, by expressing a doubt whether anything about him could be picked out of the entire of Boswell, equal, space for space, in characteristic spirit and force, to the following passages,-all of them occurring within thirty or forty pages of the volume before us. |