revulsions, have questioned whether even Evelina is a very remarkable book.  Some, with human respect for the great names of its early admirers, have passed it over gingerly—­not exactly as willing to wound, but as quite afraid or reluctant to strike.  Nay, actual critical evaluations of the novel-values of Miss Burney’s four attempts in novel-writing are very rare.  I dare say there are other people who have read The Wanderer through:  but I never met any one who had done so except (to quote Rossetti) myself:  and I could not bring myself, even on this occasion, to read it again.  I doubt whether very many now living have read Camilla.  Even Cecilia requires an effort, and does not repay that effort very well.  Only Evelina itself is legible and relegible—­for reasons which will be given presently.  Yet Cecilia was written shortly after Evelina, under the same stimulus of abundant and genial society, with no pressure except that of friendly encouragement and perhaps assistance, and long before the supposed blight of royal favour and royal exigences came upon its author.  When Camilla was published she had been relieved from these exigences, though not from that favour, for five years:  and was a thoroughly happy woman, rejoicing in husband and child.  Even when the impossible Wanderer was concocted, she had had ample leisure, had as yet incurred none of her later domestic sorrows, and was assured of lavish recompense for her (it must be said) absolutely worthless labours.  Why this steady declension, with which, considering the character of Cecilia, the court sojourn can have had nothing to do?  And admitting it, why still uphold, as the present writer does uphold, Evelina as one of the points de repere of the English novel?  Both questions shall be answered in their order.

Frances Burney must have been, as we see not merely from external testimony, but from the infallible witness of her own diary, a most engaging person to any one who could get over her shyness and her prudery:[12] but she was only in a very limited sense a gifted one.  Macaulay grants her a “fine understanding;” but even his own article contradicts the statement, which is merely one of his exaggerations for the sake of point.  She had not a fine understanding:  though she was neither silly nor stupid, her sense was altogether inferior to her sensibility.  Although living in a most bookish circle she was, as Macaulay himself admits, almost illiterate:  and (which he does not say) her comparative critical estimates of books, when she does give them, are merely contemptible.  This harsh statement could be freely substantiated:  but it is enough to say that, when a girl, she preferred some forgotten rubbish called Henry and Frances to the Vicar of Wakefield:  and that, when a woman, she deliberately offended Chateaubriand by praising the Itineraire rather than the Genie