United States or Nepal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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.
Burney's babe died soon after the steamer had brought the two mothers and their infants to their refuge; but little George Boardman did not suffer any ill effects from these dreadful days and nights, and was, in fact, the only child of his patents who outlived infancy. Another son, born a few months afterwards, soon ended a feeble existence, and Mrs. Boardman was ill for many months.
But she did come, and asked for Mrs. Burney's "Evelina." She smiled when she named the book, and said that she believed she would have to take a novel, after all, and she had always wanted to read that one. "I wouldn't take a novel if I were you," said Mr. Tolman; and he triumphantly took down the "Dormstock" and laid it before her. She was evidently much pleased, but when he told her of Mr.
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.
Have I, then, two lives, that, after I have wasted one in the service of others, there may yet remain to me a second, which I may live unto myself?" Now and then, indeed, events occurred which disturbed the wretched monotony of Frances Burney's life. The Court moved from Kew to Windsor, and from Windsor back to Kew. One dull colonel went out of waiting, and another dull colonel came into waiting.
'And what about Henkel? asked Burney. 'Have you ever heard of him since? 'Not a word. But' Ken's voice dropped a tone 'I mean to. If he's alive I'll find him, and He stopped abruptly, and suddenly gripped Burney's arm. 'There's some one listening, he whispered. 'I heard some one behind that boat. No, stay where you are. If we both move, he'll smell a rat.
Turn to your Evelina and see what was accounted humorous, what passed for practical joking, in Miss Burney's time, at the end of the last century. It is not difficult to imagine Dr. Johnson, who greatly delighted in Evelina, supposing the intentional upsetting into the ditch of the old French lady in the carriage to be a joke.
To judge from Burney's account of the preceding weeks of the season, coupled with this astonishingly rapid collaboration, it is probable that Hill was in a difficult situation, from which only a new and strikingly successful opera could save him.
Giles Church, in which he is buried; and stood a long time before St. James Palace, trying to make out which could have been Miss Burney's windows when she was dresser to Queen Charlotte of bitter memory.
But if it deserves scant credit as a model for Miss Burney's infinitely more delicate art, "Betsy Thoughtless" should still be noticed as an early attempt to use the substance of everyday life as material for fiction. It has been called with some justice the first domestic novel in the language. Although the exact definition of a domestic novel nowhere appears, the term may be understood by expanding the French roman
Word Of The Day