But there was to be a still deeper descent. After the publication of Camilla, Madame D’Arblay resided ten years at Paris. During those years there was scarcely any intercourse between France and England. It was with difficulty that a short letter could occasionally be transmitted. All Madame D’Arblay’s companions were French. She must have written, spoken, thought, in French. Ovid expressed his fear that a shorter exile might have affected the purity of his Latin. During a shorter exile, Gibbon unlearned his native English. Madame D’Arblay had carried a bad style to France. She brought back a style which we are really at a loss to describe. It is a sort of broken Johnsonese, a barbarous _patois_, bearing the same relation to the language of Rasselas, which the gibberish of the Negroes of Jamaica hears to the English of the House of Lords. Sometimes it reminds us of the finest, that is to say, the vilest parts, of Mr. Galt’s novels; sometimes of the perorations of Exeter Hall; sometimes of the leading articles of the Morning Post. But it most resembles the puffs of Mr. Rowland and Dr. Goss. It matters not what ideas are clothed in such a style. The genius of Shakspeare and Bacon united would not save a work so written from general derision. It is only by means of specimens that we can enable our readers to judge how widely Madame D’Arblay’s three styles differed from each other. The following passage was written before she became intimate with Johnson. It is from Evelina. {315}”_His son seems weaker in his understanding, and more gay in his temper; but his gaiety is that of a foolish overgrown schoolboy, whose mirth consists in noise and disturbance. He disdains his father for his close attention to business and love of money, though he seems himself to have no talents, spirit, or generosity to make him superior to either. His chief delight appears to be in tormenting and ridiculing his sisters, who in return most cordially despise him. Miss Branghton, the eldest daughter, is by no means ugly; but looks proud, ill-tempered, and conceited. She hates the city, though without knowing why; for it is easy to discover she has lived nowhere else. Miss Folly Branghton is rather pretty, very foolish, very ignorant, very giddy, and, I believe, very goodnatured_.” This is not a fine style, but simply perspicuous and agreeable. We now come to Cecilia, written during Miss Burney’s intimacy with Johnson; and we leave it to our readers to judge whether the following passage was not at least corrected by his hand.