Of course, the proposition and the acceptance were alike mistaken. The service required was unworthy of the servant, nor was she competent for the service. On the one hand, the talents of a brilliant writer were thrown away in a situation where writing was neither expected nor desired. On the other, a novice of puny figure, imperfect sight, extreme nervousness, and small aptitude for ordinary feminine duties, was most unlikely to become distinguished in the profession of a lady-in-attendance. Under the most favourable circumstances, the gains and advantages attached to her constrained life at Court were not to be compared with those which might be looked for from the diligent use of her pen in the freedom of home. Yet allowing all this, we cannot disguise from ourselves that much heedless rhetoric has been expended by several critics on the folly of Miss Burney’s choice, and the infatuation of her parent. These critics, we conceive, have been led astray, partly by those more extreme trials of her servitude which no prudence could have foreseen, but principally by an erroneous estimate of her position at the time when she closed with the Queen’s offer. The picture which has been imagined of Frances Burney sending forth, at short intervals, a series of ‘Cecilias,’ and receiving for each a cheque of two thousand guineas, is attractive, but purely visionary. It would, we venture to say, have tickled her fine sense of humour amazingly. We are not to think of her as of a favourite novelist of to-day, whom the booksellers and the editors of magazines conspire to keep constantly employed. Her longing to see herself in print seems to have been satiated by the appearance of ‘Evelina.’ Her second work was a much less spontaneous production. Indeed, it is not clear that ‘Cecilia’ would have been written but for the urgency of Crisp, seconded by other friends. Her two fathers were agreed that she ought to exert herself while her powers and her fame were fresh; but how much stimulus was applied after Crisp’s death, we are not informed. Hers was not a very energetic nature, and she had some misgiving that her invention was exhausted. At any rate, she had now let four years go by without attempting anything new. Her third book was not published for the space of a lustrum after her release from Court, and then only under strong pressure of the _res angusta domi_. There had been some talk of laying out the amount paid for ‘Cecilia’ in the purchase of an annuity. But we do not find that this saving plan was executed. What has been contemptuously called ‘board, lodging, and two hundred a year,’ was no bad provision for a single lady of thirty-four, who was producing nothing, and had no income of her own. Boswell, it is true, declared that he would farm her out himself for double or treble the money; but then Boswell did not know a great deal of female authors. Burney was much better aware what to expect from his daughter’s enterprise and