in her early days, for planning a story, and contriving situations for the actors in it, had faded away as the freshness of youth departed. The months rolled on, and her spirits did not improve, while her health steadily declined. Some of her female friends—Mrs. Gwynn, Miss Cambridge, Mrs. Ord—saw her at Windsor or Kew after the close of the London season, and were painfully impressed with the alteration which they noted in her. The reports which these ladies carried up to town were speedily known throughout her father’s circle of acquaintances. The discontent that had been felt at her seclusion increased tenfold when it was suspected that there was danger of the prisoner’s constitution giving way. A sort of cabal was formed to bring influence to bear upon Dr. Burney. The lead in this seems to have been taken by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who, despite his failing eyesight and his Academic troubles, was zealous as ever in the cause of his old favourite. Dr. Burney had yielded to Fanny’s wish of retiring; but he was not in affluent circumstances, he had expected great things from the Court appointment, his daughter had not much worldly wisdom, and in dread of the censure that awaited him in high quarters, if he suffered her to throw away a competency without visible necessity, he was for putting off the evil day of resignation as long as possible. It was therefore important that friends whose approbation he valued should unite to make him understand that the case, in their judgment, called for prompt determination. He was much worked upon in the autumn by a letter from Horace Walpole to Frances, in which the writer, with a touch of heartiness quite unusual to him, lamented her confinement to a closet at Court, and asked whether her talents were given to be buried in obscurity? About the same time, he was warned by his daughter, Mrs. Francis, that Windham, her neighbour in Norfolk, who had observed for himself the change in Fanny’s appearance, was meditating an attack on him as soon as they should meet in town. The politician had already sounded Burney to little purpose; ‘it is resolution,’ he told Charlotte, ‘not inclination, the Doctor wants.’ ‘I will set the Literary Club upon him!’ he cried. ‘Miss Burney has some very true friends there, and I am sure they will all eagerly assist. We will present him an address.’ The general feeling infected James Boswell, though not very intimate with the Burney family. In this same autumn, Boswell was on a visit to the Dean of Windsor, who was also Bishop of Carlisle. Miss Burney met him one morning at the choir-gate of St. George’s Chapel: “We saluted with mutual glee: his comic-serious face and manner have lost nothing of their wonted singularity; nor yet have his mind and language, as you will soon confess.