The composition of ‘Camilla’ has been blamed for the opposite faults of affectation and slovenliness. ‘Every passage,’ says Macaulay, ‘which the author meant to be fine is detestable; and the book has been saved from condemnation only by the admirable spirit and force of those scenes in which she was content to be familiar.’ Other censors have observed that, while the rhetoric is inflated, the grammar is occasionally doubtful, and the diction sometimes barbarous. Now, it must be owned that the ordinary vocabulary of the Burneys was not remarkable for purity or elegance. In their talk and intimate letters, both the father and the daughters expressed themselves in the most colloquial forms, not seldom lapsing into downright slang. To give one instance only, the atrocious vulgarism of ‘an invite’ for ‘an invitation’ occurs in several parts of the Diary. When writing for the press, Dr. Burney guarded himself by the adoption of a wholly artificial style, that swelled, from time to time, into tedious magniloquence. Fanny was schooled for writing ‘Cecilia’ by the critical discussions of the Streatham circle, by much intercourse with Johnson, and by some study of style—chiefly the style of the ‘Ramblers’ and ‘Lives of the Poets.’ Having despatched her second novel, she ceased to be careful about literary questions. This indifference increased after her marriage. When describing the reception of ‘Camilla’ at Windsor, ‘the Queen,’ she writes, ‘talked of some books and authors, but found me wholly in the clouds as to all that is new.’ Her husband, insensible, of course, to the niceties of a foreign idiom, but apparently admiring pompous phraseology, conceived a relish for Dr. Burney’s style; and Madame, delighting to think her ‘dear father’ perfect, was pleased to place his English in the very first class.[119] The eloquence of ‘Camilla’ seems to mingle faint Johnsonian echoes with the stilted movement of the music-master’s prose; while too often the choice of words is left to chance. A recent editor of the two earlier novels has called attention to the numerous vulgarities of expression, not put into vulgar mouths, which occur in ‘Camilla.’ ‘People “_stroam_ the fields,” or have “a depressing _feel_.”’ This editor suggests that Miss Burney’s five years at Court may have done much to spoil her English, remarking that ‘she lived at Windsor among hybrids.’ By ‘hybrids’ we suppose we are to understand equerries. But the equerries, if not possessing great culture, were, at any rate, gentlemen of good position. If they used the incriminated phrases why not also the personages of the novel? We take it, however, that ‘to stroam the fields’ is not a low phrase acquired by Fanny at Court, but a provincialism which she learned in her native county, where the verb to ‘stroam,’ or to ‘strome,’ was certainly in use a hundred years ago,[120] and is, we are assured, familiarly employed at the present day. We