printed.”’[53] Macaulay did not mean to emulate Croker; he was betrayed by fancied resemblances of style, than which nothing can be more deceptive. The probability is that the manuscript was not submitted to Johnson, lest he should be held to have written what he only corrected. ‘Cecilia; or, The Memoirs of an heiress,’ was published in July, 1782. “We have been informed,” says Macaulay, “by persons who remember those days, that no romance of Sir Walter Scott was more impatiently awaited, or more eagerly snatched from the counters of the booksellers.” The first edition, which was exhausted in the following October, consisted of two thousand copies; and Macaulay was told by someone, not named, that an equal number of pounds was received by the author for her work. There is no producible authority for the latter statement, and we cannot but think that it is an exaggeration, arising out of some confusion between the amount paid for the copyright, and the number of copies first printed. At any rate, the sum mentioned does not seem to square with some expressions used by Burke, who about this time began to take a personal interest in Miss Burney. The great statesman was introduced to her, a few days before her second novel appeared, at a dinner given by Sir Joshua in his house on Richmond Hill. At the end of July he addressed her in a letter of congratulation: ‘You have crowded,’ he wrote, ‘into a few small volumes an incredible variety of characters; most of them well planned, well supported, and well contrasted with each other. If there be any fault in this respect, it is one in which you are in no great danger of being imitated. Justly as your characters are drawn, perhaps they are too numerous. But I beg pardon; I fear it is quite in vain to preach economy to those who are come young to excessive and sudden opulence. I might trespass on your delicacy if I should fill my letter to you with what I fill my conversation to others. I should be troublesome to you alone if I should tell you all I feel and think on the natural vein of humour, the tender pathetic, the comprehensive and noble moral, and the sagacious observation, that appear quite throughout that extraordinary performance.’ To be addressed in such terms by such a man was enough to turn the head of any young writer; and this letter may be regarded as marking the topmost point in Fanny’s literary career.