But the London of 1811, when we have the first record of Jane’s visiting it, was not what it had been thirty years before. Johnson was dead, Walpole was dead, Garrick was dead, Reynolds was dead, Sheridan living but sunk in debt and disease; of the brilliant band that Hannah More had known few were left. Doctor Johnson had died fourteen years previously, when Jane was only nine years old. Miss Burney had had not only his friendship but his help in the revision of her works—perhaps a doubtful privilege. To quote Lord Macaulay again: “When she wrote her early journals, and her novel of _Evelina_, her style was not indeed brilliant or energetic; but it was easy, clear, and free from all offensive faults. When she wrote _Cecilia_ she aimed higher. She had then lived much in a circle of which Johnson was the centre; and she was herself one of his most submissive worshippers.... In an evil hour the author of _Evelina_ took the _Rambler_ for her model. She had her style. It was a tolerably good one; she determined to throw it away to adopt a style in which she could attain excellence only by achieving an almost miraculous victory over nature and over habit. In _Cecilia_ the imitation of Johnson, though not always in the best taste, is sometimes eminently happy. There were people who whispered that Johnson had assisted his young friend and that the novel owed all its finest passages to his hand. This was merely the fabrication of envy.” But after the death of Johnson, “she had to write in Johnson’s manner without Johnson’s aid. The consequence was that in _Camilla_ every passage which she meant to be fine is detestable; and that 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.” After he had read _Camilla_, Walpole says of Miss Burney: “Alas! She had reversed experience which I have long thought reverses its own utility by coming at the wrong end of our life when we do not want it. This author knew the world and penetrated characters before she had stepped over the threshold; now she has seen so much of it she has little or no insight at all.” It was therefore, perhaps, lucky for Jane Austen that she was not so overshadowed by the direct personality of a mighty man as to lose her clear, bright English style. Her admiration for Miss Burney’s work was decided and clearly expressed, and she was among the first subscribers to _Camilla_ in 1796. Though Jane never came into contact with the men and women who made literature in her day, she took a keen interest in their works, and was a great novel reader. She says in one place, “As an inducement to subscribe (to her library) Mrs. Martin tells me that her collection is not to consist only of novels but of every kind of literature. She might have spared this pretension to our family, who are great novel readers and not ashamed of being so.”