* * * * * [Sidenote: Walpole’s criticism.] I will only reply by a word or two to a question you seem to ask; how I like ‘Camilla’? I do not care to say how little. Alas! she has 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; and, now she has seen so much of it, she has little or no insight at all. HORACE WALPOLE: _Letter to Hannah More_, 1796. * * * * * Dr. Burney asked me about deplorable ‘Camilla.’ Alas! I had not recovered of it enough to be loud in its praise. HORACE WALPOLE: _Letter to Miss Berry_, 1796. ‘The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford.’ London: Henry G. Bohn, 1867. * * * * * [Sidenote: ‘The Hermitage,’ West Hamble.] We are going immediately to build a little cottage for ourselves. We shall make it as small and as cheap as will accord with its being warm and comfortable. We mean to make this a property salable or lettable for our Alex. FRANCES D’ARBLAY: _Letter to Dr. Burney_, 1796, in ‘Diary and Letters.’ * * * * * I need not say how I shall rejoice to see you again, nor how charmed we shall both be to make a nearer acquaintance with Mr. Broome; but, for Heaven’s sake, my dear girl, how are we to give him a dinner?--unless he will bring with him his poultry, for ours are not yet arrived; and his fish, for ours are still at the bottom of some pond we know not where; and his spit, for our jack is yet without one; not to mention his table-linen;--and not to speak of his knives and forks, some ten of our poor original twelve having been massacred in M. D’Arblay’s first essays in the art of carpentering;--and to say nothing of his large spoons, the silver of our plated ones having feloniously made off under cover of the whitening brush;--and not to talk of his cook, ours being not yet hired;--and not to start the subject of wine, ours, by some odd accident, still remaining at the wine-merchants! With all these impediments, however, to convivial hilarity, if he will eat a quarter of a joint of meat (his share, I mean), tied up by a packthread, and roasted by a log of wood on the bricks, and declare no potatoes so good as those dug by M. D’Arblay out of our garden--and protest our small beer gives the spirits of champagne--and pronounce that bare walls are superior to tapestry--and promise us the first sight of his epistle upon visiting a new-built cottage--we shall be sincerely happy to receive him in our Hermitage. FRANCES D’ARBLAY: _Letter to Mrs. Francis_, 1797, in ‘Diary and Letters.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Poverty.] [Sidenote: Generosity.]