Was introduced by Rogers to Mme. D’Arblay, the celebrated authoress of ‘Evelina’ and ‘Cecilia’--an elderly lady, with no remains of personal beauty, but with a simple and gentle manner, a pleasing expression of countenance, and apparently quick feelings. SIR WALTER SCOTT: _Diary_, November, 1826, in ‘Memoirs,’ by J. G. Lockhart. * * * * * [Sidenote: Miss Mitford’s criticism.] I do not think very highly of Mme. D’Arblay’s books. The style is so strutting. She does so stalk about on Dr. Johnson’s old stilts. What she says wants so much translating into common English, and when translated would seem so commonplace, that I have always felt strongly tempted to read all the serious parts with my fingers’ ends.... A novel should be as like life as a painting, but not as like life as a piece of wax-work. Mme. D’Arblay has much talent, but no taste. Another fault is the sameness of her characters; they all say one thing twenty times over.... They have but one note. MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letters to Sir W. Elford_, in ‘Life,’ edited by Rev. A. G. L’Estrange. London: Richard Bentley, 1870. * * * * * [Sidenote: ‘A very woman.’] Madame D’Arblay is quite of the old school, a mere common observer of manners, and also a very woman. It is this last circumstance which forms the peculiarity of her writings. She is a quick, lively, and accurate observer of persons and things; but she always looks at them with a consciousness of her sex, and in that point of view in which it is the particular business and interest of women to observe them. There is little in her works of passion or character, or even manners, in the most extended sense of the word, as implying the sum total of our habits and pursuits; her _forte_ is in describing the absurdities and affectations of external behavior, or _the manners of people in company_. Her characters, which are ingenious caricatures, are, no doubt, distinctly marked, and well kept up; but they are slightly shaded, and exceedingly uniform. Her heroes and heroines, almost all of them, depend upon the stock of a single phrase or sentiment, and have certain mottoes or devices by which they may always be known. They form such characters as people might be supposed to assume for a night at a masquerade.... The Braughtons are the best. Mr. Smith is an exquisite city portrait. ‘Evelina’ is also her best novel, because it is the shortest; that is, it has all the liveliness in the sketches of character, and smartness of comic dialogue and repartee, without the tediousness of the story, and endless affectation of sentiment which disfigures the others. WILLIAM HAZLITT: _Lecture on the English Novelists_, in ‘Lecture on the English Poets, and the English Comic Writers,’ edited by Wm. Carew Hazlitt. London: Bell & Daldy, 1869. * * * * * [Sidenote: Accused of superficiality.]