The turning point in this direction of the kind was to be made by a person far inferior in ability to any one of the great quartette, and in a book which, _as_ a book, cannot pretend to an equality with the worst of theirs--by a person indeed of less intellectual power, and in a book of less literary merit, than not a few of the persons and books just noticed. There is something, no doubt, paradoxical in this: and the paradox is connected, both with a real quality of the subject and with a surprising diversity of opinions about it. Frances Burney and her _Evelina_ (1778), not to mention her subsequent works and her delightful _Diary_, have been the subject of a great deal of writing: but though more than a hundred years--more indeed than a century and a quarter--have passed since the book insidiously took London by gradual storm, it may, without too much presumption, be questioned whether either book or author has yet been finally or satisfactorily "placed." The immense advantage of not having a history, positively illustrated once for all in Shakespeare, could hardly be negatively illustrated better than in Madame d'Arblay. She had the curious, and actually very unpleasant, experience of being selected for a position at court on the strength of her literary achievements, of finding it intolerable, of breaking down, and of never doing any really good work after her release, through much more than half of her long life. On this fact critical biography has fastened almost exclusively. Macaulay, in one of his most brilliant and best known essays, represents the world as having been deprived of unknown quantities of admirable work by the misplaced kindness, and the positive unkindness, of Queen Charlotte. Some have agreed with him, some have differed with him. Some, in one of the natural if uncritical revulsions, have questioned whether even _Evelina_ is a very remarkable book. Some, with human respect for the great names of its early admirers, have passed it over gingerly--not exactly as willing to wound, but as quite afraid or reluctant to strike. Nay, actual critical evaluations of the novel-values of Miss Burney's four attempts in novel-writing are very rare. I dare say there are other people who have read _The Wanderer_ through: but I never met any one who had done so except (to quote Rossetti) myself: and I could not bring myself, even on this occasion, to read it again. I doubt whether very many now living have read _Camilla_. Even _Cecilia_ requires an effort, and does not repay that effort very well. Only _Evelina_ itself is legible and relegible--for reasons which will be given presently. Yet _Cecilia_ was written shortly after _Evelina_, under the same stimulus of abundant and genial society, with no pressure except that of friendly encouragement and perhaps assistance, and long before the supposed blight of royal favour and royal exigences came upon its author. When _Camilla_ was published she had been relieved from these exigences,