nquered, and for a long time did not
conquer, any high place in literature from the point of view of serious
criticism--while, now and long afterwards, novel-writing was the
Cinderella of the literary family, and novel-reading the inexhaustible
text for sermons on wasted, nay positively ill-spent, time--the
novelists themselves half justified their critics by frequent
extravagance; by more frequent unreality; by undue licence pretty often;
by digression and divagation still oftener. Except Fielding, hardly any
one had dared boldly to hold up the mirror to nature, and be content
with giving the reflection, in his own way, but with respect for it. For
even Goldsmith, with infinite touches of nature, had not given quite a
natural whole, and even Johnson, though absolutely true, had failed to
accommodate his truth to the requirements of the novel.

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