y
ready for an English university she returned to England, and passed her
tranquil age among her friends until she died at eighty-eight.

What Fanny Burney did in all unconsciousness was to establish fiction
upon a new basis. She may be said to have created the family novel.
Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne had bequeathed their legacy impregnated
with objectionable qualities, in spite of strength and charm; they were
read rather secretly, and tabooed for women. On the other hand, the
followers of Richardson were too didactic to be readable. Fanny Burney
proved that entertaining tales, unweighted by heavy moralizing, may be
written, adapted to young and old. Her sketches of life were witty,
sincere, and vigorous, yet always moral in tone. 'Evelina,' the work of
an innocent, frank girl, could be read by any one.

A still greater source of her success was her robust and abounding,
though sometimes rather broad and cheap, fun. In her time decent novels
were apt to be appallingly serious in tone, and not infrequently stupid;
humor in spite of Addison still connoted much coarseness and obtrusive
sexuality, and in fiction had to be sought in the novels written for men
only. As humor is the deadly foe to sentimentalism and hysterics, the
Richardson school were equally averse to it on further grounds. Fanny
Burney produced novels fit for women's and family reading, yet full of
humor of a masculine vigor--and it must be added, with something of
masculine unsensitiveness. There is little fineness to most of it; some
is mere horseplay, some is extravagant farce: but it is deep and
genuine, it supplied an exigent want, and deserved its welcome. De
Morgan says it was like introducing dresses of glaring red and yellow
and other crude colors into a country where every one had previously
dressed in drab--a great relief, but not art. This is hard measure,
however: some of her character-drawing is almost as richly humorous and
valid as Jane Austen's own.

Fanny Burney undoubtedly did much to augment the new respect for woman's
intellectual ability, and was a stimulus to the brilliant group which
succeeded her. Miss Ferrier, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen all owe
her something of their inspiration and more of their welcome.

EVELINA'S LETTER TO THE REV. MR. VILLARS

From 'Evelina'

Holborn, June 17th

Yesterday Mr. Smith carried his point of making a party for Vauxhall,
consisting of Madame Duval, M. Du Bois, all the Branghtons,