Cholmondeley, the sayer of odd things, and
Seward, much given to yawning, and Baretti, who slew the man in the
Haymarket, and Paoli, talking broken English, and Langton, taller by the
head than any other member of the club, and Lady Millar, who kept a vase
wherein fools were wont to put bad verses, and Jerningham, who wrote
verses fit to be put into the vase of Lady Millar, and Dr. Franklin--
not, as some have dreamed, the great Pennsylvanian Dr. Franklin, who
could not then have paid his respects to Miss Burney without much risk
of being hanged, drawn, and quartered, but Dr. Franklin the less--

[Greek: _Aias
meion, outi tosos ge osos Telamonios Aias,
alla polu meion._]

It would not have been surprising if such success had turned even a
strong head, and corrupted even a generous and affectionate nature. But,
in the Diary, we can find no trace of any feeling inconsistent with a
truly modest and amiable disposition. There is, indeed, abundant proof
that Frances enjoyed, with an intense, though a troubled, joy, the
honours which her genius had won; but it is equally clear that her
happiness sprang from the happiness of her father, her sister, and her
dear Daddy Crisp. While flattered by the great, the opulent, and the
learned, while followed along the Steyne at Brighton and the Pantiles at
Tunbridge Wells by the gaze of admiring crowds, her heart seems to have
been still with the little domestic circle in St. Martin's Street. If
she recorded with minute diligence all the compliments, delicate and
coarse, which she heard wherever she turned, she recorded them for the
eyes of two or three persons who had loved her from infancy, who had
loved her in obscurity, and to whom her fame gave the purest and most
exquisite delight. Nothing can be more unjust than to confound these
outpourings of a kind heart, sure of perfect sympathy, with the egotism
of a blue-stocking, who prates to all who come near her about her own
novel or her own volume of sonnets.

It was natural that the triumphant issue of Miss Burney's first venture
should tempt her to try a second. Evelina, though it had raised her
fame, had added nothing to her fortune. Some of her friends urged her to
write for the stage. Johnson promised to give her his advice as to the
composition. Murphy, who was supposed to understand the temper of the
pit as well as any man of his time, undertook to instruct her as to
stage-effect. Sheridan declared that he would accept