When next Madame D'Arblay appeared before the world as a writer, she was in a very different situation.She would not content herself with the simple English in which Evelina had been written.She had no longer the friend who, we are confident, had polished and strengthened the style of Cecilia.She had to write in Johnson's manner without Johnson's aid.The consequence was, that in Camilla every passage which she meant to be fine is detestable; and that the book has been saved from condemnation only by the admirable spirit and force of those scenes in which she was content to be familiar.
But there was to be a still deeper descent.After the publication of Camilla, Madame D'Arblay resided ten years at Paris.During those years there was scarcely any intercourse between France and England.It was with difficulty that a short letter could occasionally be transmitted.All Madame D'Arblay's companions were French.She must have written, spoken, thought, in French.
Ovid expressed his fear that a shorter exile might have affected the purity of his Latin.During a shorter exile, Gibbon unlearned his native English.Madame D'Arblay had carried a bad style to France.She brought back a style which we are really at a loss to describe.It is a sort of broken Johnsonese, a barbarous patois, bearing the same relation to the language of Rasselas, which the gibberish of the negroes of Jamaica bears to the English of the House of Lords.Sometimes it reminds us of the finest, that is to say, the vilest parts, of Mr.Galt's novels; sometimes of the perorations of Exeter Hall; sometimes of the leading articles of the Morning Post.But it most resembles the puffs of Mr.Rowland and Dr.Goss.It matters not what ideas are clothed in such a style.The genius of Shakspeare and Bacon united, would not save a work so written from general derision.
It is only by means of specimens that we can enable our readers to judge how widely Madame D'Arblay's three styles differed from each other.
The following passage was written before she became intimate with Johnson.It is from Evelina:
"His son seems weaker in his understanding, and more gay in his temper; but his gaiety is that of a foolish overgrown schoolboy, whose mirth consists in noise and disturbance.He disdains his father for his close attention to business and love of money, though he seems himself to have no talents, spirit, or generosity to make him superior to either.His chief delight appears to be in tormenting and ridiculing his sisters, who in return most cordially despise him.Miss Branghton, the eldest daughter, is by no means ugly; but looks proud, ill-tempered, and conceited.She hates the city, though without knowing why; for it is easy to discover she has lived nowhere else.Miss Polly Branghton is rather pretty, very foolish, very ignorant, very giddy, and, Ibelieve, very good-natured."
This is not a fine style, but simple, perspicuous, and agreeable.
We now come to Cecilia, written during Miss Burney's intimacy with Johnson; and we leave it to our readers to judge whether the following passage was not at least corrected by his hand:
"It is rather an imaginary than an actual evil, and though a deep wound to pride, no offence to morality.Thus have I laid open to you my whole heart, confessed my perplexities, acknowledged my vainglory, and exposed with equal sincerity the sources of my doubts, and the motives of my decision.But now, indeed, how to proceed I know not.The difficulties which are yet to encounter Ifear to enumerate, and the petition I have to urge I have scarce courage to mention.My family, mistaking ambition for honour, and rank for dignity, have long planned a splendid connection for me, to which, though my invariable repugnance has stopped any advances, their wishes and their views immoveably adhere.I am but too certain they will now listen to no other.I dread, therefore, to make a trial where I despair of success.I know not how to risk a prayer with those who may silence me by a command."Take now a specimen of Madame D'Arblay's later style.This is the way in which she tells us that her father, on his journey back from the Continent, caught the rheumatism.
"He was assaulted, during his precipitated return, by the rudest fierceness of wintry elemental strife; through which, with bad accommodations and innumerable accidents, he became a prey to the merciless pangs of the acutest spasmodic rheumatism, which barely suffered him to reach his home, ere, long and piteously, it confined him, a tortured prisoner, to his bed.Such was the cheek that almost instantly curbed, though it could not subdue, the rising pleasure of his hopes of entering upon a new species of existence--that of an approved man of letters; for it was on the bed of sickness, exchanging the light wines of France, Italy, and Germany, for the black and loathsome potions of the Apothecaries'
Hall, writhed by darting stitches, and burning with fiery fever, that he felt the full force of that sublunary equipoise that seems evermore to hang suspended over the attainment of long-sought and uncommon felicity, just as it is ripening to burst forth with enjoyment."Here is a second passage from Evelina:
"Mrs.Selwyn is very kind and attentive to me.She is extremely clever.Her understanding, indeed, may be called masculine; but unfortunately her manners deserve the same epithet; for, in studying to acquire the knowledge of the other sex, she has lost all the softness of her own, In regard to myself, however, as Ihave neither courage nor inclination to argue with her, I have never been personally hurt at her want of gentleness, a virtue which nevertheless seems so essential a part of the female character, that I find myself more awkward and less at case with a woman who wants it than I do with a man."This is a good style of its kind; and the following passage from Cecilia is also in a good style, though not in a faultless one.
We say with confidence, either Sam Johnson or the Devil:
