any other, as your too susceptible mind would be hurt again, and that would grieve me quite to the heart.

I have a long work, which a long time has been in hand, that I mean to publish soon-in about a year. Should it succeed, like 'Evelina' and 'Cecilia,' it may be a little portion to our Bambino. We wish, therefore, to print it for ourselves in this hope; but the expenses of the press are so enormous, so raised by these late Acts, that it is out of all question for us to afford it. We have, therefore, been led by degrees to listen to counsel of some friends, and to print it by subscription. This is in many-many ways unpleasant and unpalatable to us both; but the real chance of real use and benefit to our little darling overcomes all scruples, and, therefore, to work we go!

You will feel, I dare believe, all I could write on this subject; I once rejected such a plan, formed for me by Mr. Burke, where books were to be kept by ladies, not booksellers, the Duchess of Devonshire, Mrs. Boscawen, and Mrs. Crewe; but I was an individual then, and had no cares of times to come: now, thank Heaven! this is not the case ;-and when I look at my little boy's dear, innocent, yet intelligent face, I defy any pursuit to be painful that may lead to his good. Adieu, my ever dear friend!

F. D'A.

Madame d'Arblay to Dr. Burney.

Bookham, June 18, '95.

MY DEAREST FATHER,-How I rejoice my business letter did not arrive an hour or two sooner! It might have so turned your thoughts to itself as to have robbed me of "'fore George! a more excellent song

than t'other!" I would not have lost it-I had almost said-for all my subscription; and I should quite have said it, if I listened more to impulse than to interest.

How I should have enjoyed being with "that rogue," as you call Mrs. Crewe, and Lady Buckingham, peering at you and Mr. Erskine confabbing so lovingly! . But I must fly from all this, and from our garden, and our Bambino, to write first upon business,-or this, and those, will presently swallow all my paper by dearer, more congenial attraction.

All our deliberations made, even after your discouraging calculations, we still mean to hazard the publishing by subscription. And, indeed, I had previously determined, when I changed my state, to set aside all my innate and original abhorrences, and to regard and use as resources, myself, what had always been considered as such by others. Without this idea, and this resolution, our hermitage must have been madness. With them,-I only wish my dear and kind father could come and work at it, with Abdolomine, to cure his lumbago, as Abdolomine says it would surely do; and he would then see its comforts, its peace, its harmony, and its little "perennial plant," and see many a view of retired life which he may have read as romantic, yet felt as desirable, realized. But here I am running away from this same business again!

I am extremely glad you mean to communicate with Mrs. Crewe. Her former great kindness, in voluntary propositions of exertion upon a similar plan, I have never forgotten, and consequently never ceased to be grateful for, though my then shyness and peculiarly strung nerves, made its prospect terrific, not alluring, to me. Now, when I look at my dear baby, and see its dimpling smiles, and feel its elastic springs, I think

how small is the sacrifice of such feelings for such a blessing. You enchant me by desiring more infantile biography. With what delight I shall obey such a call, and report progress of his wonders from letter to letter !

But-to business again. I like well the idea of giving no name at all,-why should not I have my mystery as well as Udolpho ?—but,. . "now, don't fly, Dr. Burney!"-I own I do not like calling it a novel; it gives so simply the notion of a mere lovestory, that I recoil a little from it. I mean this work to be sketches of characters and morals put in action,not a romance. I remember the word novel was long in the way of 'Cecilia,' as I was told at the Queen's house; and it was not permitted to be read by the Princesses till sanctioned by a Bishop's recommendation, the late Dr. Ross of Exeter.

Will you then suffer mon amour propre to be saved by the proposals running thus?-Proposals for printing by subscription, in six volumes duodecimo, a new work by the author of Evelina' and 'Cecilia.'

How grieved I am you do not like my heroine's name! *—the prettiest in nature! I remember how many people did not like that of Evelina, and called it" affected" and "missish," till they read the book, and then they got accustomed in a few pages, and afterwards it was much approved.

I must leave this for the present untouched; for the force of the name attached by the idea of the character, in the author's mind, is such, that I should not know how to sustain it by any other for a long while. In Cecilia' and 'Evelina' 'twas the same: the names of all

* The name was then Ariella, changed afterwards to Camilla.

the personages annexed, with me, all the ideas I put in motion with them. The work is so far advanced, that the personages are all, to me, as so many actual acquaintances, whose memoirs and opinions I am committing to paper. I will make it the best I can, my dearest father. I will neither be indolent, nor negligent, nor avaricious. I can never half answer the expectations that seem excited. I must try to forget them, or I shall be in a continual quivering.

Mrs. Cooke, my excellent neighbour, came in just now, to read me a paragraph of a letter from Mrs. Leigh, of Oxfordshire, her sister. After much

6

of civility about the new work and its author, it finishes thus:-"Mr. Hastings I saw just now: I told him what was going forward; he gave a great jump, and exclaimed, Well, then, now I can serve her, thank Heaven, and I will! I will write to Anderson to engage Scotland, and I will attack the East Indies myself!'' F. D'A.

P.S.-The Bambino is half a year old this day. N.B. I have not heard the Park or Tower guns. I imagine the wind did not set right.

Madame d'Arblay to the Comte de Narbonne (written during his embarrassments from the French Revolution, and in answer to a letter expressing bitter disappointment from repeated losses).

Bookham, 26th December, 1795. WHAT a letter, to terminate so long and painful a silence! It has penetrated us with sorrowing and indignant feelings. Unknown to M. d'Arblay, whose grief and horror are upon the point of making him

quite ill, I venture this address to his most beloved friend; and before I seal it, I will give him the option to burn or underwrite it.

I shall be brief in what I have to propose: sincerity need not be loquacious, and M. de Narbonne is too kind to demand phrases for ceremony.

Should your present laudable but melancholy plan fail, and should nothing better offer, or till something can be arranged, will you, dear sir, condescend to share the poverty of our Hermitage? Will you take a little cell under our rustic roof, and fare as we fare? What to us two hermits is cheerful and happy, will to you, indeed, be miserable; but it will be some solace to the goodness of your heart to witness our contentment ;-to dig with M. d'A. in the garden will be of service to your health; to nurse sometimes with me in the parlour will be a relaxation to your mind. You will not blush to own your little godson. Come, then, and give him your blessing; relieve the wounded feelings of his father-oblige his mother-and turn hermit at Bookham, till brighter suns invite you elsewhere.

F. D'ARBLAY.

You will have terrible dinners, alas !-but your godson comes in for the dessert.

VOL. VI.

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