Hale: Madame D'Arhlay 



33 



dramatic situations, however, enliven the earher novels. The liveliest 

 in Evelina are Willoughby's abduction of the heroine/^^ the Vauxhall 

 scene/2^ and the episode in which the Branghtons avail themselves of 

 Lord Orville's chariot, Harrel's suicide, Mr. Delvile's detection 

 of Cecilia in Mr. Belfield's room,^^^ Cecilia's first attempt at mar- 

 riage, and the encounter between Delvile, Hobson, Briggs, and 

 Albany,^^^ form the most interesting situations in Cecilia. Camilla 

 and The Wanderer are theatrical and melodramatic thruout. They 

 have no dramatic incidents. 



IX. General Conclusions 



Evelina is the only one of Madame D'Arblay's novels that will live. 

 Macaulay justly designates The Wanderer as "a, book which no 

 judicious friend to her memory will attempt to draw from the oblivion 

 into which it has justly f alien". Mr. Austin Dobson expresses the 

 same opinion: "The best thing we can say about The Wanderer . . . 

 is that it brought grist to the mill."^^^ Three thousand, six hundred 

 copies were sold at two guineas each. Camilla is as bad. Mr. Dobson 

 classes it with its successor: ''We doubt if the piety of the enthusiast 

 could ever revive — or rather create — the slightest interest in The 

 Wanderer; or that any but the fanatics of the out-of-date, or the 

 student of manners, could conscientiously struggle through Camillay^^^ 

 Cecilia, on the other hand, does not merit this condemnation, yet it 

 is hardly a book that in the coming years any but the student will read. 

 It has a better plot than Evelina, it has skilful, even if exaggerated, 

 characterization, and it has some dramatic situations ; but too many 

 other novels have all its excellencies, without its length, its unnatural 

 style, and its slow, dull movement. Professor Raleigh is right: 

 Madame D'Arblay's ''reputation must rest on her two earlier novels, 



125 Evelina, I, 114 ff. 

 Ibid., II, 1 fT. 



127 Ihid., II, 68 ff. 



128 Cecilia, I, 403. Professor Raleigh says, "The Vauxhall scene is spirited melo- 

 drama, but nothing more; there is not a breath of genuine terror in it all" {The English 

 Novel, 259). 



129 Cecilia, II, 323. 



130 Ibid., II, 165. 



131 Ibid., II, 293." 



132 There are two somewhat interesting situations in The Wanderer: Juliet's dealings 

 with the deer-stealers, near the close of vol. IV, and the encounter between the Admiral 

 and Mrs. Howell (vol. V., 240 ff.). 



133 Select Essays of Macaulay (ed. Thurber), 164. 



134 Fanny Burney, 194. 



135 Ibid., 202. 



