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Indiana University Studies 



Sir Hugh, and disgusts everybody. Then Bellamy runs off with 

 Eugenia and compels her to marry him. About this time Lionel gets 

 into disgrace, puts his sister into serious difficulties, and has to leave 

 the country. Camilla falls into the toils of a money-lender, and her 

 father has to go to jail. Indiana wrenches Melmond's heart and runs 

 way with Macderfy. Camilla repulses Sir Sedley Clarendel, and 

 he retires from the story to recover his equanimity. Mrs. Berlington 

 assuages her grief with Hammond's Elegies and one of Collins's 

 ''most plaintive odes". Thus everybody is miserable from start to 

 finish. The last novel, however, goes beyond this. Beginning with a 

 wail from the unknown heroine, during its five volumes the cry of 

 anguish knows no respite. Harassed by Mrs. Maple, browbeaten 

 by Mrs. Ireton, cowed by Mrs. Howel, catechized by Miss Bydel, 

 cheated by Miss Arbe, terrified by Elinor, loved by Harleigh, snubbed 

 and insulted by everyone, and, finally seized by her villainous husband, 

 the fair young creature passes from one agony into another. Besides 

 all this, we endure those wild spells of Elinor's, with the hysterics and 

 the thwarted suicides — and Gabriella, like Rachel and Niobe, weeping 

 at all hours. For never a page does the torment lull. 



More tearful and tragic, if possible, than these situations is the 

 language in which they are depicted. Even Evelina has many 

 emotional passages and sentimental scenes of this type,^^ but, strange 

 to say, in reading we are hardly conscious of them. This is due to 

 the fact that to an inexperienced girl of seventeen like Evelina, highly 

 colored and overemphasized emotions seem only natural. Indeed, a 

 great deal of her charm comes from the undue way in which she is 

 affected by ordinary circumstances. The case of Cecilia and the other 

 novels is a different matter. Since the author, and not the young 

 heroine, is telling these stories, the very expressions that charm us in 

 the mouth of a seventeen-year-old girl seem affected and overdone. 

 We take it for granted that an author will restrain her feelings some- 

 what; we expect her to have more poise than a girl in her teens. In 

 the last novels, however, we find neither reserve nor restraint, but a 

 diction elevated above anything conceivably human. Two passages 

 will illustrate this. The first, which is taken from Camilla, is the 

 author's own: 



Mrs. Berlington was left prostrated nearly as much as her brother, and 

 doubtful if even the divine Indiana could render him as happy as the exalted, 

 the incomparable Eugenia, 



36 Cf. G. P. Horne, The Technique of the Novel, 199, where the opposite view is 

 maintained. 



" Camilla, V, 134. 



