10 



Indiana University Studies 



and Cecilia marks not the beginning, but an advanced stage of his 

 influence. Aside from the internal evidence that supports this theory, 

 we know that long before Madame D'Arblay began to write Evelina, 

 she had read Rasselas and had enjoyed and admired the style. Her 

 Diary for July 17, 1768, contains this statement: 



I have lately read the Prince of Abyssinia — I am almost equally charm'd 

 and shocked at it — the style, the sentiments a^pe inimitable.^'' 



Two other characteristics of the later style show their beginnings 

 in Evelina. The first, a fantastic, highly metaphorical form of ex- 

 pression, occurs thus in Camilla: 



"Edgar," said Mr. Tyrold,"you have a look to disarm care of itscorro- 

 sion."2i 



In The Wanderer this belated euphuism^^ appears in all its glory. The 

 author, wishing to make a simple statement concerning one of her 

 characters, utters this rhapsody: 



Gabriella embraced, with pungent affliction, the sorrowing Juliet . . . 

 and by the assistance of the angelic beings already hinted at, whose delicacy, 

 whose feeling, whose respect for misfortune, made their beneficence as 

 balsamic to sensibility as it was salutary to want, returned to the capital.^^ 



Macaulay cites this instances from the Memoirs of Dr. Burney: 



He was assaulted, during his precipitated return, by the rudest fierce- 

 ness of wintry elemental strife ; through which, with bad accomodations 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.^^ 



This strange variety of flowery rhetoric abounds in Camilla and The 

 Wanderer, but traces of it can be detected in Evelina, as quoted above: 



I yet presume not to attempt pursuing the same ground which they have 

 tracked; whence, though they may have cleared the weeds, they have also 

 culled the flowers, and though they have rendered the path plain, they have 

 left it barren.25 



^0 Early Diary of Frances Burney (ed. A. R. Ellis), I, 14. The Diary (to 1779) 

 shows no distinguishable traces of Dr. Johnson's influence; but this may be due to the 

 fact that, being a diary, it was written with a less premeditated, more unconscious 

 art than the novel. 



In the preface of Evelina (cf. above, p. 9), Madame D'Arblay mentions Johnson's 

 name, showing that at the time of its composition Rasselas occupied an important 

 place in her mind. 



21 Camilla, IV, 68. 



22 Euphuism, so called from Lyly's Euphues, was an affected literary style of con- 

 siderable vogue during the latter part of the sixteenth century. It consisted of an ex- 

 aggerated use of alliteration, antithesis, consonance, etc. Cf. Select Essays of Macaulay 

 (ed. Thurber), 177. 



23 The Wanderer, III, 49. 



Select Essays of Macaulay (ed. Thurber), 175. 

 25 Evelina, Preface. Cf. IT, 147, 274. 



