Cecilia - Or Memoirs of an Heiress #255322

These words of Mr. Crisp, the fatherlike friend of Miss Burney, bear true witness to the joyous and spontaneous impulse which produced 'evelina.' That novel has a girlish, artless story. The only contrivance in it, — that of a letter going astray, — is almost clumsy; and the incidents of a deserted wife, a disowned marriage, and a change of babies by a nurse, must have been nearly as well-worn in 1778, as a fever, a raving scene, and an absence in the West Indies on the part of a husband, or a father, when he was most needed at home, were to become in the fifty years following. Evelina' has an affecting situation, which stands in stead of a good plot. Cecilia has both an elaborate plot, and a striking situation. The stage-word, situation, is not inapt for use towards a book composed so much after the manner of the theatre that Mrs. Siddons told Miss Burney there was no part which she had ever so much wished to act as that of Cecilia.'