inconsistent with a truly modest and amiable disposition. There
is, indeed, abundant proof that Frances enjoyed with an intense,
though a troubled, joy, the honours which her genius had won ;
but it is equally clear that her happiness sprang from the
happiness of her father, her sister, and her dear Daddy Crisp.
While flattered by the great, the opulent and the learned, while
followed along the Steyne at Brighton and the Pantiles at
Tunbridge Wells by the gaze of admiring crowds, her heart seems
to have been still with the little domestic circle in St.
Martin'sstreet. If she recorded with minute diligence all the
compliments, delicate and coarse, which she heard wherever she
turned, she recorded them for the eyes of two or three persons
who had loved her from infancy, who had loved her in obscurity,
and to whom her fame gave the purest and most exquisite delight.
Nothing can be more unjust than to confound these outpourings of
a kind heart, sure of perfect sympathy, with the egotism of a
bluestocking who prates to all who come near her about her own
novel or her own volume of sonnets.

It was natural that the triumphant issue of Miss Burney's first
venture should tempt her to try a second. "Evelina," though it
had raised her fame, had added nothing to her fortune. Some of
her friends urged her to write for the stage. Johnson promised
to give her his advice as to the composition. Murphy, who was
supposed to understand the temper of the pit as well as any man

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of his time, undertook to instruct her as to stage effect.
Sheridan declared that he would accept a play from her without