even reading it. Thus encouraged, she wrote a comedy named "The
Witlings." Fortunately, it was never acted or printed. We can,
we think, easily perceive, from the little which is said on the
subject in the "Diary," that "The Witlings" would have been
damned, and that Murpby and Sheridan thought so, though they were
too polite to say so. Happily Frances had a friend who was not
afraid to give her pain. Crisp, wiser for her than he had been
for himself, read the manuscript in his lonely retreat and
manfully told her that she had failed, and that to remove
blemishes here and there would be useless; that the piece had
abundance of wit but no interest, that it was bad as a whole ;
that it would remind every reader of the "Femmes Savantes,"
which, strange to say, she had never read, and that she could not
sustain so close a comparison with Moli6re. This opinion, in
which Dr. Burney concurred, was sent to Frances in what she
called "a hissing, groaning, catcalling epistle." But she had too
much sense not to know that it was better to be hissed and
catcalled by her Daddy than by a whole sea of heads in the pit of
Drury-lane theatre ; and she had too good a heart not to be
grateful for so rare an act of friendship. She returned an
answer which shows how well she deserved to have a judicious,
faithful, and affectionate adviser. "I intend," she wrote, "to
console myself for your censure by this greatest proof I have
received of the sincerity, candour, and, let me add, esteem of my
dear daddy. And, as I happen to love myself more than my play,
this consolation is not a very trifling one. This, however,
seriously I do believe, that when my two daddies put their heads
together to concert that hissing, groaning, catcalling epistle
they sent me, they felt as sorry for poor little Miss Bayes as
she could possibly do for herself. You see I do not attempt to