this was not the worst. There are separations far more cruel
than those which are made by death. Frances might weep with
proud affection for Crisp and Johnson. She had to blush as well
as to weep for Mrs. Thrale.

Life, however, still smiled upon her. Domestic happiness,
friendship, independence, leisure, letters, all these things were
hers; and she flung them all away.

Among the distinguished persons to whom Miss Burney had been
introduced, none appears to have stood higher in her regard than
Mrs. Delany. This lady was an interesting and venerable


Page xxx

relic of a past age. She was the niece of George Granville, Lord
Lansdowne, who, in his youth, exchanged verses and compliments
with Edmun Waller, and who was among the first to applaud the
opening talents of Pope. She had married Dr. Delany, a man known
to his contemporaries as a profound scholar and eloquent
preacher, but remembered in our time chiefly as one of that small
circle in which the fierce spirit of Swift, tortured by
disappointed ambition, by remorse, and by the approaches of
madness, sought for amusement and repose. Dr. Delany had long
been dead. His widow, nobly descended, eminently accomplished,
and retaining, in spite of the infirmities of advanced age, the
vigour of her faculties, and the serenity of her temper, enjoyed
and deserved the favour of the royal family. She had a pension
of three hundred a-year; and a house at Windsor, belonging to the