The Monthly Review - 1842 Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 19 Art. II.—Diary and Lstters of Madame D'Arblay, Vol IV. Colburn. We should not have thought of making another volume by itself, of the Burney papers, ... more »the subject of an article, had there been anything like a pressure of new books at this season. But the state of the market and the period of the year, afford an excuse for returning to a still unfinished publication, which will, in spite of its egotism, affected sensibilities, and wiredrawn conversations, present something almost in every page, that is an antidote to dulness, as well as suggestive of passages of history, biography, and domestic concerns which one has a wish to have recalled and vivified by a clever pen ; although it can hardly be understood how every word and movement have been so minutely and clearly set down, unless the Diarist be supposed to have constantly held pen in hand, or with great painstaking entered at her leisure into the numberless details of her recollections; dressing and disposing of them as she best might. As usual, it will be found that she herself, her sufferings, sympathies, tender alarms, and oppressed humility are always prominent, unless when the subject or event positively prevents intrusion. Accordingly, without impugning the prolix stories on the score of accuracy, or going the length of saying that the writer retouched till the picture in regard to fidelity was vitiated, we may allow that the never-absent importance of the lady, and the watchful sense of conscious but painful observance, were the basis of truth and a sufficient guarantee for essential correctness. In the present portion of the Diary, as no doubt there will be in every succeeding instalment, there occur characters, scenes, and events, which the author of " Cecilia" knew how to render piquant in spite of proli...« less