Only the other day, we stood looking at the desolate spot in St. Martin’s Street, once occupied by the happy home of the Burneys, and Dr. Johnson’s dictum about that gifted family came to our mind : I love all of that breed whom I can be said to know, and one or two I hardly know, I love on credit.’ And lo! on returning from our stroll, we found this new and valuable volume of Burneyana with those very words inscribed on its title-page. Mr. Brimley Johnson, who has already delved to such good purpose in eighteenth century quarries, here gives us a delightful miscellany. It is made up of hitherto unused material from manuscript journals and correspondence, and from contemporary newspapers, and the result is a ‘full-length family group’ of all the Burneys. By far the best part of the book consists of a reproduction of the suppressed passages in Madame d’Arblay’s Journal during her stay in France in 1802 and the succeeding years. These are full of interest, and in their vividness are well worthy of one who was at once the greatest diarist and all but the greatest novelist of her period.

The editor in his introduction rightly praises Fanny Burney’s incomparable literary picture-painting, and extols her as perhaps the shrewdest observer of human nature who ever created fictions in the likeness of man. In 1802, Bonaparte was on the eve of the Consulate for Life, and Paris presented a curious spectacle, of which we are here given many glimpses. While some of the entries are of a very intimate character, others were written to be read to Queen Charlotte and her daughters at Windsor, and are therefore of the full-dress order.