In her underplots she generally miscarries. We
can trace nothing of Miss Burney in the stories of Macartney, Albany,
and the Hills. Her comedy sometimes deviates into farce. The character
of Briggs in particular, though it very successfully excites our
laughter, certainly deforms a work, which in its principal constituents
ranks in the very highest species of composition. Her style is often
affected, and in the serious is sometimes so laboured and figurative, as
to cost the reader a very strict attention to discover the meaning,
without perfectly repaying his trouble. These faults are most
conspicuous in Cecilia, which upon the whole we esteem by much her
greatest performance. In Evelina she wrote more from inartificial
nature. And we are happy to observe in the present publication, that the
masculine sense, by which Miss Burney is distinguished, has raised her
almost wholly above these little errors. The style of Louisa is more
polished than that of Evelina, and more consonant to true taste than
that of Cecilia.
The principal story of Louisa, like that of Cecilia, is very simple, but
adorned with a thousand beautiful episodes. As the great action of the
latter is Cecilia's sacrifice of fortune to a virtuous and laudable
attachment, so that of the former is the sacrifice of rank, in the
marriage of the heroine to a young man of the most distinguished merit,
but neither conspicuous by birth, nor favoured by fortune.
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