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No; I feel sure there was no feeling of descent in her change of occupation, no sense of ‘painful duty’ in the teaching that helped to mould the minds of boys like Thomas Denman, afterwards Lord Denman, Lord Chief Justice of England, and of William Gell, subsequently Sir William Gell, the antiquary and topographer of Greece and Pompeii, neither of whom in after-life forgot their indebtedness to her. She had, as a writer, known the triumph of success. Her poems, published in 1778, had passed through four editions in the year. She had won the praise of Charles James Fox, who particularly admired her songs; had been eulogized by Garrick as ‘She who sang the sweetest lay’; and was regarded by Wordsworth as the ‘first of literary women’; while Crabb Robinson, who did not see her till she had reached old age, was enthusiastic in his admiration of her intellect, and charmed with her appearance even then.

It is amusing, from a woman’s standpoint, to mark the generous praise and admiration of these men, and compare it with the stinted commendation and personality of the ‘sweet Queen’s’ ex-reader, and of Mrs. Chapone. Some time after Miss Burney’s return to her father’s house, Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld called upon her, whereupon she writes in her journal that the latter is altered at this period, ‘but not for the worse to me, since the first flight of her youth has taken with it a great portion of an almost set smile, which had an air of determined complacency and prepared acquiescence that seemed to result from a sweetness that never risked being off guard. I remember,’ she runs on, ‘Mrs. Chapone saying to me, “She is a very good young woman, as well as replete with talent, but why must one always smile so? It makes my jaws ache to look at her;”’ and then Miss Burney sums up her literary merit as ‘the authoress of the most useful works, next to Mrs. Trimmer, that have been written for children, though this with the world is probably her very secondary merit. Her many pretty poems, and particularly songs, being generally esteemed. But many more have written these as well. For children’s books she began the new walk, which has since been so well cultivated, to the great information as well as the utility of parents.’