FANNY BURNE Y AND LORD MACAULAY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Will you allow one who owes to Macaulay her long and affectionate intimacy with " Fanny Burney and her Friends," to say a word in defence of the writer whom it is now so easy to decry P When your reviewer says that " Macaulay's indignation at some remark of Miss Burney's actually leads him to declare that her way of life was rapidly undermining her powers of reasoning and her sense of justice," he appears to have forgotten that Macaulay refers not only to an incidental or qualified remark, but to the whole of a long- continued course of conduct maintained by Miss Burney, during the Hastings trial, towards her old and kind friend, Edmund Burke.
It is Fanny Burney herself who describes this conduct as " so cold, so cutting," and who, on meeting Burke in society for the first time after his warm exertions for her liberation, fears that what proved to be short-sightedness may be a deliberate repayment of her treatment of him. Your reviewer appears to read Macaulay's indignation at the " way of life " which was affecting for the worse Fanny's impressionable nature, into an " ungenerous sneer " at Fanny herself. Her unmurmuring reception of the Queen's evident and continued displeasure at her resignation of the post which was killing her, is surely an instance for, rather than against, Macaulay's statement that " the iron had entered into her soul."
As regards the statement that " Miss Burney's health can hardly have been seriously affected," I will only refer your readers to the medical opinion on which her resignation was founded, adding that it is barely possible that a life which has been almost destroyed by over-work and unfavourable sur- roundings may be saved by an entire change of circumstances. It is difficult for any one who has felt the glow of Macaulay's chivalrous pity for the beating of Fanny's bright spirit against the (scarcely gilded) bars of her cage, to read with calmness comments which imply that he indulged in "ungenerous sneers" at her expense.—I am, Sir, &c.,
A LOVER OF FANNY BURNEY.
[The object of the " ungenerous sneer " was Queen Charlotte, and not Fanny Burney, as a more careful perusal of the notice will show. We are sorry that we cannot agree with our corre- spondent on the other points which she raises.—En. Spectator.]
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