Mrs. Crewe, whose fancy was as fertile as her friendship was zealous, perceiving the melancholy state of spirits into which the Doctor had fallen, sought to awaken him again into new life and activity through the kindly medium of his parental affections. She suggested to him, therefore, the idea of a new periodical morning paper, serious and burlesque, informing, yet amusing, upon The Times as they Run; strictly anti-jacobinical, and professedly monarchical; but allowing no party abuse, nor personal attack; and striving to fight the battles of morals and manners, by enlisting reason on their side, and raising the laugh against their foes.

The Times as they Ran, at that epoch, appeared big with every species of danger that could issue, through political avenues, from the universal sway of revolutionary systems which occupied, or revolutionary schemes which bewildered mankind. All thoughts were ingrossed by public affairs. Private life seemed as much a chimera of imagination, as reverting to the pastoral seasons of the poets of old, in wandering through valleys, or ascending mountains, crook in hand, with sheep, deer, or goats.

Mr. Burke, in his unequalled and unrivalled Essence of the French Revolution,—for such his Essay on that stupendous event may be called, had sounded a bell of alarm throughout Europe; echoing and re-echoing, aloud, aloft, around, with panic reverberation,

with massacre, degradation, shame, and devastation, “involving all—save the inflictors!”

Nor vain was the clangor of that bell. All who dreaded evils yet untried, evils wrapped up in the obscurity of hidden circumstances; dependent on the million of inlets to which accident opens an entrance; and of uncertain catastrophe; still more than they recoiled from ills which, however unpalatable, have been experienced, and are therefore known not to outstretch the powers of endurance; caught its fearful sound, and listened to its awful warnings: and the lament of Mr. Burke that the times of chivalry were gone by, nearly re-animated their return, from the eloquence with which he pointed them out as antidotes to the anarchy of insubordination; and spurs to rescue mankind from hovering degeneracy.

Fraught with these notions, Mrs. Crewe conceived an idea that a weekly paper upon such subjects, treating them so variously as to keep alive expectation, by essaying

might turn to what Mr. Burke, and Dr. Burney, and she herself, deemed the right way of seeing things, the motley many who, from wanting reflection to think for themselves, are dangerously led to act by others.

This weekly paper Mrs. Crewe purposed to call The Breakfast Table. And it was her desire, expressed in the most flattering terms, that the Doctor should bear a prominent part in it; but that his daughter should be the editor and chief.

The letters of Mrs. Crewe on this plan are full of spirit and ingenuity; and of comic as well as sagacious ideas. “If we are saved,” she cries, “from the infection, i. e. the jacobinism of our neighbours, it will be through the wise foresight of Mr. Burke; and from seeing that persiflage has been their bane, and that Quiz, if we are not upon our guard, will be ours; and, above all, from taking heed that Jacobinism does not carry the day in polite companies; for Newgate never does mischief to society. No! ’tis your fine talkers, and free-thinkers, and refiners, that are to be feared. Watch but the vital parts, and the extremities will take care of themselves....

“I mentioned my idea of this paper to our Beaconsfield friends;[46] but they have enough to do there...!

“I think, indeed, there should be a society to join in this plan; which should include strictures upon life and manners at the end of the eighteenth century; to come out in one sheet for breakfast tables. How folks would read away, and talk, in all great towns, and in all country-houses; nay, and in London itself; where I remember my poor mother told me much of the effects produced formerly by periodical papers; even Pamela, when it came out in that way. Now how well Madame d’Arblay could manage such a work! and how one and all would join to get epigrams for her; and bobs at the times, in prose and in verse: and news from Paris; &c. &c. And we might all have a finger in the pie! and try to laugh people out of their Jacobinism. Old anecdotes, characters, and bits of poetry rummaged out of old authors; especially from some of the quaint, but clever ancient French poets: and a thousand interesting things that would be read, and tasted, and felt, if well introduced: and if Madame d’Arblay’s name could be said to preside, it would suit people’s laziness so well to have matters brought before them all ready chosen and prepared...!

“And O! how Mr. Burke’s spirit would be relevÉ by such a spur! which is now choaked and kept down by gross abuse and disheartedness.

“Think of all this, Dr. Burney; it may employ you. Let it be a secret at first, and I have no objection to cater for our society of writers. People love to read the beauties of books; and we might pick out bits of Mr. Burke’s, so as to impress and shame all out of at least creeping Jacobinism. I am certain, already, that Mr. Windham would approve the plan. The only point is to do it well.”

Project upon project, scheme upon scheme, and letter upon letter followed this opening, and sought, progressively, to make it effective to the Doctor: while all, by the desire of Mrs. Crewe, was communicated to Bookham, with the most cordial zeal for attracting its female recluse from her obscurity, by placing her at the head of a design to work at mind and morals, in concert with the high names of Mr. Windham, Mr. Canning, and the then Dean of Chester; with various other honourable persons, marked out, but not yet engaged.

“Do ask Madame d’Arblay,” she continues, “to form some plan. We will all help to address letters to her, if she will be ‘Dear Spec.’”

She then adds a wish that the nominal Editor should be supposed to live in the neighbourhood of Sir Hugh Tyrold; whose simplicity of truth, perplexity of doubts and humility, and laughable originality of dialect, might produce comic entertainment to enliven the serious disquisitions.

And, in conclusion, her filial heart, always wedded to the memory of her distinguished mother, earnestly desired to make this work a mean to bring forth some “novel characters” of that celebrated lady, that might be taken from a posthumous manuscript which Mrs. Crewe, long since, had given to this Memorialist, to finish—if she thought feasible—or otherwise to edit; but which various impediments had, and still have, kept unpublished in her hands.

Nothing could be more honourable than such a proposition, nor more gratefully felt by the then Bookham, and afterwards West Hamble Female Hermit: but she, who, from the origin of her first literary attempt, might almost be called an accidental author, could by no means so new model the natural shyness of her character, as to assume courage for meeting the public eye with the opinions, injunctions, and admonitions of a didactic one. Her answer, therefore, to her Father, which, after communicating to Mrs. Crewe, Dr. Burney preserved, is here abridged and copied.