Evelina - Frances Burney

Excerpt from Evelina: Or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance Into the World
The living French writer who has the most wit at will, has laboured with the patience of an antiquary, and the kindness of a kinsman, to preserve, or revive, the memories of those French writers whom he classes as the Neglected, the Disdained, the Forgotten, and the Resuscitated. We begin to read of them because we like himself in his own writings, we go on reading, liking him better still. He himself has called Sainte-Beuve "the smiling critic," but mirth or pathos must be sought far beneath the patient consideration, the desire to give almost every writer the fairest of fair play, which mark the judicious Sainte-Beuve. Each has that sixth sense, an exquisite appreciation of fine literature; but to Charles Monselet belong the playful pity, the tender ridicule, the touch of poetry, making living approved Academic authors akin to these poor shades evoked from book-stalls on the quays of Paris, or from yellow files of journals and bundles of pamphlets in public libraries. It must be owned that, but for euphemy, M. Monselet might have named some of his authors, the Galvanized, or the Disinterred. He himself smiles in deprecation as he leads forward many of the objects of his charity, or clemency, of the brain, and sighs as he shows the grandiose Chateaubriand, and the high-thinking Guizot already among those who may need resuscitation.
On the shelves of the London Library may be found the fifty volumes of an edition of "The British Novelists," brought out in 1800.
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