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c10
Student: ___________________________________________________________________________
1. Self-directed work teams are typically responsible for a specialized skill, such as accounting or maintenance.
True False
2. Members of SDWTs have enriched and enlarged jobs.
True False
3. Self-directed work teams control most work inputs, work processes, and output quality.
True False
4. In most self-directed work teams, the supervisor assigns tasks that individual team members perform.
True False
5. Self-directed work teams are designed for production processes but not for administrative or service
activities.
True False
6. According to sociotechnical systems theory, the work site's social and technological systems should become
more compatible to improve team dynamics and job enrichment.
True False
7. Controlling key variances and joint optimization are two elements found in all team building activities.
True False
8. According to sociotechnical systems theory, self-directed work teams operate best where they are responsible
for an entire work process that is fairly independent of other work units.
True False
9. Self-directed work teams operate best when they are highly interdependent with other work teams.
True False
10. In sociotechnical systems theory, joint optimization refers to the idea that a balance must be struck between
the social and technical systems.
True False
11. Joint optimization represents a team-based version of autonomy in job enrichment.
True False
12. Volvo's Kalmer and Uddevalla plants have developed a near-perfect sociotechnical system where the social
and technical systems are designed for maximum productivity and employee wellbeing.
True False
13. Self-directed work teams tend to work better in cultures with low power distance.
True False
14. Self-directed work teams are more difficult to implement in high power distance cultures.
True False
15. Employees with individualistic values tend be more satisfied working in self-directed work teams.
True False
16. When companies introduce self-directed work teams, supervisors must change from command and control
bosses to hands-off facilitators.
True False
17. Supervisors tend to adjust more easily to their new roles in self-directed work teams when they have worked
in high-involvement workplaces.
True False
18. Many union leaders are concerned that self-directed work team practices may cause them to lose
hard-fought union member rights.
True False
19. Virtual teams are usually permanent functional groups that communicate mainly through weekly
face-to-face meetings.
True False
20. Virtual team members are mutually accountable for achieving common goals associated with organizational
objectives.
True False
21. A critical feature of virtual teams is that they are co-located.
True False
22. In a typical virtual team, one member located near headquarters is the source of all communication among
team members.
True False
23. Virtual teams are becoming more common because companies are encouraging employees in distant parts of
the organization to share knowledge with each other.
True False
24. The shift towards knowledge-based rather than production-based work has made virtual teamwork feasible.
True False
25. The shift from production to knowledge-based work has resulted in fewer virtual teams than in the past.
True False
26. One problem with virtual teams is that they create more silos of knowledge.
True False
27. Due to globalization, companies are usually unable to form virtual teams.
True False
28. The team effectiveness model does not apply to virtual teams.
True False
29. Due to the lack of face-to-face communication, virtual teams tend to have fewer problems with status
differences.
True False
30. Virtual teams operate best in tasks that require no interdependence among team members.
True False
31. Virtual teams have more difficulty than conventional teams at performing ambiguous and complex tasks.
True False
32. Compared with conventional teams, virtual teams experience fewer problems as the number of team
members increases.
True False
33. Virtual teams have more cohesiveness when they are able to meet face-to-face.
True False
34. Trust occurs when we have positive expectations about another party's intentions and actions toward us in
situations involving vulnerability.
True False
35. Identification-based trust is the most robust or sturdy form of trust in work relationships.
True False
36. Calculus-based trust is based on the belief that the other party will deliver its promises because punishments
would be applied if they fail to deliver those promises.
True False
37. Knowledge-based trust is based on the belief that the other party will deliver its promises because
punishments would be applied if they fail to deliver those promises.
True False
38. Knowledge-based trust develops over time.
True False
39. Calculus-based trust is the best form of trust to have in virtual teams.
True False
40. When people join teams, they usually begin with a very low level of trust in the other team members.
True False
41. The trust that new team members feel towards their teammates is fragile and easily weakened.
True False
42. Research indicates that trust in virtual teams tends to decrease rather than increase over time.
True False
43. Production blocking occurs when employees are unable to complete their tasks because they spend too
much time in meetings.
True False
44. Production blocking causes team members to pay less attention to the conversation or to forget their own
ideas.
True False
45. Evaluation apprehension causes employees to present ideas to the group even though the ideas are silly and
a waste of the group's time.
True False
46. Many potentially valuable ideas never get presented to the group because individuals think they are silly and
would make them look equally silly to the team.
True False
47. Evaluation apprehension is most common in meetings attended by people with different levels of status or
expertise.
True False
48. Groupthink and evaluation apprehension are two characteristics of effective decision-making teams.
True False
49. A symptom of groupthink is that the team feels comfortable with risky decisions because possible
weaknesses are suppressed or glossed over.
True False
50. Groupthink is more likely to occur when the team has experienced recent success in other decision-making
problems.
True False
51. Groupthink goes beyond the problem of conformity by focusing on how decisions go awry when team
members try to maintain harmony.
True False
52. Group polarization partly occurs because team members become comfortable with more extreme positions
when they realize through open discussion that other members hold similar views.
True False
53. Group polarization is a condition in which team members cannot agree on a solution to a problem because
some team members hold completely opposing views about the issue.
True False
54. Group polarization causes teams to make more extreme decisions than the average individual in the group
would make alone.
True False
55. Constructive conflict occurs when team members hold different opinions and assumptions and debate the
issues through an open, healthy dialogue.
True False
56. One problem with constructive conflict is that it can easily slide into personal attacks.
True False
57. Constructive conflict encourages participants to re-examine their assumptions and logic.
True False
58. An important rule in brainstorming is that no one is allowed to evaluate or criticize another team member's
ideas.
True False
59. One of the rules of brainstorming is that no one is allowed to piggyback or build on the ideas of other team
members.
True False
60. One of the main advantages of brainstorming is that this process removes most production blocking.
True False
61. Brainstorming sessions tend to spread more enthusiasm among participants than in electronic brainstorming
sessions.
True False
62. Electronic brainstorming is any situation in which team members communicate through email and other
computer technologies to make decisions.
True False
63. Electronic brainstorming relies mainly on email and electronic chat rooms to make decisions.
True False
64. Electronic brainstorming significantly reduces the problem of production blocking.
True False
65. The Delphi method allows the decision-making team to meet face-to-face whenever they want.
True False
66. The nominal group technique tends to produce more and better ideas than do traditional interacting groups.
True False
67. The nominal group technique removes the problems of evaluation apprehension and production blocking.
True False
68. One benefit of team building is that it doesn't affect the team development process.
True False
69. Some team-building interventions clarify the team's performance goals and increase the team's motivation to
accomplish these goals.
True False
70. Dialogue is a team building process that attempts to help team members build trust and open
communication.
True False
71. Team building interventions often fail because they are offered as a three-day jump-start rather than an
ongoing process.
True False
72. One advantage of team building activities is that they solve a variety of problems with team composition.
True False
73. Team building activities rarely include follow-up consultation to ensure what was learned in the activity was
transferred back on the job.
True False
74. Which of these statements about self-directed work teams (SDWTs) is TRUE?
A. SDWTs typically work in a separate building from other employees in the organization.
B. SDWTs are responsible for most work inputs, workflow activities and output quality standards.
C. SDWTs are mainly identified as groups that operate as virtual teams at least once each week.
D. SDWTs represent a very low level of employee involvement.
E. All of these statements are true.
75. Self-directed work teams:
A. have not yet been introduced into Canada.
B. rely on supervisors to communicate between the team and senior management.
C. perform a variety of tasks but have little autonomy regarding how to perform those tasks.
D. are more common in Canada than in the United States.
E. None of these statements is true.
76. Which of the following allows employees to collectively plan, organize, and control work activities with
little or no direct involvement of a higher-status supervisor?
A. Gainsharing plans
B. Production teams
C. Joint health and safety committees
D. Self-directed work teams
E. None of these is true.
77. Self-directed work teams:
A. are informal groups.
B. usually exist as communities of practice.
C. have substantial autonomy over the execution of a complete task.
D. consist of a group of employees led by their immediate supervisor.
E. are common in Europe but rarely found in North America.
78. Members of SDWTs have jobs that are:
A. typically in services rather than production.
B. enlarged but not enriched.
C. enriched but not enlarged.
D. specialized with a high division of labor.
E. both enlarged and enriched.
79. SDWTs tend to be more useful where:
A. employees perform identical tasks.
B. employees require direct supervision to motivate them.
C. employees perform tasks that are independent of each other.
D. all of these conditions exist.
E. none of these conditions exists.
80. SDWTs are best suited to situations where:
A. employees perform highly interdependent tasks.
B. management wants to closely monitor employee performance.
C. employees perform identical tasks.
D. employees do not get along with each other.
E. all of these conditions exist.
81. Sociotechnical systems theory is the conceptual foundation for:
A. dialogue meetings.
B. team building.
C. individual decision making.
D. conflict management
E. self-directed work teams.
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82. Which of the following explains how self-directed work teams should be designed?
A. Open book management
B. Team building
C. Sociotechnical systems theory
D. Bounded rationality
E. Expectancy theory
83. Sociotechnical systems theory says that an SDWT must have sufficient ________ to manage the work
process.
A. closure
B. knowledge-based trust.
C. supervision
D. autonomy
E. Sociotechnical systems theory does not require any of these features.
84. According to sociotechnical systems theory, autonomy is:
A. one of the four main conditions for self-directed work teams.
B. the main reason why self-directed work teams fail.
C. the main source of groupthink.
D. a key variance.
E. the most common reason why self-directed work teams lack joint optimization
85. Sociotechnical systems theory is based on the idea that:
A. teams work best when there is 'joint optimization' between the social and technical systems of the work unit.
B. employees are unable to think for themselves.
C. managers usually have better ideas than employees.
D. employees work best alone rather than in teams.
E. technology should determine how the work process is structured.
86. In sociotechnical systems theory, the philosophy that a balance must be struck between the social and
technical systems to maximize the operation's effectiveness is called:
A. joint optimization.
B. autonomy.
C. the primary work unit principle.
D. controlling key variances.
E. none of these.
87. The concepts of joint optimization and primary work unit are part of:
A. group polarization.
B. escalation of commitment
C. employee engagement.
D. gainsharing.
E. sociotechnical systems theory
88. Sociotechnical theory does NOT recommend that:
A. the team should have autonomy to decide how to divide up work among its members.
B. the team should be assigned a complete work process.
C. the team should have control over disturbances or interruptions that affect the quality of the product or
service.
D. the team's structure should be influenced mainly by technology.
E. the team should operate without close supervision.
89. Sociotechnical systems theory recommends that SDWTs should be a "primary work unit." This means that:
A. team members should be similar to each other in terms of the primary categories of diversity.
B. SDWT members should receive higher pay than employees who are not in SDWTs.
C. the team's structure is influenced primarily by the technology used by the team.
D. the team completes an entire product or service that requires minimal interdependence with other work units.
E. None of these statements relates to the meaning of "primary work unit."
90. In sociotechnical systems theory, joint optimization is:
A. the practice of having two teams learning how to work together more effectively.
B. the practice of ensuring that the team can decide how to divide up work among its members as well as how
to coordinate that work.
C. a serious problem that undermines the effectiveness of self-directed work teams.
D. the opposite of collective self-regulation.
E. none of statements relates to the meaning of "joint optimization."
91. In sociotechnical systems theory, joint optimization is:
A. the belief that a balance must be struck between the social and technical systems to maximize the operation's
effectiveness.
B. the practice of ensuring that the team can decide how to divide up work among its members as well as how
to coordinate that work.
C. the practice of having two teams learning how to work together more effectively.
D. the opposite of autonomy.
E. the practice of minimizing conflict between management and employees.
92. Which of the following is NOT explicitly included in sociotechnical systems theory?
A. Joint optimization
B. Bounded rationality
C. Autonomy
D. Primary work unit
E. Key variances
93. Sociotechnical systems theory explicitly refers to all of the following concepts EXCEPT:
A. autonomy.
B. key variances.
C. calculus-based trust.
D. primary work unit.
E. joint optimization.
94. Joint optimization assumes that:
A. employees would prefer to work alone than in teams.
B. people are imperfect decision makers.
C. technology is flexible enough to support a semi-autonomous team-based structure.
D. teams make better decisions than do individuals working alone.
E. Joint optimization assumes none of these statements.
95. One problem with sociotechnical systems theory is that it:
A. does not apply to SDWTs involving services and other non-production activities.
B. originated in the United States and does not seem to work in European countries.
C. ignores the fact that teams need some autonomy to perform the work more effectively.
D. is very difficult to implement in organizations with fewer than 100 employees.
E. does not identify the best way to align social and technical systems for the SDWT's optimal performance.
96. Self-directed work teams are more difficult to apply:
A. in organizations with fewer than 100 employees.
B. in cultures with high power distance.
C. where the work involves performing a service rather than making a product.
D. where supervisors previously worked in high-involvement workplaces.
E. in all of these situations.
97. Self-directed work teams are more difficult to implement in cultures with:
A. low power distance and low collectivism.
B. high power distance and low collectivism.
C. low power distance and high collectivism.
D. high power distance and high collectivism.
E. Power distance and collectivism have no effect on the implementation of self-directed work teams.
98. Self-directed work teams are more difficult to implement effectively:
A. in societies with high power distance and high individualism values.
B. when managers are concerned that they will lose their jobs.
C. when labor union leaders believe that the employee involvement activity will produce more intense work
effort and higher stress levels.
D. when employees are uncomfortable exploring new roles in their jobs.
E. in all of these situations.
99. Which of the following is a barrier to implementing self-directed work teams (SDWTs)?
A. Employees feel uncertain about the new and ambiguous roles they must acquire in SDWTs.
B. Supervisors are reluctant to give up their role as facilitators.
C. Executives are concerned that SDWTs will give them too much control over employee behavior.
D. All of these conditions are barriers to SDWTs.
E. None of these conditions is a barrier to SDWTs.
100. Virtual teams are best described as:
A. groups of employees who are almost (virtually) identical to each other in skills and values.
B. cross-functional groups of employees that operate across space, time and organizational boundaries.
C. formal work teams in which most members do not feel that they are really part of the team.
D. informal groups that meet only in cyberspace.
E. groups of employees from different departments who are located near each other.
101. Dependence on information technology and lack of co-location represent two factors that distinguish:
A. employees with high collectivist values from employees with low collectivist values.
B. self-directed work teams from task forces.
C. virtual teams from conventional teams.
D. task forces from permanent teams.
E. managers from employees.
102. Two features that distinguish virtual teams from conventional teams are:
A. size and heterogeneity.
B. lack of co-location and dependence on information technology.
C. joint optimization and primary work unit.
D. norms and trust.
E. None of these factors distinguishes virtual teams from conventional teams.
103. Globalization and knowledge management have made ______ necessary for organizations to remain
competitive.
A. groupthink
B. virtual teams
C. command-and-control management
D. Delphi method
E. None of these is necessary as a result of globalization and knowledge management.
104. The increasing number of virtual teams is partly due to:
A. increased preference for employees to work alone rather than interdependently with others.
B. increased emphasis on business ethics.
C. increased workforce diversity.
D. better information technology.
E. none of these factors explains the increasing number of virtual teams.
105. Virtual teams are increasingly necessary because:
A. people perform better when they work alone.
B. computer networks make distances among people less relevant.
C. companies are becoming globalized, yet need to minimize silos of knowledge.
D. companies have shifted from production-based to knowledge-based work.
E. all of these factors make virtual teams increasingly necessary.
106. Virtual teams are becoming increasingly common because of:
A. globalization.
B. improvements in information technology.
C. the need to minimize silos of knowledge.
D. the shift from production-based to knowledge-based work.
E. all of these factors have increased the presence of virtual teams.
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Then the King answers, with less heat but equal severity—“You
know that you behaved shamefully in Prussia. It was well for you
that you had to deal with a man so indulgent to the infirmities of
genius as I am. You richly deserved to see the inside of a dungeon.
Your talents are not more widely known than your faithlessness and
your malevolence. The grave itself is no asylum from your spite.
Maupertuis is dead; but you still go on calumniating and deriding
him, as if you had not made him miserable enough while he was
living. Let us have no more of this. And, above all, let me hear no
more of your niece. I am sick to death of her name. I can bear with
your faults for the sake of your merits; but she has not written
Mahomet or Merope.”
An explosion of this kind, it might be supposed, would necessarily
put an end to all amicable communication. But it was not so. After
every outbreak of ill humour this extraordinary pair became more
loving than before, and exchanged compliments and assurances of
mutual regard with a wonderful air of sincerity.
It may well be supposed that men who wrote thus to each other,
were not very guarded in what they said of each other. The English
ambassador, Mitchell, who knew that the King of Prussia was
constantly writing to Voltaire with the greatest freedom on the most
important subjects, was amazed to hear his Majesty designate this
highly favoured correspondent as a bad-hearted fellow, the greatest
rascal on the face of the earth. And the language which the poet
held about the King was not much more respectful.
It would probably have puzzled Voltaire himself to say what was
his real feeling towards Frederic. It was compounded of all
sentiments, from enmity to friendship, and from scorn to admiration;
and the proportions in which these elements were mixed, changed
every moment. The old patriarch resembled the spoiled child who
screams, stamps, cuffs, laughs, kisses, and cuddles within one
quarter of an hour. His resentment was not extinguished; yet he was
not without sympathy for his old friend. As a Frenchman, he wished
success to the arms of his country. As a philosopher, he was anxious
for the stability of a throne on which a philosopher sat. He longed
both to save and to humble Frederic. There was one way, and only
one, in which all his conflicting feelings could at once be gratified. If
Frederic were preserved by the interference of France, if it were
known that for that interference he was indebted to the mediation of
Voltaire, this would indeed be delicious revenge; this would indeed
be to heap coals of fire on that haughty head. Nor did the vain and
restless poet think it impossible that he might, from his hermitage
near the Alps, dictate peace to Europe. D’Estrdes had quitted
Hanover, and the command of the French army had been intrusted
to the Duke of Richelieu, a man whose chief distinction was derived
from his success in gallantry. Richelieu was in truth the most
eminent of that race of seducers by profession, who furnished
Cordbillon the younger and La Clos with models for their heroes. In
his earlier days the royal house itself had not been secure from his
presumptuous love. He was believed to have carried his conquests
into the family of Orleans; and some suspected that he was not
unconcerned in the mysterious remorse which embittered the last
hours of the charming mother of Lewis the Fifteenth. But the Duke
was now sixty years old. With a heart deeply corrupted by vice, a
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constitution, an impaired fortune, and, worst of all, a very red nose,
he was entering on a dull, frivolous, and unrespected old age.
Without one qualification for military command, except that personal
courage which was common between him and the whole nobility of
France, he had been placed at the head of the army of Hanover; and
in that situation he did his best to repair, by extortion and
corruption, the injury which he had done to his property by a life of
dissolute profusion.
The Duke of Richelieu to the end of his life hated the philosophers
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man would have condemned, but for their virtues, for their spirit of
free inquiry, and for their hatred of those social abuses of which he
was himself the personification. But he, like many of those who
thought with him, excepted Voltaire from the list of proscribed
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patriarch the honour to borrow money of him, and even carried this
condescending friendship so far as to forget to pay the interest.
Voltaire thought that it might be in his power to bring the Duke and
the King of Prussia into communication with each other. He wrote
earnestly to both; and he so far succeeded that a correspondence
between them was commenced. But it was to very different means
that Frederic was to owe is deliverance. At the beginning of
November the net seemed to have closed completely round him. The
Russians were in the field, and were spreading devastation through
his eastern provinces. Silesia was overrun by the Austrians. A great
French army was advancing from the west under the command of
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Berlin itself had been taken and plundered by the Croatians. Such
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Prince Charles, at the head of not less than sixty thousand, met at
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machine, resorted, on this great day, to means resembling those
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the purpose of stimulating military enthusiasm. The principal officers
were convoked. Frederic addressed them with great force and
pathos; and directed them to speak to their men as he had spoken
to them. When the armies were set in battle array, the Prussian
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showed itself after the fashion of a grave people. The columns
advanced to the attack chanting, to the sound of drums and fifes,
the rude hymns of the old Saxon Sternholds. They had never fought
so well: nor had the genius of their chief ever been so conspicuous.
“That battle,” said Napoleon, “was a masterpiece. Of itself it is
sufficient to entitle Frederic to a place in the first rank among
generals.” The victory was complete. Twenty-seven thousand
Austrians were killed, wounded, or taken; fifty stand of colours, a
hundred guns, four thousand waggons, fell into the hands of the
Prussians. Breslau opened its gates; Silesia was reconquered;
Charles of Loraine retired to hide his shame and sorrow at Brussels;
and Frederic allowed his troops to take some repose in winter
quarters, after a campaign, to the vicissitudes of which it will be
difficult to find any parallel in ancient or modern history.
The King’s fame filled all the world. He had, during the last year,
maintained a contest, on terms of advantage, against three powers,
the weakest of which had more than three times his resources. He
had fought four great pitched battles against superior forces. Three
of these battles he had gained; and the defeat of Kolin, repaired as
it had been, rather raised than lowered his military renown. The
victory of Leuthen is, to this day, the proudest on the roll of Prussian
fame. Leipsic indeed, and Waterloo, produced consequences more
important to mankind. But the glory of Leipsic must be shared by
the Prussians with the Austrians and Russians; and at Waterloo the
British Infantry bore the burden and heat of the day. The victory of
Rosbach was, in a military point of view, less honourable than that of
Leuthen; for it was gained over an incapable general and a
disorganized army; but the moral effect which it produced was
immense. All the preceding triumphs of Frederic had been triumphs
over Germans, and could excite no emotions of national pride among
the German people. It was impossible that a Hessian or a
Hanoverian could feel any patriotic exultation at hearing that
Pomeranians had slaughtered Moravians, or that Saxon banners had
been hung in the churches of Berlin. Indeed, though the military
character of the Germans justly stood high throughout the world,
they could boast of no great day which belonged to them as a
people; of no Agincourt, of no Bannockburn. Most of their victories
had been gained over each other; and their most splendid exploits
against foreigners had been achieved under the command of
Eugene, who was himself a foreigner. The news of the battle of Ros-
bach stirred the blood of the whole of the mighty population from
the Alps to the Baltic, and from the borders of Courland to those of
Loraine. Westphalia and Lower Saxony had been deluged by a great
host of strangers, whose speech was unintelligible, and whose
petulant and licentious manners had excited the strongest feelings of
disgust and hatred. That great host had been put to flight by a small
band of German warriors, led by a prince of German blood on the
side of father and mother, and marked by the fair hair and clear blue
eye of Germany. Never since the dissolution of the empire of
Charlemagne, had the Teutonic race won such a field against the
French. The tidings called forth a general burst of delight and pride
from the whole of the great family which spoke the varions dialects
of the ancient language of Arminius. The fame of Frederic began to
supply, in some degree, the place of a common government and of a
common capital. It became a rallying point for all true Germans, a
subject of mutual congratulation to the Bavarian and the
Westphalian, to the citizen of Frankfort and the citizen of
Nuremburg. Then first it was manifest that the Germans were truly a
nation. Then first was discernible that patriotic spirit which, in 1813,
achieved the great deliverance of central Europe, and which still
guards, and long will guard, against foreign ambition the old
freedom of the Rhine.
Nor were the effects produced by that celebrated day merely
political. The greatest masters of German poetry and eloquence
have admitted that, though the great King neither valued nor
understood his native language, though he looked on France as the
only seat of taste and philosophy, yet, in his own despite, he did
much to emancipate the genius of his countrymen from the foreign
yoke; and that, in the act of vanquishing Soubise, he was,
unintentionally, rousing the spirit which soon began to question the
literary precedence of Boileau and Voltaire. So strangely do events
confound all the plans of man. A prince who read only French, who
wrote only French, who aspired to rank as a French classic, became,
quite unconsciously, the means of liberating half the Continent from
the dominion of that French criticism of which he was himself, to the
end of his life, a slave. Yet even the enthusiasm of Germany in
favour of Frederic hardly equalled the enthusiasm of England. The
birth-day of our ally was celebrated with as much enthusiasm as that
of our own sovereign: and at night the streets of London were in a
blaze with illuminations. Portraits of the hero of Rosbach, with his
cocked hat and long pigtail, were in every house. An attentive
observer will, at this day, find in the parlours of old-fashioned inns,
and in the portfolios of print-sellers, twenty portraits of Frederic for
one of George the Second. The sign painters were everywhere
employed in touching up Admiral Vernon into the King of Prussia.
This enthusiasm was strong among religions people, and especially
among the Methodists, who knew that the French and Austrians
were Papists, and supposed Frederic to be the Joshua or Gideon of
the Reformed Faith. One of Whitfield’s hearers, on the day on which
thanks for the battle of Leuthen were returned at the Tabernacle,
made the following exquisitely ludicrous entry in a diary, part of
which has come down to us: “The Lord stirred up the King of Prussia
and his soldiers to pray. They kept three fast days, and spent about
an hour praying and singing psalms before they engaged the enemy.
O! how good it is to pray and fight!” Some young Englishmen of rank
proposed to visit Germany as volunteers, for the purpose of learning
the art of war under the greatest, of commanders. This last proof of
British attachment and admiration, Frederic politely but firmly
declined. His camp was no place for amateur students of military
science. The Prussian discipline was rigorous even to cruelty. The
officers, while in the field, were expected to practise an
abstemiousness and self-denial, such as was hardly surpassed by the
most rigid monastic orders. However noble their birth, however high
their rank in the service, they were not permitted to eat from any
thing better than pewter. It was a high crime even in a count and
field-marshal to have a single silver spoon among his baggage. Gay
young Englishmen of twenty thousand a year, accustomed to liberty
and to luxury, would not easily submit to these Spartan restraints.
The King could not venture to keep them in order as he kept his own
subjects in order. Situated as he was with respect to England, he
could not well imprison or shoot refractory Howards and
Cavendishes. On the other hand, the example of a few fine
gentlemen, attended by chariots and livery servants, eating in plate,
and drinking Champagne and Tokay, was enough to corrupt his
whole army. He thought it best to make a stand at first, and civilly
refused to admit such dangerous companions among his troops.
The help of England was bestowed in a manner far more useful
and more acceptable. An annual subsidy of near seven hundred
thousand pounds enabled the King to add probably more than fifty
thousand men to his army. Pitt, now at the height of power and
popularity, undertook the task of defending Western Germany
against France, and asked Frederic only the loan of a general. The
general selected was Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, who had
attained high distinction in the Prussian service. He was put at the
head of an army, partly English, partly Hanoverian, partly composed
of mercenaries hired from the petty princes of the empire. He soon
vindicated the choice of the two allied courts, and proved himself the
second general of the age.
Frederic passed the winter at Breslau, in reading, writing, and
preparing for the next campaign. The havoc which the war had
made among his troops was rapidly repaired; and in the spring of
1758 he was again ready for the conflict. Prince Ferdinand kept the
French in check. The King in the mean time, after attempting against
the Austrians some operations which led to no very important
results, marched to encounter the Russians, who, slaying, burning,
and wasting wherever they turned, had penetrated into the heart of
his realm. He gave them battle at Zorndorf, near Frank fort on the
Oder. The fight was long and bloody. Quarter was neither given nor
taken; for the Germans and Scythians regarded each other with
bitter aversion, and the sight of the ravages committed by the
halfsavage invaders had incensed the King and his army. The
Russians were overthrown with great slaughter: and for a few
months no further danger was to be apprehended from the east.
A day of thanksgiving was proclaimed by the King, and was
celebrated with pride and delight by his people. The rejoicings in
England were not less enthusiastic or less sincere. This may be
selected as the point of time at which the military glory of Frederic
reached the zenith. In the short space of three quarters of a year he
had won three great battles over the armies of three mighty and
warlike monarchies, France, Austria and Russia.
But it was decreed that the temper of that strong mind should be
tried by both extremes of fortune in rapid succession. Close upon
this series of triumphs came a series of disasters, such as would
have blighted the fame and broken the heart of almost any other
commander. Yet Frederic, in the midst of his calamities, was still an
object of admiration to his subjects, his allies, and his enemies.
Overwhelmed by adversity, sick of life, he still maintained the
contest, greater in defeat, in flight, and in what seemed hopeless
ruin, than on the fields of his proudest victories. Having vanquished
the Russians, he hastened into Saxony to oppose the troops of the
Empress Queen, commanded by Daun, the most cautious, and
Landohn, the most inventive and enterprising of her generals. These
two celebrated commanders agreed on a scheme, in which the
prudence of the one and the vigour of the other seemed to have
been happily combined. At dead of night they surprised the King in
his camp at Hochkirchen.
His presence of mind saved his troops from destruction; but
nothing could save them from defeat and severe loss. Marshal Keith
was among the slain. The first roar of the guns roused the noble
exile from his rest, and he was instantly in the front of the battle. He
received a dangerous wound, but refused to quit the field, and was
in the act of rallying his broken troops, when an Austrian bullet
terminated his chequered and eventual life.
The misfortune was serious. But of all generals Frederic
understood best how to repair defeat, and Daun understood least
how to improve victory. In a few days the Prussian army was as
formidable as before the battle. The prospect was, however, gloomy.
An Austrian army under General Harsch had invaded Silesia, and
invested the fortress of Neisse. Daun, after his success at
Hochkirchen, had written to Harsch in very confident terms:—“Go on
with your operations against Neisse. Be quite at ease as to the King.
I will give a good account of him.” In truth, the position of the
Prussians was full of difficulties. Between them and Silesia lay the
victorious army of Daun. It was not easy for them to reach Silesia at
all. If they did reach it, they left Saxony exposed to the Austrians.
But the vigour and activity of Frederic surmounted every obstacle.
He made a circuitous march of extraordinary rapidity, passed Daun,
hastened into Silesia, raised the siege of Neisse, and drove Harsch
into Bohemia.
Daun availed himself of the King’s absence to attack Dresden. The
Prussians defended it desperately. The inhabitants of that wealthy
and polished capital begged in vain for mercy from the garrison
within, and from the besiegers without. The beautiful suburbs were
burned to the ground. It was clear that the town if won at all, would
be won street by street by the bayonet. At this conjuncture, came
news that Frederic, having cleared Silesia of his enemies, was
returning by forced marches into Saxony. Daun retired from before
Dresden, and fell back into the Austrian territories. The King, over
heaps of ruins, made his triumphant entry into the unhappy
metropolis, which had so cruelly expiated the weak and perfidious
policy of its sovereign. It was now the twentieth of November. The
cold weather suspended military operations; and the King again took
up his winter quarters at Breslau.
The third of the seven terrible years was over; and Frederic still
stood his ground. He had been recently tried by domestic as well as
by military disasters. On the fourteenth of October, the day on which
he was defeated at Hoehkirchen, the day on the anniversary of
which, forty-eight years later, a defeat far more tremendous laid the
Prussian monarchy in the dust, died Wilhelmina, Margravine of
Bareuth. From the accounts which we have of her, by her own hand,
and by the hands of the most discerning of her contemporaries, we
should pronounce her to have been coarse, indelicate, and a good
hater, but not destitute of kind and generous feelings. Her mind,
naturally strong and observant, had been highly cultivated; and she
was, and deserved to be, Frederic’s favourite sister. He felt the loss
as much as it was in his iron nature to feel the loss of any thing but
a province or a battle.
At Breslau, during the winter, he was indefatigable in his poetical
labours. The most spirited lines, perhaps, that he ever wrote, are to
be found in a bitter lampoon on Lewis and Madame de Pompadour,
which he composed at this time, and sent to Voltaire. The verses
were, indeed, so good, that Voltaire was afraid that he might himself
be suspected of having written them, or at least of having corrected
them; and partly from fright, partly, we fear, from love of mischief,
sent them to the Duke of Choiseul, then prime minister of France.
Choiseul very wisely determined to encounter Frederic at Frederic’s
own weapons, and applied for assistance to Palissot, who had some
skill as a versifier, and some little talent for satire. Palissot produced
some very stinging lines on the moral and literary character of
Frederic, and these lines the Duke sent to Voltaire.
This war of couplets, following close on the carnage of Zorndorf
and the conflagration of Dresden, illustrates well the strangely
compounded character of the King of Prussia.
At this moment he was assailed by a new enemy. Benedict the
Fourteenth, the best and wisest of the two hundred and fifty
successors of St. Peter, was no more. During the short interval
between his reign and that of his disciple Ganganelli, the chief seat
in the Church of Rome was filled by Rezzonico, who took the name
of Clement the Thirteenth. This absurd priest determined to try what
the weight of his authority could effect in favour of the orthodox
Maria Theresa against a heretic king. At the high mass on Christmas-
day, a sword with a rich belt and scabbard, a hat of crimson velvet
lined with ermine, and a dove of pearl, the mystic symbol of the
Divine Comforter, were solemnly blessed by the supreme pontiff, and
were sent with great ceremony to Marshal Daun, the conqueror of
Kolin and Hochkirchen. This mark of favour had more than once
been bestowed by the Popes on the great champions of the faith.
Similar honours had been paid, more than six centuries earlier, by
Urban the Second to Godfrey of Bouillon. Similar honours had been
conferred on Alba for destroying the liberties of the Low Countries,
and on John Sobiesky after the deliverance of Vienna. But the
presents which were received with profound reverence by the Baron
of the Holy Sepulchre in the eleventh century, and which had not
wholly lost their value even in the seventeenth century, appeared
inexpressibly ridiculous to a generation which read Montesquieu and
Voltaire. Frederic wrote sarcastic verses on the gifts, the giver, and
the receiver. But the public wanted no prompter; and an universal
roar of laughter from Petersburg to Lisbon reminded the Vatican that
the age of crusades was over.
The fourth campaign, the most disastrous of all the campaigns of
this fearful war, had now opened. The Austrians filled Saxony and
menaced Berlin. The Russians defeated the King’s generals on the
Oder, threatened Silesia, effected a junction with Laudolm, and
intrenched themselves strongly at Kunersdorf.
Frederic hastened to attack them. A great battle was fought.
During the earlier part of the day every thing yielded to the
impetuosity of the Prussians, and to the skill of their chief. The lines
were forced. Half the Russian guns were taken. The King sent off a
courier to Berlin with two lines, announcing a complete victory. But,
in the mean time, the stubborn Russians, defeated yet unbroken,
had taken up their stand in an almost impregnable position, on an
eminence where the Jews of Frankfort were wont to bury their dead.
Here the battle recommenced. The Prussian infantry, exhausted by
six hours of hard fighting under a sun which equalled the tropical
heat, were yet brought up repeatedly to the attack, but in vain. The
King led three charges in person. Two horses were killed under him.
The officers of his staff fell all round him. His coat was pierced by
several bullets. All was in vain. His infantry was driven back with
frightful slaughter. Terror began to spread fast from man to man. At
that moment, the fiery cavalry of Laudolm, still fresh, rushed on the
wavering ranks. Then followed an universal rout. Frederic himself
was on the point of falling into the hands of the conquerors, and
was with difficulty saved by a gallant officer, who, at the head of a
handful of Hussars, made good a diversion of a few minutes.
Shattered in body, shattered in mind, the King reached that night a
village which the Cossacks had plundered; and there, in a ruined and
deserted farm-house, flung himself on a heap of straw. He had sent
to Berlin a second despatch very different from his first:—“Let the
royal family leave Berlin. Send the archives to Potsdam. The town
may make terms with the enemy.”
The defeat was, in truth, overwhelming. Of fifty thousand men
who had that morning marched under the black eagles, not three
thousand remained together. The King bethought him again of his
corrosive sublimate, and wrote to bid adieu to his friends, and to
give directions as to the measures to be taken in the event of his
death:—“I have no resource left”—such is the language of one of his
letters—“all is lost. I will not survive the ruin of my country. Farewell
for ever.”
But the mutual jealousies of the confederates prevented them
from following up their victory. They lost a few days in loitering and
squabbling; and a few days, improved by Frederic, were worth more
than the years of other men. On the morning after the battle, he had
got together eighteen thousand of his troops. Very soon his force
amounted to thirty thousand. Guns were procured from the
neighbouring fortresses; and there was again an army. Berlin was for
the present safe; but calamities came pouring on the King in
uninterrupted succession. One of his generals, with a large body of
troops, was taken at Maxen; another was defeated at Meissen; and
when at length the campaign of 1709 closed, in the midst of a
rigorous winter, the situation of Prussia appeared desperate. The
only consoling circumstance was, that, in the West, Ferdinand of
Brunswick had been more fortunate than his master; and by a series
of exploits, of which the battle of Minden was the most glorious, had
removed all apprehension of danger on the side of France.
The fifth year was now about to commence. It seemed impossible
that the Prussian territories, repeatedly devastated by hundreds of
thousands of invaders, could longer support the contest. But the
King carried on war as no European power has ever carried on war,
except the Committee of Public Safety during the great agony of the
French Revolution, He governed his kingdom as he would have
governed a besieged town, not caring to what extent property was
destroyed, or the pursuits of civil life suspended, so that he did but
make head against the enemy. As long as there was a man left in
Prussia, that man might carry a musket; as long as there was a
horse left, that horse might draw artillery. The coin was debased, the
civil functionaries were left unpaid; in some provinces civil
government altogether ceased to exist. But there were still rye-bread
and potatoes; there were still lead and gunpowder; and, while the
means of sustaining and destroying life remained, Frederic was
determined to fight it out to the very last.
The earlier part of the campaign of 1760 was unfavourable to him.
Berlin was again occupied by the enemy. Great contributions were
levied on the inhabitants, and the royal palace was plundered. But at
length, after two years of calamity, victory came back to his arms. At
Lignitz he gained a great battle over Laudohn; at Torgau, after a day
of horrible carnage, he triumphed over Daun. The fifth year closed,
and still the event was in suspense. In the countries where the war
had raged, the misery and exhaustion were more appalling than
ever; but still there were left men and beasts, arms and food, and
still Frederic fought on. In truth he had now been baited into
savageness. His heart was ulcerated with hatred. The implacable
resentment with which his enemies persecuted him, though
originally provoked by his own unprincipled ambition, excited in him
a thirst for vengeance which he did not even attempt to conceal. “It
is hard,” he says in one of his letters, “for man to bear what I bear. I
begin to feel that, as the Italians sav, revenge is a pleasure for the
gods. My philosophy is worn out by suffering. I am no saint, like
those of whom we read in the legends: and I will own that I should
die content if only I could first inflict a portion of the misery which I
endure.” Borne up by such feelings He struggled with various
success, but constant glory, through the campaign of 1701. On the
whole, the result of this campaign was disastrous to Prussia. No
great battle was gained by the enemy; but, in spite of the desperate
bounds of the hunted tiger, the circle of pursuers was fast closing
round him. Laudolm had surprised the important fortress of
Sehweidnitz. With that fortress, half of Silesia, and the command of
the most important defiles through the mountains, had been
transferred to the Austrians. The Russians had overpowered the
King’s generals in Pomerania. The country was so completely
desolated that he began, by his own confession, to look round him
with blank despair, unable to imagine where recruits, horses, or
provisions were to be found.
Just at this time two great events brought on a complete change
in the relations of almost all the powers of Europe. One of those
events was the retirement of Mr. Pitt from office; the other was the
death of the Empress Elizabeth of Russia.
The retirement of Pitt seemed to be an omen of utter ruin to the
House of Brandenburg. His proud and vehement nature was
incapable of any thing that looked like either fear or treachery. He
had often declared that, while he was in power, England should
never make a peace of Utrecht, should never, for any selfish object,
abandon an ally even in the last extremity of distress. The
Continental war was his own war. He had been bold enough, he who
in former times had attacked, with irresistible powers of oratory, the
Hanoverian policy of Carteret, and the German subsidies of
Newcastle, to declare that Hanover ought to be as dear to us as
Hampshire, and that he would conquer America in Germany. He had
fallen; and the power which he had exercised, not always with
discretion, but always with vigour and genius, had devolved on a
favourite who was the representative of the Tory party, of the party
which had thwarted William, which had persecuted Marlborough,
and which had given up the Catalans to the vengeance of Philip of
Anjou. To make peace with France, to shake off, with all, or more
than all, the speed compatible with decency, every Continental
connection, these were among the chief objects of the new Minister.
The policy then followed inspired Frederic with an unjust, but deep
and bitter aversion to the English name, and produced effects which
are still felt throughout the civilised world. To that policy it was
owing that, some years later, England could not find on the whole
Continent a single ally to stand by her, in her extreme need, against
the House of Bourbon. To that policy it was owing that Frederic,
alienated from England, was compelled to connect himself closely,
during his later years, with Russia, and was induced to assist in that
great crime, the fruitful parent of other great crimes, the first
partition of Poland.
Scarcely had the retreat of Mr. Pitt deprived Prussia of her only
friend, when the death of Elizabeth produced an entire revolution in
the politics of the North. The Grand Duke Peter, her nephew, who
now ascended the Russian throne, was not merely free from the
prejudices which his aunt had entertained against Frederic, but was
a worshipper, a servile imitator of the great King. The days of the
new Czar’s government were few and evil, but sufficient to produce
a change in the whole state of Christendom. He set the Prussian
prisoners at liberty, fitted them out decently, and sent them back to
their master; he withdrew his troops from the provinces which
Elizabeth had decided on incorporating with her dominions; and he
absolved all those Prussian subjects, who had been compelled to
swear fealty to Russia, from their engagements.
Not content with concluding peace on terms favourable to Prussia,
he solicited rank in the Prussian service, dressed himself in a
Prussian uniform, wore the Black Eagle of Prussia on his breast,
made preparations for visiting Prussia, in order to have an interview
with the object of his idolatry, and actually sent fifteen thousand
excellent troops to reinforce the shattered army of Frederic. Thus
strengthened, the King speedily repaired the losses of the preceding
year, reconquered Silesia, defeated Daun at Buckersdorf, invested
and retook Schweidnitz, and, at the close of the year, presented to
the forces of Maria Theresa a front as formidable as before the great
reverses of 1759. Before the end of the campaign, his friend, the
emperor Peter, having by a series of absurd insults to the
institutions, manners, and feelings of his people, united them in
hostility to his person and government, was deposed and murdered.
The Empress, who, under the title of Catharine the Second, now
assumed the supreme power, was, at the commencement of her
administration, by no means partial to Frederic, and refused to
permit her troops to remain under his command. But she observed
the peace made by her husband; and Prussia was no longer
threatened by danger from the East.
England and France at the same time paired off together. They
concluded a treaty, by which they bound themselves to observe
neutrality with respect to the German war. Thus the coalitions on
both sides were dissolved; and the original enemies, Austria and
Prussia, remained alone confronting each other.
Austria had undoubtedly far greater means than Prussia, and was
less exhausted by hostilities; yet it seemed hardly possible that
Austria could effect alone what she had in vain attempted to effect
when supported by France on the one side, and by Russia on the
other. Danger also began to menace the Imperial house from
another quarter. The Ottoman Porte held threatening; language, and
a hundred thousand Turks were mustered on the frontiers of
Hungary. The proud and revengeful spirit of the Empress Queen at
length gave way; and, in February, 1763, the peace of Hubertsburg
put an end to the conflict which had, during seven years, devastated
Germany. The King ceded nothing. The whole Continent in arms had
proved unable to tear Silesia from that iron grasp.
The war was over. Frederic was safe. His glory was beyond the
reach of envy. If he had not made conquests as vast as those of
Alexander, of Cæsar, and of Napoleon, if he had not, on fields of
battle, enjoyed the constant success of Marlborough and Wellington,
he had yet given an example unrivalled in history of what capacity
and resolution can effect against the greatest superiority of power
and the utmost spite of fortune. He entered Berlin in triumph, after
an absence of more than six years. The streets were brilliantly
lighted up; and, as he passed along in an open carriage, with
Ferdinand of Brunswick at his side, the multitude saluted him with
loud praises and blessings. He was moved by those marks of
attachment, and repeatedly exclaimed “Long live my dear people!
Long live my children!” Yet, even in the midst of that gay spectacle,
He could not but perceive everywhere the traces of destruction and
decay. The city had been more than once plundered. The population
had considerably diminished. Berlin, however, had suffered little
when compared with most parts of the kingdom. The ruin of private
fortunes, the distress of all ranks, was such as might appal the
firmest mind. Almost every province had been the seat of war, and
of war conducted with merciless ferocity. Clouds of Croatians had
descended on Silesia. Tens of thousands of Cossacks had been let
loose on Pomerania and Brandenburg. The mere contributions levied
by the invaders amounted, it was said, to more than a hundred
millions of dollars; and the value of what they extorted was probably
much less than the value of what they destroyed. The fields lay
uncultivated. The very seed-corn had been devoured in the madness
of hunger. Famine, and contagious maladies produced by famine,
had swept away the herds and flocks; and there was reason to fear
that a great pestilence among the human race was likely to follow in
the train of that tremendous war. Near fifteen thousand houses had
been burned to the ground. The population of the kingdom had in
seven years decreased to the frightful extent of ten per cent. A sixth
of the males capable of bearing arms had actually perished on the
field of battle. In some districts, no labourers, except women, were
seen in the fields at harvest-time. In others, the traveller passed
shuddering through a succession of silent villages, in which not a
single inhabitant remained. The currency had been debased; the
authority of laws and magistrates had been suspended; the whole
social system was deranged. For, during that convulsive struggle,
every thing that was not military violence was anarchy. Even the
army was disorganized. Some great generals, and a crowd of
excellent officers, had fallen, and it had been impossible to supply
their place. The difficulty of finding recruits had, towards the close of
the war, been so great, that selection and rejection were impossible.
Whole battalions were composed of deserters or of prisoners. It was
hardly to be hoped that thirty years of repose and industry would
repair the ruin produced by seven years of havoc. One consolatory
circumstance, indeed, there was. No debt had been incurred. The
burdens of the war had been terrible, almost insupportable; but no
arrear was left to embarrass the finances in time of peace.
Here, for the present, we must pause. We have accompanied
Frederic to the close of his career as a warrior. Possibly, when these
Memoirs are completed, we may resume the consideration of his
character, and give some account of his domestic and foreign policy,
and of his private habits, during the many years of tranquillity which
followed the Seven Years’ War.
Organizational Behavior Emerging Realities for the WorkPlace Revolution 4th Edition McShane Test Bank
T
MADAME D’ARBLAY. (1)
(Edinburgh Review, January, 1843.)
hough the world saw and heard little of Madame D’Arblay
during the last forty years of her life, and though that little did
not add to her fame, there were thousands, we believe, who
felt a singular emotion when they learned that she was no longer
among us. The news of her death carried the minds of men back at
one leap over two generations, to the time when her first literary
triumphs were won. All those whom we had been accustomed to
revere as intellectual patriarchs seemed children when compared
with her; for Burke had sate up all night to read her writings, and
Johnson had pronounced her superior to Fielding, when Rogers was
still a schoolboy, and Southey still in petticoats. Yet more strange did
it seem that we should just have lost one whose name had been
widely celebrated before anybody had heard of some illustrious men
who, twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, were, after a long and
splendid career, borne with honour to the grave. Yet so it was.
Francis Burney was at the height of fame and popularity before
Cowper had published his first volume, before Porson had gone up
to college, before Pitt had
(1) Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay. Five vols. 8vo.
London: 1842.
taken his seat in the House of Commons, before the voice of
Erskine had been once heard in Westminster Hall. Since the
appearance of her first work, sixty-two years had passed; and this
interval had been crowded, not only with political, but also with
intellectual revolutions. Thousands of reputations had, during that
period, sprung up, bloomed, withered, and disappeared. New kinds
of composition had come into fashion, had got ont of fashion, had
been derided, had been forgotten. The fooleries of Della Crusca, and
the fooleries of Kotzebue, had for a time bewitched the multitude,
but had left no trace behind them; nor had misdirected genius been
able to save from decay the once flourishing schools of Godwin, of
Darwin, and of Radcliffe. Many books, written for temporary effect,
had run through six or seven editions, and had then been gathered
to the novels of Afra Behn, and the epic poems of Sir Richard
Blackmore. Yet the early works of Madame D’Arblay, in spite of the
lapse of years, in spite of the change of manners, in spite of the
popularity deservedly obtained by some of her rivals, continued to
hold a high place in the public esteem. She lived to be a classic.
Time set on her fame, before she went hence, that seal which is
seldom set except on the fame of the departed. Like Sir Condy
Rackrent in the tale, she survived her own wake, and overheard the
judgment of posterity.
Having always felt a warm and sincere, though not a blind
admiration for her talents, we rejoiced to learn that her Diary was
about to be made public. Our hopes, it is true, were not unmixed
with fears. We could not forget the fate of the Memoirs of Dr.
Burney, which were published ten years ago. That unfortunate book
contained much that was curious and interesting. Yet it was received
with a cry of disgust, and was speedily consigned to oblivion. The
truth is, that it deserved its doom. It was written in Madame
D’Arblay’s later style, the worst style that has ever been known
among men. No genius, no information, could save from proscription
a book so written. We, therefore, opened the Diary with no small
anxiety, trembling lest we should light upon some of that peculiar
rhetoric which deforms almost every page of the Memoirs, and
which it is impossible to read without a sensation made up of mirth,
shame, and loathing. We soon, however, discovered to our great
delight that this Diary was kept before Madame D’Arblay became
eloquent. It is, for the most part, written in her earliest and best
manner, in true woman’s English, clear, natural, and lively. The two
works are lying side by side before us; and we never turn from the
Memoirs to the Diary without a sense of relief. The difference is as
great as the difference between the atmosphere of a perfumer’s
shop, fetid with lavender water and jasmine soap, and the air of a
heath on a fine morning in May. Both works ought to be consulted
by every person who wishes to be well acquainted with the history
of our literature and our manners. But to read the Diary is a
pleasure; to read the Memoirs will always be a task.
We may, perhaps, afford some harmless amusement to our
readers, if we attempt, with the help of these two books, to give
them an account of the most important years of Madame D’arblay’s
life.
She was descended from a family which bore the name of
Macburney, and which, though probably of Irish origin, had been
long settled in Shropshire, and was possessed of considerable
estates in that county. Unhappily, many years before her birth, the
Macburneys began, as if of set purpose and in a spirit of determined
rivalry, to expose and ruin themselves. The heir apparent, Mr. James
Macburney, offended his father by making a runaway match with an
actress from Goodman’s Fields. The old gentleman could devise no
more judicious mode of wreaking vengeance on his undutiful boy
than by marrying the cook. The cook gave birth to a son named
Joseph, who succeeded to all the lands of the family, while James
was cut off with a shilling. The favourite son, however, was so
extravagant, that he soon became as poor as his disinherited
brother. Both were forced to earn their bread by their labour. Joseph
turned dancing master, and settled in Norfolk. James struck off the
Mac from the beginning of his name, and set up as a portrait painter
at Chester. Here he had a son named Charles, well known as the
author of the History of Music, and as the father of two remarkable
children, of a son distinguished by learning, and of a daughter still
more honourably distinguished by genius.
Charles early showed a taste for that art, of which, at a later
period, he became the historian. He was apprenticed to a celebrated
musician in London, and applied himself to study with vigour and
success. He soon found a kind and munificent patron in Fulk Greville,
a highborn and highbred man, who seems to have had in large
measure all the accomplishments and all the follies, all the virtues
and all the vices, which, a hundred years ago, were considered as
making up the character of a fine gentleman. Under such protection,
the young artist had every prospect of a brilliant career in the
capital. But his health failed. It became necessary for him to retreat
from the smoke and river fog of London, to the pure air of the coast.
He accepted the place of organist, at Lynn, and settled at that town
with a young lady who had recently become his wife.
At Lynn, in June, 1752, Frances Burney was born. Nothing in her
childhood indicated that she would, while still a young woman, have
secured for herself an honourable and permanent place among
English writers. She was shy and silent. Her brothers and sisters
called her a dunce, and not without some show of reason; for at
eight years old she did not know her letters.
In 1760, Mr. Burney quitted Lynn for London, and took a house in
Poland Street; a situation which had been fashionable in the reign of
Queen Anne, but which, since that time, had been deserted by most
of its wealthy and noble inhabitants. He afterwards resided in Saint
Martin’s Street, on the south, side of Leicester Square. His house
there is still well known, and will continue to be well known as long
as our island retains any trace of civilisation; for it was the dwelling
of Newton, and the square turret which distinguishes it from all the
surrounding buildings was Newton’s observatory.
Mr. Burney at once obtained as many pupils of the most
respectable description as he had time to attend, and was thus
enabled to support his family, modestly indeed, and frugally, but in
comfort and independence. His professional merit obtained for him
the degree of Doctor of Music from the University of Oxford; and his
works on subjects connected with his art gained for him a place,
respectable, though certainly not eminent, among men of letters.
The progress of the mind of Frances Burney, from her ninth to her
twenty-fifth year, well deserves to be recorded. When her education
had proceeded no further than the hornbook, she lost her mother,
and thenceforward she educated herself. Her father appears to have
been as bad a father as a very honest, affectionate, and sweet
tempered man can well be. He loved his daughter dearly; but it
never seems to have occurred to him that a parent has other duties
to perform to children than that of fondling them. It would indeed
have been impossible, for him to superintend their education
himself. His professional engagements occupied him all day. At seven
in the morning he began to attend his pupils, and, when London was
full, was sometimes employed in teaching till eleven at night. He was
often forced to carry in his pocket a tin box of sandwiches, and a
bottle of wine and water, on which he dined in a hackney coach,
while hurrying from one scholar to another. Two of his daughters he
sent to a seminary at Paris; but he imagined that Frances would run
some risk of being perverted from the Protestant faith if she were
educated in a Catholic country, and he therefore kept her at home.
No governess, no teacher of any art or of any language, was
provided for her. But one of her sisters showed her how to write;
and, before she was fourteen, she began to find pleasure in reading.
It was not, however, by reading that her intellect was formed.
Indeed, when her best novels were produced, her knowledge of
books was very small. When at the height of her fame, she was
unacquainted with the most celebrated works of Voltaire and
Moliere; and, what seems still more extraordinary, had never heard
or seen a line of Churchill, who, when she was a girl, was the most
popular of living poets. It is particularly deserving of observation that
she appears to have been by no means a novel reader. Her father’s
library was large; and he had admitted into it so many books which
rigid moralists generally exclude that he felt uneasy, as he
afterwards owned, when Johnson began to examine the shelves. But
in the whole collection there was only a single novel, Fielding’s
Amelia.
An education, however, which to most girls would have been
useless, but which suited Fanny’s mind better than elaborate culture,
was in constant progress during her passage from childhood to
womanhood. The great book of human nature was turned over
before her. Her father’s social position was very peculiar. He
belonged in fortune and station to the middle class. His daughters
seemed to have been suffered to mix freely with those whom butlers
and waiting maids call vulgar. We are told that they were in the habit
of playing with the children of a wigmaker who lived in the adjoining
house. Yet few nobles could assemble in the most stately mansions
of Grosvenor Square or Saint James’s Square, a society so various
and so brilliant as was sometimes to be found in Dr. Burney’s cabin.
His mind, though not very powerful or capacious, was restlessly
active; and, in the intervals of his professional pursuits, he had
contrived to lay up much miscellaneous information. His attainments,
the suavity of his temper, and the gentle simplicity of his manners,
had obtained for him ready admission to the first literary circles.
While he was still at Lynn, he had won Johnson’s heart by sounding
with honest zeal the praises of the English Dictionary. In London the
two friends met frequently, and agreed most harmoniously. One tie,
indeed, was wanting to their mutual attachment. Burney loved his
own art passionately; and Johnson just knew the bell of Saint
Clement’s church from the organ. They had, however, many topics in
common; and on winter nights their conversations were sometimes
prolonged till the fire had gone out, and the candles had burned
away to the wicks. Burney’s admiration of the powers which had
produced Rasselas and The Rambler bordered on idolatry. Johnson,
on the other hand, condescended to growl out that Burney was an
honest fellow, a man whom it was impossible not to like.
Garrick, too, was a frequent visiter in Poland Street and Saint
Martin’s Lane. That wonderful actor loved the society of children,
partly from good nature, and partly from vanity. The ecstasies of
mirth and terror, which his gestures and play of countenance never
failed to produce in a nursery, flattered him quite as much as the
applause of mature critics. He often exhibited all his powers of
mimicry for the amusement of the little Burneys, awed them by
shuddering and crouching as if he saw a ghost, scared them by
raving like a maniac in Saint Luke’s, and then at once became an
auctioneer, a chimneysweeper, or an old woman, and made them
laugh till the tears ran down their cheeks.
But it would be tedious to recount the names of all the men of
letters and artists whom Frances Burney had an opportunity of
seeing and hearing. Colman, Twining, Harris, Baretti, Hawkesworth,
Reynolds, Barry, were among those who occasionally surrounded the
tea table and supper tray at her father’s modest dwelling. This was
not all. The distinction which Dr. Burney had acquired as a musician,
and as the historian of music, attracted to his house the most
eminent musical performers of that age. The greatest Italian singers
who visited England regarded him as the dispenser of fame in their
art, and exerted themselves to obtain his suffrage. Pachierotti
became his intimate friend. The rapacious Agujari, who sang for
nobody else under fifty pounds an air, sang her best for Dr. Burney
without a fee; and in the company of Dr. Burney even the haughty
and eccentric Gabrielli constrained herself to behave with civility. It
was thus in his power to give, with scarcely any expense, concerts
equal to those of the aristocracy. On such occasions the quiet street
in which he lived was blocked up by coroneted chariots, and his little
drawingroom was crowded with peers, peeresses, ministers, and
ambassadors. On one evening, of which we happen to have a full
account, there were present Lord Mulgrave, Lord Bruce, Lord and
Lady Edgecumbe, Lord Barrington from the War Office, Lord
Sandwich from the Admiralty, Lord Ashburnham, with his gold key
dangling from his pocket, and the French Ambassador, M. De
Guignes, renowned for his fine person and for his success in
gallantry. But the great show of the night was the Russian
ambassador, Count Orloff, whose gigantic figure was all in a blaze
with jewels, and in whose demeanour the untamed ferocity of the
Scythian might be discerned through a thin varnish of French
politeness. As he stalked about the small parlour, brushing the
ceiling with his toupee, the girls whispered to each other, with
mingled admiration and horror, that he was the favoured lover of his
august mistress; that he had borne the chief part in the revolution to
which she owed her throne; and that his huge hands, now glittering
with diamond rings, had given the last squeeze to the windpipe of
her unfortunate husband.
With such illustrious guests as these were mingled all the most
remarkable specimens of the race of lions, a kind of game which is
limited in London every spring with more than Meltonian ardour and
perseverance. Bruce, who had washed down steaks cut from living
oxen with water from the fountains of the Nile, came to swagger and
talk about his travels. Omai lisped broken English, and made all the
assembled musicians hold their ears by howling Otaheitean love
songs, such as those with which Oberea charmed her Opano.
With the literary and fashionable society, which occasionally met
under Dr. Burney’s roof, Frances can scarcely be said to have
mingled. She was not a musician, and could therefore bear no part
in the concerts. She was shy almost to awkwardness, and scarcely
ever joined in the conversation. The slightest remark from a stranger
disconcerted her: and even the old friends of her father who tried to
draw her out could seldom extract more than a Yes or a No. Her
figure was small, her face not distinguished by beauty. She was
therefore suffered to withdraw quietly to the background, and,
unobserved herself, to observe all that passed. Her nearest relations
were aware that she had good sense, but seem not to have
suspected that, under her demure and bashful deportment, were
concealed a fertile invention and a keen sense of the ridiculous. She
had not, it is true, an eye for the fine shades of character, but every
marked peculiarity instantly caught her notice and remained
engraven on her imagination. Thus, while still a girl, she had laid up
such a store of materials for fiction as few of those who mix much in
the world are able to accumulate during a long life. She had watched
and listened to people of every class, from princes and great officers
of state down to artists living in garrets, and poets familiar with
subterranean cookshops. Hundreds of remarkable persons had
passed in review before lier, English, French, German, Italian, lords
and fiddlers, deans of cathedrals and managers of theatres,
travellers leading about newly caught savages, and singing women
escorted by deputy husbands.
So strong was the impression made on the mind of Frances by the
society which she was in the habit of seeing and hearing, that she
began to write little fictitious narratives as soon as she could use her
pen with ease, which, as we have said, was not very early. Her
sisters were amused by her stories: but Dr. Burney knew nothing of
their existence; and in another quarter her literary propensities met
with serious discouragement. When she was fifteen, her father took
a second wife. The new Mrs. Burney soon found out that her
stepdaughter was fond of scribbling, and delivered several
goodnatured lectures on the subject. The advice no doubt was well
meant, and might have been given by the most judicious friend; for
at that time, from causes to which we may hereafter advert, nothing
could be more disadvantageous to a young lady than to be known as
a novel writer. Frances yielded, relinquished her favourite pursuit,
and made a bonfire of all her manuscripts. (1)
She now hemmed and stitched from breakfast to dinner with
scrupulous regularity. But the dinners of that time were early; and
the afternoon was her own. Though she had given up novelwriting,
she was still
(1) There is some difficulty here as to the chronology.
“This sacrifice,” says the editor of the Diary, “was made in
the young authoress’s fifteenth year.” This could not be;
for the sacrifice was the effect, according to the editor’s
own showing, of the remonstrances of the second Mrs. Burney:
and Frances was in her sixteenth year when her father’s
second marriage took place.
fond of using her pen. She began to keep a diary, and she
corresponded largely with a person who seems to have had the chief
share in the formation of her mind. This was Samuel Crisp, an old
friend of her father. His name, well known, near a century ago, in
the most splendid circles of London, has long been forgotten. His
history is, however, so interesting and instructive, that it tempts us
to venture on a digression.
Long before Frances Burney was born, Mr. Crisp had made his
entrance into the world, with every advantage. He was well
connected and well educated. His face and figure were
conspicuously handsome; his manners were polished; his fortune
was easy; his character was without stain; he lived in the best
society; he had read much; he talked well; his taste in literature,
music, painting, architecture, sculpture, was held in high esteem.
Nothing that the world can give seemed to be wanting to his
happiness and respectability, except that he should understand the
limits of his powers, and should not throw away distinctions which
were within his reach in the pursuit of distinctions which were
unattainable.
“It is an uncontrolled truth,” says Swift, “that no man ever made
an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who
mistook them.” Every day brings with it fresh illustrations of this
weighty saying; but the best commentary that we remember is the
history of Samuel Crisp. Men like him have their proper place, and it
is a most important one, in the Commonwealth of Letters. It is by
the judgment of such men that the rank of authors is finally
determined. It, is neither to the multitude, nor to the few who are
gifted with great creative genius, that we are to look for sound
critical decisions. The multitude, unacquainted with the best models,
are captivated by whatever stuns and dazzles them. They deserted
Mrs. Siddons to run after Master Betty; and they now prefer, we
have no doubt, Jack Sheppard to Von Artevelde. A man of great
original genius, on the other hand, a man who has attained to
mastery in some high walk of art, is by no means to be implicitly
trusted as a judge of the performances of others. The erroneous
decisions pronounced by such men are without number.
It is commonly supposed that jealousy makes them unjust. But a
more creditable explanation may easily be found. The very
excellence of a work shows that some of the faculties of the author
have been developed at the expense of the rest; for it is not given to
the human intellect to expand itself widely in all directions at once,
and to be at the same time gigantic and well proportioned. Whoever
becomes pre-eminent in any art, nay, in any style of art, generally
does so by devoting himself with intense and exclusive enthusiasm
to the pursuit of one kind of excellence. His perception of other
kinds of excellence is therefore too often impaired. Out of Ins own
department he praises and blames at random, and is far less to be
trusted than, the mere connoisseur, who produces nothing, and
whose business is only to judge and enjoy. One painter is
distinguished by his exquisite finishing. He toils day after day to
bring the veins of a cabbage leaf, the folds of a lace veil, the
wrinkles of an old woman’s face, nearer and nearer to perfection. In
the time which he employs on a square foot of canvass, a master of
a different order covers the walls of a palace with gods burying
giants under mountains, or makes the cupola of a church alive with
seraphim and martyrs. The more fervent the passion of each of
these artists for his art, the higher the merit of each in his own line,
the more unlikely it is that they will justly appreciate each other.
Many persons who never handled a pencil probably do far more
justice to Michael Angelo than would have been done by Gerard
Douw, and far more justice to Gerard Douw than would have been
done by Michael Angelo.
It is the same with literature. Thousands, who have no spark of
the genius of Dryden or Wordsworth, do to Dryden the justice which
has never been done by Wordsworth, and to Wordsworth the justice
which, we suspect, would never have been done by Dryden. Gray,
Johnson, Richardson, Fielding, are all highly esteemed by the great
body of intelligent and well informed men. But Gray could see no
merit in Rasselas; and Johnson could see no merit in the Bard.
Fielding thought Richardson a solemn prig; and Richardson
perpetually expressed contempt and disgust for Fielding’s lowness.
Mr. Crisp seems, as far as we can judge, to have been a man
eminently qualified for the useful office of a connoisseur. His talents
and knowledge fitted him to appreciate justly almost every species
of intellectual superiority. As an adviser he was inestimable. Nay, he
might probably have held a respectable rank as a writer, if he would
have confined himself to some department of literature in which
nothing more than sense, taste, and reading was required.
Unhappily he set his heart on being a great poet, wrote a tragedy in
five acts on the death of Virginia, and offered it to Garrick, who was
his personal friend. Garrick read, shook his head, and expressed a
doubt whether it would be wise in Mr. Crisp to stake a reputation,
which stood high, on the success of such a piece. But the author,
blinded by ambition, set in motion a machinery such as none could
long resist. His intercessors were the most eloquent man and the
most lovely woman of that veneration. Pitt was induced to read
Virginia, and to pronounce it excellent. Lady Coventry, with fingers
which might have furnished a model to sculptors, forced the
manuscript into the reluctant hand of the manager; and, in the year
1754, the play was brought forward.
Nothing that skill or friendship could do was omitted. Garrick
wrote both prologue and epilogue. The zealous friends of the author
filled every box; and, by their strenuous exertions, the life of the
play was prolonged during ten nights. But, though there was no
clamorous reprobation, it was universally felt that the attempt had
failed. When Virginia was printed, the public disappointment was
even greater than at the representation. The critics, the Monthly
Reviewers in particular, fell on plot, characters, and diction without
mercy, but, we fear, not without justice. We have never met with a
copy of the play; but, if we may judge from the scene which is
extracted in the Gentleman’s Magazine, and which does not appear
to have been malevolently selected, we should say that nothing but
the acting of Garrick, and the partiality of the audience, could have
saved so feeble and unnatural a drama from instant damnation.
The ambition of the poet was still unsubdued. When the London
season closed, he applied himself vigorously to the work of removing
blemishes. He does not seem to have suspected, what we are
strongly inclined to suspect, that the whole piece was one blemish,
and that the passages which were meant to be fine, were, in truth,
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Organizational Behavior Emerging Realities for the WorkPlace Revolution 4th Edition McShane Test Bank

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  • 5. c10 Student: ___________________________________________________________________________ 1. Self-directed work teams are typically responsible for a specialized skill, such as accounting or maintenance. True False 2. Members of SDWTs have enriched and enlarged jobs. True False 3. Self-directed work teams control most work inputs, work processes, and output quality. True False 4. In most self-directed work teams, the supervisor assigns tasks that individual team members perform. True False 5. Self-directed work teams are designed for production processes but not for administrative or service activities. True False 6. According to sociotechnical systems theory, the work site's social and technological systems should become more compatible to improve team dynamics and job enrichment. True False 7. Controlling key variances and joint optimization are two elements found in all team building activities. True False 8. According to sociotechnical systems theory, self-directed work teams operate best where they are responsible for an entire work process that is fairly independent of other work units. True False
  • 6. 9. Self-directed work teams operate best when they are highly interdependent with other work teams. True False 10. In sociotechnical systems theory, joint optimization refers to the idea that a balance must be struck between the social and technical systems. True False 11. Joint optimization represents a team-based version of autonomy in job enrichment. True False 12. Volvo's Kalmer and Uddevalla plants have developed a near-perfect sociotechnical system where the social and technical systems are designed for maximum productivity and employee wellbeing. True False 13. Self-directed work teams tend to work better in cultures with low power distance. True False 14. Self-directed work teams are more difficult to implement in high power distance cultures. True False 15. Employees with individualistic values tend be more satisfied working in self-directed work teams. True False 16. When companies introduce self-directed work teams, supervisors must change from command and control bosses to hands-off facilitators. True False 17. Supervisors tend to adjust more easily to their new roles in self-directed work teams when they have worked in high-involvement workplaces. True False
  • 7. 18. Many union leaders are concerned that self-directed work team practices may cause them to lose hard-fought union member rights. True False 19. Virtual teams are usually permanent functional groups that communicate mainly through weekly face-to-face meetings. True False 20. Virtual team members are mutually accountable for achieving common goals associated with organizational objectives. True False 21. A critical feature of virtual teams is that they are co-located. True False 22. In a typical virtual team, one member located near headquarters is the source of all communication among team members. True False 23. Virtual teams are becoming more common because companies are encouraging employees in distant parts of the organization to share knowledge with each other. True False 24. The shift towards knowledge-based rather than production-based work has made virtual teamwork feasible. True False 25. The shift from production to knowledge-based work has resulted in fewer virtual teams than in the past. True False 26. One problem with virtual teams is that they create more silos of knowledge. True False
  • 8. 27. Due to globalization, companies are usually unable to form virtual teams. True False 28. The team effectiveness model does not apply to virtual teams. True False 29. Due to the lack of face-to-face communication, virtual teams tend to have fewer problems with status differences. True False 30. Virtual teams operate best in tasks that require no interdependence among team members. True False 31. Virtual teams have more difficulty than conventional teams at performing ambiguous and complex tasks. True False 32. Compared with conventional teams, virtual teams experience fewer problems as the number of team members increases. True False 33. Virtual teams have more cohesiveness when they are able to meet face-to-face. True False 34. Trust occurs when we have positive expectations about another party's intentions and actions toward us in situations involving vulnerability. True False 35. Identification-based trust is the most robust or sturdy form of trust in work relationships. True False
  • 9. 36. Calculus-based trust is based on the belief that the other party will deliver its promises because punishments would be applied if they fail to deliver those promises. True False 37. Knowledge-based trust is based on the belief that the other party will deliver its promises because punishments would be applied if they fail to deliver those promises. True False 38. Knowledge-based trust develops over time. True False 39. Calculus-based trust is the best form of trust to have in virtual teams. True False 40. When people join teams, they usually begin with a very low level of trust in the other team members. True False 41. The trust that new team members feel towards their teammates is fragile and easily weakened. True False 42. Research indicates that trust in virtual teams tends to decrease rather than increase over time. True False 43. Production blocking occurs when employees are unable to complete their tasks because they spend too much time in meetings. True False 44. Production blocking causes team members to pay less attention to the conversation or to forget their own ideas. True False
  • 10. 45. Evaluation apprehension causes employees to present ideas to the group even though the ideas are silly and a waste of the group's time. True False 46. Many potentially valuable ideas never get presented to the group because individuals think they are silly and would make them look equally silly to the team. True False 47. Evaluation apprehension is most common in meetings attended by people with different levels of status or expertise. True False 48. Groupthink and evaluation apprehension are two characteristics of effective decision-making teams. True False 49. A symptom of groupthink is that the team feels comfortable with risky decisions because possible weaknesses are suppressed or glossed over. True False 50. Groupthink is more likely to occur when the team has experienced recent success in other decision-making problems. True False 51. Groupthink goes beyond the problem of conformity by focusing on how decisions go awry when team members try to maintain harmony. True False 52. Group polarization partly occurs because team members become comfortable with more extreme positions when they realize through open discussion that other members hold similar views. True False
  • 11. 53. Group polarization is a condition in which team members cannot agree on a solution to a problem because some team members hold completely opposing views about the issue. True False 54. Group polarization causes teams to make more extreme decisions than the average individual in the group would make alone. True False 55. Constructive conflict occurs when team members hold different opinions and assumptions and debate the issues through an open, healthy dialogue. True False 56. One problem with constructive conflict is that it can easily slide into personal attacks. True False 57. Constructive conflict encourages participants to re-examine their assumptions and logic. True False 58. An important rule in brainstorming is that no one is allowed to evaluate or criticize another team member's ideas. True False 59. One of the rules of brainstorming is that no one is allowed to piggyback or build on the ideas of other team members. True False 60. One of the main advantages of brainstorming is that this process removes most production blocking. True False 61. Brainstorming sessions tend to spread more enthusiasm among participants than in electronic brainstorming sessions. True False
  • 12. 62. Electronic brainstorming is any situation in which team members communicate through email and other computer technologies to make decisions. True False 63. Electronic brainstorming relies mainly on email and electronic chat rooms to make decisions. True False 64. Electronic brainstorming significantly reduces the problem of production blocking. True False 65. The Delphi method allows the decision-making team to meet face-to-face whenever they want. True False 66. The nominal group technique tends to produce more and better ideas than do traditional interacting groups. True False 67. The nominal group technique removes the problems of evaluation apprehension and production blocking. True False 68. One benefit of team building is that it doesn't affect the team development process. True False 69. Some team-building interventions clarify the team's performance goals and increase the team's motivation to accomplish these goals. True False 70. Dialogue is a team building process that attempts to help team members build trust and open communication. True False
  • 13. 71. Team building interventions often fail because they are offered as a three-day jump-start rather than an ongoing process. True False 72. One advantage of team building activities is that they solve a variety of problems with team composition. True False 73. Team building activities rarely include follow-up consultation to ensure what was learned in the activity was transferred back on the job. True False 74. Which of these statements about self-directed work teams (SDWTs) is TRUE? A. SDWTs typically work in a separate building from other employees in the organization. B. SDWTs are responsible for most work inputs, workflow activities and output quality standards. C. SDWTs are mainly identified as groups that operate as virtual teams at least once each week. D. SDWTs represent a very low level of employee involvement. E. All of these statements are true. 75. Self-directed work teams: A. have not yet been introduced into Canada. B. rely on supervisors to communicate between the team and senior management. C. perform a variety of tasks but have little autonomy regarding how to perform those tasks. D. are more common in Canada than in the United States. E. None of these statements is true. 76. Which of the following allows employees to collectively plan, organize, and control work activities with little or no direct involvement of a higher-status supervisor? A. Gainsharing plans B. Production teams C. Joint health and safety committees D. Self-directed work teams E. None of these is true.
  • 14. 77. Self-directed work teams: A. are informal groups. B. usually exist as communities of practice. C. have substantial autonomy over the execution of a complete task. D. consist of a group of employees led by their immediate supervisor. E. are common in Europe but rarely found in North America. 78. Members of SDWTs have jobs that are: A. typically in services rather than production. B. enlarged but not enriched. C. enriched but not enlarged. D. specialized with a high division of labor. E. both enlarged and enriched. 79. SDWTs tend to be more useful where: A. employees perform identical tasks. B. employees require direct supervision to motivate them. C. employees perform tasks that are independent of each other. D. all of these conditions exist. E. none of these conditions exists. 80. SDWTs are best suited to situations where: A. employees perform highly interdependent tasks. B. management wants to closely monitor employee performance. C. employees perform identical tasks. D. employees do not get along with each other. E. all of these conditions exist. 81. Sociotechnical systems theory is the conceptual foundation for: A. dialogue meetings. B. team building. C. individual decision making. D. conflict management E. self-directed work teams.
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  • 16. 82. Which of the following explains how self-directed work teams should be designed? A. Open book management B. Team building C. Sociotechnical systems theory D. Bounded rationality E. Expectancy theory 83. Sociotechnical systems theory says that an SDWT must have sufficient ________ to manage the work process. A. closure B. knowledge-based trust. C. supervision D. autonomy E. Sociotechnical systems theory does not require any of these features. 84. According to sociotechnical systems theory, autonomy is: A. one of the four main conditions for self-directed work teams. B. the main reason why self-directed work teams fail. C. the main source of groupthink. D. a key variance. E. the most common reason why self-directed work teams lack joint optimization 85. Sociotechnical systems theory is based on the idea that: A. teams work best when there is 'joint optimization' between the social and technical systems of the work unit. B. employees are unable to think for themselves. C. managers usually have better ideas than employees. D. employees work best alone rather than in teams. E. technology should determine how the work process is structured. 86. In sociotechnical systems theory, the philosophy that a balance must be struck between the social and technical systems to maximize the operation's effectiveness is called: A. joint optimization. B. autonomy. C. the primary work unit principle. D. controlling key variances. E. none of these.
  • 17. 87. The concepts of joint optimization and primary work unit are part of: A. group polarization. B. escalation of commitment C. employee engagement. D. gainsharing. E. sociotechnical systems theory 88. Sociotechnical theory does NOT recommend that: A. the team should have autonomy to decide how to divide up work among its members. B. the team should be assigned a complete work process. C. the team should have control over disturbances or interruptions that affect the quality of the product or service. D. the team's structure should be influenced mainly by technology. E. the team should operate without close supervision. 89. Sociotechnical systems theory recommends that SDWTs should be a "primary work unit." This means that: A. team members should be similar to each other in terms of the primary categories of diversity. B. SDWT members should receive higher pay than employees who are not in SDWTs. C. the team's structure is influenced primarily by the technology used by the team. D. the team completes an entire product or service that requires minimal interdependence with other work units. E. None of these statements relates to the meaning of "primary work unit." 90. In sociotechnical systems theory, joint optimization is: A. the practice of having two teams learning how to work together more effectively. B. the practice of ensuring that the team can decide how to divide up work among its members as well as how to coordinate that work. C. a serious problem that undermines the effectiveness of self-directed work teams. D. the opposite of collective self-regulation. E. none of statements relates to the meaning of "joint optimization." 91. In sociotechnical systems theory, joint optimization is: A. the belief that a balance must be struck between the social and technical systems to maximize the operation's effectiveness. B. the practice of ensuring that the team can decide how to divide up work among its members as well as how to coordinate that work. C. the practice of having two teams learning how to work together more effectively. D. the opposite of autonomy. E. the practice of minimizing conflict between management and employees.
  • 18. 92. Which of the following is NOT explicitly included in sociotechnical systems theory? A. Joint optimization B. Bounded rationality C. Autonomy D. Primary work unit E. Key variances 93. Sociotechnical systems theory explicitly refers to all of the following concepts EXCEPT: A. autonomy. B. key variances. C. calculus-based trust. D. primary work unit. E. joint optimization. 94. Joint optimization assumes that: A. employees would prefer to work alone than in teams. B. people are imperfect decision makers. C. technology is flexible enough to support a semi-autonomous team-based structure. D. teams make better decisions than do individuals working alone. E. Joint optimization assumes none of these statements. 95. One problem with sociotechnical systems theory is that it: A. does not apply to SDWTs involving services and other non-production activities. B. originated in the United States and does not seem to work in European countries. C. ignores the fact that teams need some autonomy to perform the work more effectively. D. is very difficult to implement in organizations with fewer than 100 employees. E. does not identify the best way to align social and technical systems for the SDWT's optimal performance. 96. Self-directed work teams are more difficult to apply: A. in organizations with fewer than 100 employees. B. in cultures with high power distance. C. where the work involves performing a service rather than making a product. D. where supervisors previously worked in high-involvement workplaces. E. in all of these situations.
  • 19. 97. Self-directed work teams are more difficult to implement in cultures with: A. low power distance and low collectivism. B. high power distance and low collectivism. C. low power distance and high collectivism. D. high power distance and high collectivism. E. Power distance and collectivism have no effect on the implementation of self-directed work teams. 98. Self-directed work teams are more difficult to implement effectively: A. in societies with high power distance and high individualism values. B. when managers are concerned that they will lose their jobs. C. when labor union leaders believe that the employee involvement activity will produce more intense work effort and higher stress levels. D. when employees are uncomfortable exploring new roles in their jobs. E. in all of these situations. 99. Which of the following is a barrier to implementing self-directed work teams (SDWTs)? A. Employees feel uncertain about the new and ambiguous roles they must acquire in SDWTs. B. Supervisors are reluctant to give up their role as facilitators. C. Executives are concerned that SDWTs will give them too much control over employee behavior. D. All of these conditions are barriers to SDWTs. E. None of these conditions is a barrier to SDWTs. 100. Virtual teams are best described as: A. groups of employees who are almost (virtually) identical to each other in skills and values. B. cross-functional groups of employees that operate across space, time and organizational boundaries. C. formal work teams in which most members do not feel that they are really part of the team. D. informal groups that meet only in cyberspace. E. groups of employees from different departments who are located near each other. 101. Dependence on information technology and lack of co-location represent two factors that distinguish: A. employees with high collectivist values from employees with low collectivist values. B. self-directed work teams from task forces. C. virtual teams from conventional teams. D. task forces from permanent teams. E. managers from employees.
  • 20. 102. Two features that distinguish virtual teams from conventional teams are: A. size and heterogeneity. B. lack of co-location and dependence on information technology. C. joint optimization and primary work unit. D. norms and trust. E. None of these factors distinguishes virtual teams from conventional teams. 103. Globalization and knowledge management have made ______ necessary for organizations to remain competitive. A. groupthink B. virtual teams C. command-and-control management D. Delphi method E. None of these is necessary as a result of globalization and knowledge management. 104. The increasing number of virtual teams is partly due to: A. increased preference for employees to work alone rather than interdependently with others. B. increased emphasis on business ethics. C. increased workforce diversity. D. better information technology. E. none of these factors explains the increasing number of virtual teams. 105. Virtual teams are increasingly necessary because: A. people perform better when they work alone. B. computer networks make distances among people less relevant. C. companies are becoming globalized, yet need to minimize silos of knowledge. D. companies have shifted from production-based to knowledge-based work. E. all of these factors make virtual teams increasingly necessary. 106. Virtual teams are becoming increasingly common because of: A. globalization. B. improvements in information technology. C. the need to minimize silos of knowledge. D. the shift from production-based to knowledge-based work. E. all of these factors have increased the presence of virtual teams.
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  • 22. Then the King answers, with less heat but equal severity—“You know that you behaved shamefully in Prussia. It was well for you that you had to deal with a man so indulgent to the infirmities of genius as I am. You richly deserved to see the inside of a dungeon. Your talents are not more widely known than your faithlessness and your malevolence. The grave itself is no asylum from your spite. Maupertuis is dead; but you still go on calumniating and deriding him, as if you had not made him miserable enough while he was living. Let us have no more of this. And, above all, let me hear no more of your niece. I am sick to death of her name. I can bear with your faults for the sake of your merits; but she has not written Mahomet or Merope.” An explosion of this kind, it might be supposed, would necessarily put an end to all amicable communication. But it was not so. After every outbreak of ill humour this extraordinary pair became more loving than before, and exchanged compliments and assurances of mutual regard with a wonderful air of sincerity. It may well be supposed that men who wrote thus to each other, were not very guarded in what they said of each other. The English ambassador, Mitchell, who knew that the King of Prussia was constantly writing to Voltaire with the greatest freedom on the most important subjects, was amazed to hear his Majesty designate this highly favoured correspondent as a bad-hearted fellow, the greatest rascal on the face of the earth. And the language which the poet held about the King was not much more respectful. It would probably have puzzled Voltaire himself to say what was his real feeling towards Frederic. It was compounded of all sentiments, from enmity to friendship, and from scorn to admiration; and the proportions in which these elements were mixed, changed every moment. The old patriarch resembled the spoiled child who screams, stamps, cuffs, laughs, kisses, and cuddles within one quarter of an hour. His resentment was not extinguished; yet he was not without sympathy for his old friend. As a Frenchman, he wished success to the arms of his country. As a philosopher, he was anxious
  • 23. for the stability of a throne on which a philosopher sat. He longed both to save and to humble Frederic. There was one way, and only one, in which all his conflicting feelings could at once be gratified. If Frederic were preserved by the interference of France, if it were known that for that interference he was indebted to the mediation of Voltaire, this would indeed be delicious revenge; this would indeed be to heap coals of fire on that haughty head. Nor did the vain and restless poet think it impossible that he might, from his hermitage near the Alps, dictate peace to Europe. D’Estrdes had quitted Hanover, and the command of the French army had been intrusted to the Duke of Richelieu, a man whose chief distinction was derived from his success in gallantry. Richelieu was in truth the most eminent of that race of seducers by profession, who furnished Cordbillon the younger and La Clos with models for their heroes. In his earlier days the royal house itself had not been secure from his presumptuous love. He was believed to have carried his conquests into the family of Orleans; and some suspected that he was not unconcerned in the mysterious remorse which embittered the last hours of the charming mother of Lewis the Fifteenth. But the Duke was now sixty years old. With a heart deeply corrupted by vice, a head long accustomed to think only on trifles, an impaired constitution, an impaired fortune, and, worst of all, a very red nose, he was entering on a dull, frivolous, and unrespected old age. Without one qualification for military command, except that personal courage which was common between him and the whole nobility of France, he had been placed at the head of the army of Hanover; and in that situation he did his best to repair, by extortion and corruption, the injury which he had done to his property by a life of dissolute profusion. The Duke of Richelieu to the end of his life hated the philosophers as a sect, not for those parts of their system which a good and wise man would have condemned, but for their virtues, for their spirit of free inquiry, and for their hatred of those social abuses of which he was himself the personification. But he, like many of those who thought with him, excepted Voltaire from the list of proscribed
  • 24. writers. He frequently sent flattering letters to Ferney. He did the patriarch the honour to borrow money of him, and even carried this condescending friendship so far as to forget to pay the interest. Voltaire thought that it might be in his power to bring the Duke and the King of Prussia into communication with each other. He wrote earnestly to both; and he so far succeeded that a correspondence between them was commenced. But it was to very different means that Frederic was to owe is deliverance. At the beginning of November the net seemed to have closed completely round him. The Russians were in the field, and were spreading devastation through his eastern provinces. Silesia was overrun by the Austrians. A great French army was advancing from the west under the command of Marshal Soubise, a prince of the great Armorican house of Rohan. Berlin itself had been taken and plundered by the Croatians. Such was the situation from which Frederic extricated himself, with dazzling glory, in the short space of thirty days. He marched first against Soubise. On the fifth of November the armies met at Rosbaeh. The French were two to one; but they were ill disciplined, and their general was a dunce. The tactics of Frederic, and the well-regulated valour of the Prussian troops, obtained a complete victory. Seven thousand of the invaders were made prisoners. Their guns, their colours, their baggage, fell into the hands of the conquerors. Those who escaped fled as confusedly as a mob scattered by cavalry. Victorious in the West, the King turned his arms towards Silesia. In that quarter every thing seemed to be lost. Breslau had fallen; and Charles of Loraine, with a mighty power, held the whole province! On the fifth of December, exactly one month after the battle of Rosbaeh, Frederic, with forty thousand men, and Prince Charles, at the head of not less than sixty thousand, met at Leuthen, hard by Breslau. The King, who was, in general, perhaps too much inclined to consider the common soldier as a mere machine, resorted, on this great day, to means resembling those which Bonaparte afterwards employed with such signal success for the purpose of stimulating military enthusiasm. The principal officers were convoked. Frederic addressed them with great force and
  • 25. pathos; and directed them to speak to their men as he had spoken to them. When the armies were set in battle array, the Prussian troops were in a state of fierce excitement; but their excitement showed itself after the fashion of a grave people. The columns advanced to the attack chanting, to the sound of drums and fifes, the rude hymns of the old Saxon Sternholds. They had never fought so well: nor had the genius of their chief ever been so conspicuous. “That battle,” said Napoleon, “was a masterpiece. Of itself it is sufficient to entitle Frederic to a place in the first rank among generals.” The victory was complete. Twenty-seven thousand Austrians were killed, wounded, or taken; fifty stand of colours, a hundred guns, four thousand waggons, fell into the hands of the Prussians. Breslau opened its gates; Silesia was reconquered; Charles of Loraine retired to hide his shame and sorrow at Brussels; and Frederic allowed his troops to take some repose in winter quarters, after a campaign, to the vicissitudes of which it will be difficult to find any parallel in ancient or modern history. The King’s fame filled all the world. He had, during the last year, maintained a contest, on terms of advantage, against three powers, the weakest of which had more than three times his resources. He had fought four great pitched battles against superior forces. Three of these battles he had gained; and the defeat of Kolin, repaired as it had been, rather raised than lowered his military renown. The victory of Leuthen is, to this day, the proudest on the roll of Prussian fame. Leipsic indeed, and Waterloo, produced consequences more important to mankind. But the glory of Leipsic must be shared by the Prussians with the Austrians and Russians; and at Waterloo the British Infantry bore the burden and heat of the day. The victory of Rosbach was, in a military point of view, less honourable than that of Leuthen; for it was gained over an incapable general and a disorganized army; but the moral effect which it produced was immense. All the preceding triumphs of Frederic had been triumphs over Germans, and could excite no emotions of national pride among the German people. It was impossible that a Hessian or a Hanoverian could feel any patriotic exultation at hearing that
  • 26. Pomeranians had slaughtered Moravians, or that Saxon banners had been hung in the churches of Berlin. Indeed, though the military character of the Germans justly stood high throughout the world, they could boast of no great day which belonged to them as a people; of no Agincourt, of no Bannockburn. Most of their victories had been gained over each other; and their most splendid exploits against foreigners had been achieved under the command of Eugene, who was himself a foreigner. The news of the battle of Ros- bach stirred the blood of the whole of the mighty population from the Alps to the Baltic, and from the borders of Courland to those of Loraine. Westphalia and Lower Saxony had been deluged by a great host of strangers, whose speech was unintelligible, and whose petulant and licentious manners had excited the strongest feelings of disgust and hatred. That great host had been put to flight by a small band of German warriors, led by a prince of German blood on the side of father and mother, and marked by the fair hair and clear blue eye of Germany. Never since the dissolution of the empire of Charlemagne, had the Teutonic race won such a field against the French. The tidings called forth a general burst of delight and pride from the whole of the great family which spoke the varions dialects of the ancient language of Arminius. The fame of Frederic began to supply, in some degree, the place of a common government and of a common capital. It became a rallying point for all true Germans, a subject of mutual congratulation to the Bavarian and the Westphalian, to the citizen of Frankfort and the citizen of Nuremburg. Then first it was manifest that the Germans were truly a nation. Then first was discernible that patriotic spirit which, in 1813, achieved the great deliverance of central Europe, and which still guards, and long will guard, against foreign ambition the old freedom of the Rhine. Nor were the effects produced by that celebrated day merely political. The greatest masters of German poetry and eloquence have admitted that, though the great King neither valued nor understood his native language, though he looked on France as the only seat of taste and philosophy, yet, in his own despite, he did
  • 27. much to emancipate the genius of his countrymen from the foreign yoke; and that, in the act of vanquishing Soubise, he was, unintentionally, rousing the spirit which soon began to question the literary precedence of Boileau and Voltaire. So strangely do events confound all the plans of man. A prince who read only French, who wrote only French, who aspired to rank as a French classic, became, quite unconsciously, the means of liberating half the Continent from the dominion of that French criticism of which he was himself, to the end of his life, a slave. Yet even the enthusiasm of Germany in favour of Frederic hardly equalled the enthusiasm of England. The birth-day of our ally was celebrated with as much enthusiasm as that of our own sovereign: and at night the streets of London were in a blaze with illuminations. Portraits of the hero of Rosbach, with his cocked hat and long pigtail, were in every house. An attentive observer will, at this day, find in the parlours of old-fashioned inns, and in the portfolios of print-sellers, twenty portraits of Frederic for one of George the Second. The sign painters were everywhere employed in touching up Admiral Vernon into the King of Prussia. This enthusiasm was strong among religions people, and especially among the Methodists, who knew that the French and Austrians were Papists, and supposed Frederic to be the Joshua or Gideon of the Reformed Faith. One of Whitfield’s hearers, on the day on which thanks for the battle of Leuthen were returned at the Tabernacle, made the following exquisitely ludicrous entry in a diary, part of which has come down to us: “The Lord stirred up the King of Prussia and his soldiers to pray. They kept three fast days, and spent about an hour praying and singing psalms before they engaged the enemy. O! how good it is to pray and fight!” Some young Englishmen of rank proposed to visit Germany as volunteers, for the purpose of learning the art of war under the greatest, of commanders. This last proof of British attachment and admiration, Frederic politely but firmly declined. His camp was no place for amateur students of military science. The Prussian discipline was rigorous even to cruelty. The officers, while in the field, were expected to practise an abstemiousness and self-denial, such as was hardly surpassed by the most rigid monastic orders. However noble their birth, however high
  • 28. their rank in the service, they were not permitted to eat from any thing better than pewter. It was a high crime even in a count and field-marshal to have a single silver spoon among his baggage. Gay young Englishmen of twenty thousand a year, accustomed to liberty and to luxury, would not easily submit to these Spartan restraints. The King could not venture to keep them in order as he kept his own subjects in order. Situated as he was with respect to England, he could not well imprison or shoot refractory Howards and Cavendishes. On the other hand, the example of a few fine gentlemen, attended by chariots and livery servants, eating in plate, and drinking Champagne and Tokay, was enough to corrupt his whole army. He thought it best to make a stand at first, and civilly refused to admit such dangerous companions among his troops. The help of England was bestowed in a manner far more useful and more acceptable. An annual subsidy of near seven hundred thousand pounds enabled the King to add probably more than fifty thousand men to his army. Pitt, now at the height of power and popularity, undertook the task of defending Western Germany against France, and asked Frederic only the loan of a general. The general selected was Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, who had attained high distinction in the Prussian service. He was put at the head of an army, partly English, partly Hanoverian, partly composed of mercenaries hired from the petty princes of the empire. He soon vindicated the choice of the two allied courts, and proved himself the second general of the age. Frederic passed the winter at Breslau, in reading, writing, and preparing for the next campaign. The havoc which the war had made among his troops was rapidly repaired; and in the spring of 1758 he was again ready for the conflict. Prince Ferdinand kept the French in check. The King in the mean time, after attempting against the Austrians some operations which led to no very important results, marched to encounter the Russians, who, slaying, burning, and wasting wherever they turned, had penetrated into the heart of his realm. He gave them battle at Zorndorf, near Frank fort on the
  • 29. Oder. The fight was long and bloody. Quarter was neither given nor taken; for the Germans and Scythians regarded each other with bitter aversion, and the sight of the ravages committed by the halfsavage invaders had incensed the King and his army. The Russians were overthrown with great slaughter: and for a few months no further danger was to be apprehended from the east. A day of thanksgiving was proclaimed by the King, and was celebrated with pride and delight by his people. The rejoicings in England were not less enthusiastic or less sincere. This may be selected as the point of time at which the military glory of Frederic reached the zenith. In the short space of three quarters of a year he had won three great battles over the armies of three mighty and warlike monarchies, France, Austria and Russia. But it was decreed that the temper of that strong mind should be tried by both extremes of fortune in rapid succession. Close upon this series of triumphs came a series of disasters, such as would have blighted the fame and broken the heart of almost any other commander. Yet Frederic, in the midst of his calamities, was still an object of admiration to his subjects, his allies, and his enemies. Overwhelmed by adversity, sick of life, he still maintained the contest, greater in defeat, in flight, and in what seemed hopeless ruin, than on the fields of his proudest victories. Having vanquished the Russians, he hastened into Saxony to oppose the troops of the Empress Queen, commanded by Daun, the most cautious, and Landohn, the most inventive and enterprising of her generals. These two celebrated commanders agreed on a scheme, in which the prudence of the one and the vigour of the other seemed to have been happily combined. At dead of night they surprised the King in his camp at Hochkirchen. His presence of mind saved his troops from destruction; but nothing could save them from defeat and severe loss. Marshal Keith was among the slain. The first roar of the guns roused the noble exile from his rest, and he was instantly in the front of the battle. He received a dangerous wound, but refused to quit the field, and was
  • 30. in the act of rallying his broken troops, when an Austrian bullet terminated his chequered and eventual life. The misfortune was serious. But of all generals Frederic understood best how to repair defeat, and Daun understood least how to improve victory. In a few days the Prussian army was as formidable as before the battle. The prospect was, however, gloomy. An Austrian army under General Harsch had invaded Silesia, and invested the fortress of Neisse. Daun, after his success at Hochkirchen, had written to Harsch in very confident terms:—“Go on with your operations against Neisse. Be quite at ease as to the King. I will give a good account of him.” In truth, the position of the Prussians was full of difficulties. Between them and Silesia lay the victorious army of Daun. It was not easy for them to reach Silesia at all. If they did reach it, they left Saxony exposed to the Austrians. But the vigour and activity of Frederic surmounted every obstacle. He made a circuitous march of extraordinary rapidity, passed Daun, hastened into Silesia, raised the siege of Neisse, and drove Harsch into Bohemia. Daun availed himself of the King’s absence to attack Dresden. The Prussians defended it desperately. The inhabitants of that wealthy and polished capital begged in vain for mercy from the garrison within, and from the besiegers without. The beautiful suburbs were burned to the ground. It was clear that the town if won at all, would be won street by street by the bayonet. At this conjuncture, came news that Frederic, having cleared Silesia of his enemies, was returning by forced marches into Saxony. Daun retired from before Dresden, and fell back into the Austrian territories. The King, over heaps of ruins, made his triumphant entry into the unhappy metropolis, which had so cruelly expiated the weak and perfidious policy of its sovereign. It was now the twentieth of November. The cold weather suspended military operations; and the King again took up his winter quarters at Breslau. The third of the seven terrible years was over; and Frederic still stood his ground. He had been recently tried by domestic as well as
  • 31. by military disasters. On the fourteenth of October, the day on which he was defeated at Hoehkirchen, the day on the anniversary of which, forty-eight years later, a defeat far more tremendous laid the Prussian monarchy in the dust, died Wilhelmina, Margravine of Bareuth. From the accounts which we have of her, by her own hand, and by the hands of the most discerning of her contemporaries, we should pronounce her to have been coarse, indelicate, and a good hater, but not destitute of kind and generous feelings. Her mind, naturally strong and observant, had been highly cultivated; and she was, and deserved to be, Frederic’s favourite sister. He felt the loss as much as it was in his iron nature to feel the loss of any thing but a province or a battle. At Breslau, during the winter, he was indefatigable in his poetical labours. The most spirited lines, perhaps, that he ever wrote, are to be found in a bitter lampoon on Lewis and Madame de Pompadour, which he composed at this time, and sent to Voltaire. The verses were, indeed, so good, that Voltaire was afraid that he might himself be suspected of having written them, or at least of having corrected them; and partly from fright, partly, we fear, from love of mischief, sent them to the Duke of Choiseul, then prime minister of France. Choiseul very wisely determined to encounter Frederic at Frederic’s own weapons, and applied for assistance to Palissot, who had some skill as a versifier, and some little talent for satire. Palissot produced some very stinging lines on the moral and literary character of Frederic, and these lines the Duke sent to Voltaire.
  • 32. This war of couplets, following close on the carnage of Zorndorf and the conflagration of Dresden, illustrates well the strangely compounded character of the King of Prussia. At this moment he was assailed by a new enemy. Benedict the Fourteenth, the best and wisest of the two hundred and fifty successors of St. Peter, was no more. During the short interval between his reign and that of his disciple Ganganelli, the chief seat in the Church of Rome was filled by Rezzonico, who took the name of Clement the Thirteenth. This absurd priest determined to try what the weight of his authority could effect in favour of the orthodox Maria Theresa against a heretic king. At the high mass on Christmas- day, a sword with a rich belt and scabbard, a hat of crimson velvet lined with ermine, and a dove of pearl, the mystic symbol of the Divine Comforter, were solemnly blessed by the supreme pontiff, and were sent with great ceremony to Marshal Daun, the conqueror of Kolin and Hochkirchen. This mark of favour had more than once been bestowed by the Popes on the great champions of the faith. Similar honours had been paid, more than six centuries earlier, by Urban the Second to Godfrey of Bouillon. Similar honours had been conferred on Alba for destroying the liberties of the Low Countries, and on John Sobiesky after the deliverance of Vienna. But the presents which were received with profound reverence by the Baron of the Holy Sepulchre in the eleventh century, and which had not wholly lost their value even in the seventeenth century, appeared inexpressibly ridiculous to a generation which read Montesquieu and Voltaire. Frederic wrote sarcastic verses on the gifts, the giver, and the receiver. But the public wanted no prompter; and an universal roar of laughter from Petersburg to Lisbon reminded the Vatican that the age of crusades was over. The fourth campaign, the most disastrous of all the campaigns of this fearful war, had now opened. The Austrians filled Saxony and menaced Berlin. The Russians defeated the King’s generals on the Oder, threatened Silesia, effected a junction with Laudolm, and intrenched themselves strongly at Kunersdorf.
  • 33. Frederic hastened to attack them. A great battle was fought. During the earlier part of the day every thing yielded to the impetuosity of the Prussians, and to the skill of their chief. The lines were forced. Half the Russian guns were taken. The King sent off a courier to Berlin with two lines, announcing a complete victory. But, in the mean time, the stubborn Russians, defeated yet unbroken, had taken up their stand in an almost impregnable position, on an eminence where the Jews of Frankfort were wont to bury their dead. Here the battle recommenced. The Prussian infantry, exhausted by six hours of hard fighting under a sun which equalled the tropical heat, were yet brought up repeatedly to the attack, but in vain. The King led three charges in person. Two horses were killed under him. The officers of his staff fell all round him. His coat was pierced by several bullets. All was in vain. His infantry was driven back with frightful slaughter. Terror began to spread fast from man to man. At that moment, the fiery cavalry of Laudolm, still fresh, rushed on the wavering ranks. Then followed an universal rout. Frederic himself was on the point of falling into the hands of the conquerors, and was with difficulty saved by a gallant officer, who, at the head of a handful of Hussars, made good a diversion of a few minutes. Shattered in body, shattered in mind, the King reached that night a village which the Cossacks had plundered; and there, in a ruined and deserted farm-house, flung himself on a heap of straw. He had sent to Berlin a second despatch very different from his first:—“Let the royal family leave Berlin. Send the archives to Potsdam. The town may make terms with the enemy.” The defeat was, in truth, overwhelming. Of fifty thousand men who had that morning marched under the black eagles, not three thousand remained together. The King bethought him again of his corrosive sublimate, and wrote to bid adieu to his friends, and to give directions as to the measures to be taken in the event of his death:—“I have no resource left”—such is the language of one of his letters—“all is lost. I will not survive the ruin of my country. Farewell for ever.”
  • 34. But the mutual jealousies of the confederates prevented them from following up their victory. They lost a few days in loitering and squabbling; and a few days, improved by Frederic, were worth more than the years of other men. On the morning after the battle, he had got together eighteen thousand of his troops. Very soon his force amounted to thirty thousand. Guns were procured from the neighbouring fortresses; and there was again an army. Berlin was for the present safe; but calamities came pouring on the King in uninterrupted succession. One of his generals, with a large body of troops, was taken at Maxen; another was defeated at Meissen; and when at length the campaign of 1709 closed, in the midst of a rigorous winter, the situation of Prussia appeared desperate. The only consoling circumstance was, that, in the West, Ferdinand of Brunswick had been more fortunate than his master; and by a series of exploits, of which the battle of Minden was the most glorious, had removed all apprehension of danger on the side of France. The fifth year was now about to commence. It seemed impossible that the Prussian territories, repeatedly devastated by hundreds of thousands of invaders, could longer support the contest. But the King carried on war as no European power has ever carried on war, except the Committee of Public Safety during the great agony of the French Revolution, He governed his kingdom as he would have governed a besieged town, not caring to what extent property was destroyed, or the pursuits of civil life suspended, so that he did but make head against the enemy. As long as there was a man left in Prussia, that man might carry a musket; as long as there was a horse left, that horse might draw artillery. The coin was debased, the civil functionaries were left unpaid; in some provinces civil government altogether ceased to exist. But there were still rye-bread and potatoes; there were still lead and gunpowder; and, while the means of sustaining and destroying life remained, Frederic was determined to fight it out to the very last. The earlier part of the campaign of 1760 was unfavourable to him. Berlin was again occupied by the enemy. Great contributions were
  • 35. levied on the inhabitants, and the royal palace was plundered. But at length, after two years of calamity, victory came back to his arms. At Lignitz he gained a great battle over Laudohn; at Torgau, after a day of horrible carnage, he triumphed over Daun. The fifth year closed, and still the event was in suspense. In the countries where the war had raged, the misery and exhaustion were more appalling than ever; but still there were left men and beasts, arms and food, and still Frederic fought on. In truth he had now been baited into savageness. His heart was ulcerated with hatred. The implacable resentment with which his enemies persecuted him, though originally provoked by his own unprincipled ambition, excited in him a thirst for vengeance which he did not even attempt to conceal. “It is hard,” he says in one of his letters, “for man to bear what I bear. I begin to feel that, as the Italians sav, revenge is a pleasure for the gods. My philosophy is worn out by suffering. I am no saint, like those of whom we read in the legends: and I will own that I should die content if only I could first inflict a portion of the misery which I endure.” Borne up by such feelings He struggled with various success, but constant glory, through the campaign of 1701. On the whole, the result of this campaign was disastrous to Prussia. No great battle was gained by the enemy; but, in spite of the desperate bounds of the hunted tiger, the circle of pursuers was fast closing round him. Laudolm had surprised the important fortress of Sehweidnitz. With that fortress, half of Silesia, and the command of the most important defiles through the mountains, had been transferred to the Austrians. The Russians had overpowered the King’s generals in Pomerania. The country was so completely desolated that he began, by his own confession, to look round him with blank despair, unable to imagine where recruits, horses, or provisions were to be found. Just at this time two great events brought on a complete change in the relations of almost all the powers of Europe. One of those events was the retirement of Mr. Pitt from office; the other was the death of the Empress Elizabeth of Russia.
  • 36. The retirement of Pitt seemed to be an omen of utter ruin to the House of Brandenburg. His proud and vehement nature was incapable of any thing that looked like either fear or treachery. He had often declared that, while he was in power, England should never make a peace of Utrecht, should never, for any selfish object, abandon an ally even in the last extremity of distress. The Continental war was his own war. He had been bold enough, he who in former times had attacked, with irresistible powers of oratory, the Hanoverian policy of Carteret, and the German subsidies of Newcastle, to declare that Hanover ought to be as dear to us as Hampshire, and that he would conquer America in Germany. He had fallen; and the power which he had exercised, not always with discretion, but always with vigour and genius, had devolved on a favourite who was the representative of the Tory party, of the party which had thwarted William, which had persecuted Marlborough, and which had given up the Catalans to the vengeance of Philip of Anjou. To make peace with France, to shake off, with all, or more than all, the speed compatible with decency, every Continental connection, these were among the chief objects of the new Minister. The policy then followed inspired Frederic with an unjust, but deep and bitter aversion to the English name, and produced effects which are still felt throughout the civilised world. To that policy it was owing that, some years later, England could not find on the whole Continent a single ally to stand by her, in her extreme need, against the House of Bourbon. To that policy it was owing that Frederic, alienated from England, was compelled to connect himself closely, during his later years, with Russia, and was induced to assist in that great crime, the fruitful parent of other great crimes, the first partition of Poland. Scarcely had the retreat of Mr. Pitt deprived Prussia of her only friend, when the death of Elizabeth produced an entire revolution in the politics of the North. The Grand Duke Peter, her nephew, who now ascended the Russian throne, was not merely free from the prejudices which his aunt had entertained against Frederic, but was a worshipper, a servile imitator of the great King. The days of the
  • 37. new Czar’s government were few and evil, but sufficient to produce a change in the whole state of Christendom. He set the Prussian prisoners at liberty, fitted them out decently, and sent them back to their master; he withdrew his troops from the provinces which Elizabeth had decided on incorporating with her dominions; and he absolved all those Prussian subjects, who had been compelled to swear fealty to Russia, from their engagements. Not content with concluding peace on terms favourable to Prussia, he solicited rank in the Prussian service, dressed himself in a Prussian uniform, wore the Black Eagle of Prussia on his breast, made preparations for visiting Prussia, in order to have an interview with the object of his idolatry, and actually sent fifteen thousand excellent troops to reinforce the shattered army of Frederic. Thus strengthened, the King speedily repaired the losses of the preceding year, reconquered Silesia, defeated Daun at Buckersdorf, invested and retook Schweidnitz, and, at the close of the year, presented to the forces of Maria Theresa a front as formidable as before the great reverses of 1759. Before the end of the campaign, his friend, the emperor Peter, having by a series of absurd insults to the institutions, manners, and feelings of his people, united them in hostility to his person and government, was deposed and murdered. The Empress, who, under the title of Catharine the Second, now assumed the supreme power, was, at the commencement of her administration, by no means partial to Frederic, and refused to permit her troops to remain under his command. But she observed the peace made by her husband; and Prussia was no longer threatened by danger from the East. England and France at the same time paired off together. They concluded a treaty, by which they bound themselves to observe neutrality with respect to the German war. Thus the coalitions on both sides were dissolved; and the original enemies, Austria and Prussia, remained alone confronting each other. Austria had undoubtedly far greater means than Prussia, and was less exhausted by hostilities; yet it seemed hardly possible that
  • 38. Austria could effect alone what she had in vain attempted to effect when supported by France on the one side, and by Russia on the other. Danger also began to menace the Imperial house from another quarter. The Ottoman Porte held threatening; language, and a hundred thousand Turks were mustered on the frontiers of Hungary. The proud and revengeful spirit of the Empress Queen at length gave way; and, in February, 1763, the peace of Hubertsburg put an end to the conflict which had, during seven years, devastated Germany. The King ceded nothing. The whole Continent in arms had proved unable to tear Silesia from that iron grasp. The war was over. Frederic was safe. His glory was beyond the reach of envy. If he had not made conquests as vast as those of Alexander, of Cæsar, and of Napoleon, if he had not, on fields of battle, enjoyed the constant success of Marlborough and Wellington, he had yet given an example unrivalled in history of what capacity and resolution can effect against the greatest superiority of power and the utmost spite of fortune. He entered Berlin in triumph, after an absence of more than six years. The streets were brilliantly lighted up; and, as he passed along in an open carriage, with Ferdinand of Brunswick at his side, the multitude saluted him with loud praises and blessings. He was moved by those marks of attachment, and repeatedly exclaimed “Long live my dear people! Long live my children!” Yet, even in the midst of that gay spectacle, He could not but perceive everywhere the traces of destruction and decay. The city had been more than once plundered. The population had considerably diminished. Berlin, however, had suffered little when compared with most parts of the kingdom. The ruin of private fortunes, the distress of all ranks, was such as might appal the firmest mind. Almost every province had been the seat of war, and of war conducted with merciless ferocity. Clouds of Croatians had descended on Silesia. Tens of thousands of Cossacks had been let loose on Pomerania and Brandenburg. The mere contributions levied by the invaders amounted, it was said, to more than a hundred millions of dollars; and the value of what they extorted was probably much less than the value of what they destroyed. The fields lay
  • 39. uncultivated. The very seed-corn had been devoured in the madness of hunger. Famine, and contagious maladies produced by famine, had swept away the herds and flocks; and there was reason to fear that a great pestilence among the human race was likely to follow in the train of that tremendous war. Near fifteen thousand houses had been burned to the ground. The population of the kingdom had in seven years decreased to the frightful extent of ten per cent. A sixth of the males capable of bearing arms had actually perished on the field of battle. In some districts, no labourers, except women, were seen in the fields at harvest-time. In others, the traveller passed shuddering through a succession of silent villages, in which not a single inhabitant remained. The currency had been debased; the authority of laws and magistrates had been suspended; the whole social system was deranged. For, during that convulsive struggle, every thing that was not military violence was anarchy. Even the army was disorganized. Some great generals, and a crowd of excellent officers, had fallen, and it had been impossible to supply their place. The difficulty of finding recruits had, towards the close of the war, been so great, that selection and rejection were impossible. Whole battalions were composed of deserters or of prisoners. It was hardly to be hoped that thirty years of repose and industry would repair the ruin produced by seven years of havoc. One consolatory circumstance, indeed, there was. No debt had been incurred. The burdens of the war had been terrible, almost insupportable; but no arrear was left to embarrass the finances in time of peace. Here, for the present, we must pause. We have accompanied Frederic to the close of his career as a warrior. Possibly, when these Memoirs are completed, we may resume the consideration of his character, and give some account of his domestic and foreign policy, and of his private habits, during the many years of tranquillity which followed the Seven Years’ War.
  • 41. T MADAME D’ARBLAY. (1) (Edinburgh Review, January, 1843.) hough the world saw and heard little of Madame D’Arblay during the last forty years of her life, and though that little did not add to her fame, there were thousands, we believe, who felt a singular emotion when they learned that she was no longer among us. The news of her death carried the minds of men back at one leap over two generations, to the time when her first literary triumphs were won. All those whom we had been accustomed to revere as intellectual patriarchs seemed children when compared with her; for Burke had sate up all night to read her writings, and Johnson had pronounced her superior to Fielding, when Rogers was still a schoolboy, and Southey still in petticoats. Yet more strange did it seem that we should just have lost one whose name had been widely celebrated before anybody had heard of some illustrious men who, twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, were, after a long and splendid career, borne with honour to the grave. Yet so it was. Francis Burney was at the height of fame and popularity before Cowper had published his first volume, before Porson had gone up to college, before Pitt had (1) Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay. Five vols. 8vo. London: 1842. taken his seat in the House of Commons, before the voice of Erskine had been once heard in Westminster Hall. Since the appearance of her first work, sixty-two years had passed; and this interval had been crowded, not only with political, but also with intellectual revolutions. Thousands of reputations had, during that period, sprung up, bloomed, withered, and disappeared. New kinds of composition had come into fashion, had got ont of fashion, had
  • 42. been derided, had been forgotten. The fooleries of Della Crusca, and the fooleries of Kotzebue, had for a time bewitched the multitude, but had left no trace behind them; nor had misdirected genius been able to save from decay the once flourishing schools of Godwin, of Darwin, and of Radcliffe. Many books, written for temporary effect, had run through six or seven editions, and had then been gathered to the novels of Afra Behn, and the epic poems of Sir Richard Blackmore. Yet the early works of Madame D’Arblay, in spite of the lapse of years, in spite of the change of manners, in spite of the popularity deservedly obtained by some of her rivals, continued to hold a high place in the public esteem. She lived to be a classic. Time set on her fame, before she went hence, that seal which is seldom set except on the fame of the departed. Like Sir Condy Rackrent in the tale, she survived her own wake, and overheard the judgment of posterity. Having always felt a warm and sincere, though not a blind admiration for her talents, we rejoiced to learn that her Diary was about to be made public. Our hopes, it is true, were not unmixed with fears. We could not forget the fate of the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, which were published ten years ago. That unfortunate book contained much that was curious and interesting. Yet it was received with a cry of disgust, and was speedily consigned to oblivion. The truth is, that it deserved its doom. It was written in Madame D’Arblay’s later style, the worst style that has ever been known among men. No genius, no information, could save from proscription a book so written. We, therefore, opened the Diary with no small anxiety, trembling lest we should light upon some of that peculiar rhetoric which deforms almost every page of the Memoirs, and which it is impossible to read without a sensation made up of mirth, shame, and loathing. We soon, however, discovered to our great delight that this Diary was kept before Madame D’Arblay became eloquent. It is, for the most part, written in her earliest and best manner, in true woman’s English, clear, natural, and lively. The two works are lying side by side before us; and we never turn from the Memoirs to the Diary without a sense of relief. The difference is as
  • 43. great as the difference between the atmosphere of a perfumer’s shop, fetid with lavender water and jasmine soap, and the air of a heath on a fine morning in May. Both works ought to be consulted by every person who wishes to be well acquainted with the history of our literature and our manners. But to read the Diary is a pleasure; to read the Memoirs will always be a task. We may, perhaps, afford some harmless amusement to our readers, if we attempt, with the help of these two books, to give them an account of the most important years of Madame D’arblay’s life. She was descended from a family which bore the name of Macburney, and which, though probably of Irish origin, had been long settled in Shropshire, and was possessed of considerable estates in that county. Unhappily, many years before her birth, the Macburneys began, as if of set purpose and in a spirit of determined rivalry, to expose and ruin themselves. The heir apparent, Mr. James Macburney, offended his father by making a runaway match with an actress from Goodman’s Fields. The old gentleman could devise no more judicious mode of wreaking vengeance on his undutiful boy than by marrying the cook. The cook gave birth to a son named Joseph, who succeeded to all the lands of the family, while James was cut off with a shilling. The favourite son, however, was so extravagant, that he soon became as poor as his disinherited brother. Both were forced to earn their bread by their labour. Joseph turned dancing master, and settled in Norfolk. James struck off the Mac from the beginning of his name, and set up as a portrait painter at Chester. Here he had a son named Charles, well known as the author of the History of Music, and as the father of two remarkable children, of a son distinguished by learning, and of a daughter still more honourably distinguished by genius. Charles early showed a taste for that art, of which, at a later period, he became the historian. He was apprenticed to a celebrated musician in London, and applied himself to study with vigour and success. He soon found a kind and munificent patron in Fulk Greville,
  • 44. a highborn and highbred man, who seems to have had in large measure all the accomplishments and all the follies, all the virtues and all the vices, which, a hundred years ago, were considered as making up the character of a fine gentleman. Under such protection, the young artist had every prospect of a brilliant career in the capital. But his health failed. It became necessary for him to retreat from the smoke and river fog of London, to the pure air of the coast. He accepted the place of organist, at Lynn, and settled at that town with a young lady who had recently become his wife. At Lynn, in June, 1752, Frances Burney was born. Nothing in her childhood indicated that she would, while still a young woman, have secured for herself an honourable and permanent place among English writers. She was shy and silent. Her brothers and sisters called her a dunce, and not without some show of reason; for at eight years old she did not know her letters. In 1760, Mr. Burney quitted Lynn for London, and took a house in Poland Street; a situation which had been fashionable in the reign of Queen Anne, but which, since that time, had been deserted by most of its wealthy and noble inhabitants. He afterwards resided in Saint Martin’s Street, on the south, side of Leicester Square. His house there is still well known, and will continue to be well known as long as our island retains any trace of civilisation; for it was the dwelling of Newton, and the square turret which distinguishes it from all the surrounding buildings was Newton’s observatory. Mr. Burney at once obtained as many pupils of the most respectable description as he had time to attend, and was thus enabled to support his family, modestly indeed, and frugally, but in comfort and independence. His professional merit obtained for him the degree of Doctor of Music from the University of Oxford; and his works on subjects connected with his art gained for him a place, respectable, though certainly not eminent, among men of letters. The progress of the mind of Frances Burney, from her ninth to her twenty-fifth year, well deserves to be recorded. When her education
  • 45. had proceeded no further than the hornbook, she lost her mother, and thenceforward she educated herself. Her father appears to have been as bad a father as a very honest, affectionate, and sweet tempered man can well be. He loved his daughter dearly; but it never seems to have occurred to him that a parent has other duties to perform to children than that of fondling them. It would indeed have been impossible, for him to superintend their education himself. His professional engagements occupied him all day. At seven in the morning he began to attend his pupils, and, when London was full, was sometimes employed in teaching till eleven at night. He was often forced to carry in his pocket a tin box of sandwiches, and a bottle of wine and water, on which he dined in a hackney coach, while hurrying from one scholar to another. Two of his daughters he sent to a seminary at Paris; but he imagined that Frances would run some risk of being perverted from the Protestant faith if she were educated in a Catholic country, and he therefore kept her at home. No governess, no teacher of any art or of any language, was provided for her. But one of her sisters showed her how to write; and, before she was fourteen, she began to find pleasure in reading. It was not, however, by reading that her intellect was formed. Indeed, when her best novels were produced, her knowledge of books was very small. When at the height of her fame, she was unacquainted with the most celebrated works of Voltaire and Moliere; and, what seems still more extraordinary, had never heard or seen a line of Churchill, who, when she was a girl, was the most popular of living poets. It is particularly deserving of observation that she appears to have been by no means a novel reader. Her father’s library was large; and he had admitted into it so many books which rigid moralists generally exclude that he felt uneasy, as he afterwards owned, when Johnson began to examine the shelves. But in the whole collection there was only a single novel, Fielding’s Amelia. An education, however, which to most girls would have been useless, but which suited Fanny’s mind better than elaborate culture,
  • 46. was in constant progress during her passage from childhood to womanhood. The great book of human nature was turned over before her. Her father’s social position was very peculiar. He belonged in fortune and station to the middle class. His daughters seemed to have been suffered to mix freely with those whom butlers and waiting maids call vulgar. We are told that they were in the habit of playing with the children of a wigmaker who lived in the adjoining house. Yet few nobles could assemble in the most stately mansions of Grosvenor Square or Saint James’s Square, a society so various and so brilliant as was sometimes to be found in Dr. Burney’s cabin. His mind, though not very powerful or capacious, was restlessly active; and, in the intervals of his professional pursuits, he had contrived to lay up much miscellaneous information. His attainments, the suavity of his temper, and the gentle simplicity of his manners, had obtained for him ready admission to the first literary circles. While he was still at Lynn, he had won Johnson’s heart by sounding with honest zeal the praises of the English Dictionary. In London the two friends met frequently, and agreed most harmoniously. One tie, indeed, was wanting to their mutual attachment. Burney loved his own art passionately; and Johnson just knew the bell of Saint Clement’s church from the organ. They had, however, many topics in common; and on winter nights their conversations were sometimes prolonged till the fire had gone out, and the candles had burned away to the wicks. Burney’s admiration of the powers which had produced Rasselas and The Rambler bordered on idolatry. Johnson, on the other hand, condescended to growl out that Burney was an honest fellow, a man whom it was impossible not to like. Garrick, too, was a frequent visiter in Poland Street and Saint Martin’s Lane. That wonderful actor loved the society of children, partly from good nature, and partly from vanity. The ecstasies of mirth and terror, which his gestures and play of countenance never failed to produce in a nursery, flattered him quite as much as the applause of mature critics. He often exhibited all his powers of mimicry for the amusement of the little Burneys, awed them by shuddering and crouching as if he saw a ghost, scared them by
  • 47. raving like a maniac in Saint Luke’s, and then at once became an auctioneer, a chimneysweeper, or an old woman, and made them laugh till the tears ran down their cheeks. But it would be tedious to recount the names of all the men of letters and artists whom Frances Burney had an opportunity of seeing and hearing. Colman, Twining, Harris, Baretti, Hawkesworth, Reynolds, Barry, were among those who occasionally surrounded the tea table and supper tray at her father’s modest dwelling. This was not all. The distinction which Dr. Burney had acquired as a musician, and as the historian of music, attracted to his house the most eminent musical performers of that age. The greatest Italian singers who visited England regarded him as the dispenser of fame in their art, and exerted themselves to obtain his suffrage. Pachierotti became his intimate friend. The rapacious Agujari, who sang for nobody else under fifty pounds an air, sang her best for Dr. Burney without a fee; and in the company of Dr. Burney even the haughty and eccentric Gabrielli constrained herself to behave with civility. It was thus in his power to give, with scarcely any expense, concerts equal to those of the aristocracy. On such occasions the quiet street in which he lived was blocked up by coroneted chariots, and his little drawingroom was crowded with peers, peeresses, ministers, and ambassadors. On one evening, of which we happen to have a full account, there were present Lord Mulgrave, Lord Bruce, Lord and Lady Edgecumbe, Lord Barrington from the War Office, Lord Sandwich from the Admiralty, Lord Ashburnham, with his gold key dangling from his pocket, and the French Ambassador, M. De Guignes, renowned for his fine person and for his success in gallantry. But the great show of the night was the Russian ambassador, Count Orloff, whose gigantic figure was all in a blaze with jewels, and in whose demeanour the untamed ferocity of the Scythian might be discerned through a thin varnish of French politeness. As he stalked about the small parlour, brushing the ceiling with his toupee, the girls whispered to each other, with mingled admiration and horror, that he was the favoured lover of his august mistress; that he had borne the chief part in the revolution to
  • 48. which she owed her throne; and that his huge hands, now glittering with diamond rings, had given the last squeeze to the windpipe of her unfortunate husband. With such illustrious guests as these were mingled all the most remarkable specimens of the race of lions, a kind of game which is limited in London every spring with more than Meltonian ardour and perseverance. Bruce, who had washed down steaks cut from living oxen with water from the fountains of the Nile, came to swagger and talk about his travels. Omai lisped broken English, and made all the assembled musicians hold their ears by howling Otaheitean love songs, such as those with which Oberea charmed her Opano. With the literary and fashionable society, which occasionally met under Dr. Burney’s roof, Frances can scarcely be said to have mingled. She was not a musician, and could therefore bear no part in the concerts. She was shy almost to awkwardness, and scarcely ever joined in the conversation. The slightest remark from a stranger disconcerted her: and even the old friends of her father who tried to draw her out could seldom extract more than a Yes or a No. Her figure was small, her face not distinguished by beauty. She was therefore suffered to withdraw quietly to the background, and, unobserved herself, to observe all that passed. Her nearest relations were aware that she had good sense, but seem not to have suspected that, under her demure and bashful deportment, were concealed a fertile invention and a keen sense of the ridiculous. She had not, it is true, an eye for the fine shades of character, but every marked peculiarity instantly caught her notice and remained engraven on her imagination. Thus, while still a girl, she had laid up such a store of materials for fiction as few of those who mix much in the world are able to accumulate during a long life. She had watched and listened to people of every class, from princes and great officers of state down to artists living in garrets, and poets familiar with subterranean cookshops. Hundreds of remarkable persons had passed in review before lier, English, French, German, Italian, lords and fiddlers, deans of cathedrals and managers of theatres,
  • 49. travellers leading about newly caught savages, and singing women escorted by deputy husbands. So strong was the impression made on the mind of Frances by the society which she was in the habit of seeing and hearing, that she began to write little fictitious narratives as soon as she could use her pen with ease, which, as we have said, was not very early. Her sisters were amused by her stories: but Dr. Burney knew nothing of their existence; and in another quarter her literary propensities met with serious discouragement. When she was fifteen, her father took a second wife. The new Mrs. Burney soon found out that her stepdaughter was fond of scribbling, and delivered several goodnatured lectures on the subject. The advice no doubt was well meant, and might have been given by the most judicious friend; for at that time, from causes to which we may hereafter advert, nothing could be more disadvantageous to a young lady than to be known as a novel writer. Frances yielded, relinquished her favourite pursuit, and made a bonfire of all her manuscripts. (1) She now hemmed and stitched from breakfast to dinner with scrupulous regularity. But the dinners of that time were early; and the afternoon was her own. Though she had given up novelwriting, she was still (1) There is some difficulty here as to the chronology. “This sacrifice,” says the editor of the Diary, “was made in the young authoress’s fifteenth year.” This could not be; for the sacrifice was the effect, according to the editor’s own showing, of the remonstrances of the second Mrs. Burney: and Frances was in her sixteenth year when her father’s second marriage took place. fond of using her pen. She began to keep a diary, and she corresponded largely with a person who seems to have had the chief share in the formation of her mind. This was Samuel Crisp, an old friend of her father. His name, well known, near a century ago, in the most splendid circles of London, has long been forgotten. His history is, however, so interesting and instructive, that it tempts us to venture on a digression.
  • 50. Long before Frances Burney was born, Mr. Crisp had made his entrance into the world, with every advantage. He was well connected and well educated. His face and figure were conspicuously handsome; his manners were polished; his fortune was easy; his character was without stain; he lived in the best society; he had read much; he talked well; his taste in literature, music, painting, architecture, sculpture, was held in high esteem. Nothing that the world can give seemed to be wanting to his happiness and respectability, except that he should understand the limits of his powers, and should not throw away distinctions which were within his reach in the pursuit of distinctions which were unattainable. “It is an uncontrolled truth,” says Swift, “that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.” Every day brings with it fresh illustrations of this weighty saying; but the best commentary that we remember is the history of Samuel Crisp. Men like him have their proper place, and it is a most important one, in the Commonwealth of Letters. It is by the judgment of such men that the rank of authors is finally determined. It, is neither to the multitude, nor to the few who are gifted with great creative genius, that we are to look for sound critical decisions. The multitude, unacquainted with the best models, are captivated by whatever stuns and dazzles them. They deserted Mrs. Siddons to run after Master Betty; and they now prefer, we have no doubt, Jack Sheppard to Von Artevelde. A man of great original genius, on the other hand, a man who has attained to mastery in some high walk of art, is by no means to be implicitly trusted as a judge of the performances of others. The erroneous decisions pronounced by such men are without number. It is commonly supposed that jealousy makes them unjust. But a more creditable explanation may easily be found. The very excellence of a work shows that some of the faculties of the author have been developed at the expense of the rest; for it is not given to the human intellect to expand itself widely in all directions at once,
  • 51. and to be at the same time gigantic and well proportioned. Whoever becomes pre-eminent in any art, nay, in any style of art, generally does so by devoting himself with intense and exclusive enthusiasm to the pursuit of one kind of excellence. His perception of other kinds of excellence is therefore too often impaired. Out of Ins own department he praises and blames at random, and is far less to be trusted than, the mere connoisseur, who produces nothing, and whose business is only to judge and enjoy. One painter is distinguished by his exquisite finishing. He toils day after day to bring the veins of a cabbage leaf, the folds of a lace veil, the wrinkles of an old woman’s face, nearer and nearer to perfection. In the time which he employs on a square foot of canvass, a master of a different order covers the walls of a palace with gods burying giants under mountains, or makes the cupola of a church alive with seraphim and martyrs. The more fervent the passion of each of these artists for his art, the higher the merit of each in his own line, the more unlikely it is that they will justly appreciate each other. Many persons who never handled a pencil probably do far more justice to Michael Angelo than would have been done by Gerard Douw, and far more justice to Gerard Douw than would have been done by Michael Angelo. It is the same with literature. Thousands, who have no spark of the genius of Dryden or Wordsworth, do to Dryden the justice which has never been done by Wordsworth, and to Wordsworth the justice which, we suspect, would never have been done by Dryden. Gray, Johnson, Richardson, Fielding, are all highly esteemed by the great body of intelligent and well informed men. But Gray could see no merit in Rasselas; and Johnson could see no merit in the Bard. Fielding thought Richardson a solemn prig; and Richardson perpetually expressed contempt and disgust for Fielding’s lowness. Mr. Crisp seems, as far as we can judge, to have been a man eminently qualified for the useful office of a connoisseur. His talents and knowledge fitted him to appreciate justly almost every species of intellectual superiority. As an adviser he was inestimable. Nay, he
  • 52. might probably have held a respectable rank as a writer, if he would have confined himself to some department of literature in which nothing more than sense, taste, and reading was required. Unhappily he set his heart on being a great poet, wrote a tragedy in five acts on the death of Virginia, and offered it to Garrick, who was his personal friend. Garrick read, shook his head, and expressed a doubt whether it would be wise in Mr. Crisp to stake a reputation, which stood high, on the success of such a piece. But the author, blinded by ambition, set in motion a machinery such as none could long resist. His intercessors were the most eloquent man and the most lovely woman of that veneration. Pitt was induced to read Virginia, and to pronounce it excellent. Lady Coventry, with fingers which might have furnished a model to sculptors, forced the manuscript into the reluctant hand of the manager; and, in the year 1754, the play was brought forward. Nothing that skill or friendship could do was omitted. Garrick wrote both prologue and epilogue. The zealous friends of the author filled every box; and, by their strenuous exertions, the life of the play was prolonged during ten nights. But, though there was no clamorous reprobation, it was universally felt that the attempt had failed. When Virginia was printed, the public disappointment was even greater than at the representation. The critics, the Monthly Reviewers in particular, fell on plot, characters, and diction without mercy, but, we fear, not without justice. We have never met with a copy of the play; but, if we may judge from the scene which is extracted in the Gentleman’s Magazine, and which does not appear to have been malevolently selected, we should say that nothing but the acting of Garrick, and the partiality of the audience, could have saved so feeble and unnatural a drama from instant damnation. The ambition of the poet was still unsubdued. When the London season closed, he applied himself vigorously to the work of removing blemishes. He does not seem to have suspected, what we are strongly inclined to suspect, that the whole piece was one blemish, and that the passages which were meant to be fine, were, in truth,
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