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Title: Memoirs of Doctor Burney (Vol. 1 of 3)

Author: Fanny Burney

Release date: February 21, 2020 [eBook #61468]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by MWS, Brian Wilsden and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
        produced from images generously made available by The
        Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS OF DOCTOR BURNEY (VOL. 1 OF 3) ***




Produced by MWS, Brian Wilsden and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)





TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.




  MEMOIRS

  OF

  DOCTOR BURNEY.




  CONTENTS

  Chapters. 	           Page
  ADVERTISEMENT. 	     ii
  PREFACE, OR APOLOGY.        v
  INTRODUCTION.               x
  MEMOIRS OF DOCTOR BURNEY.   1




  ADVERTISEMENT.


IT was the intention of the Biographer of DOCTOR BURNEY, to have
printed the Doctor’s Correspondence, in a fourth volume, at the same
time with the Memoir; but upon examining the collection, there appears
such a dearth of the Doctor’s own Letters, of which he very rarely kept
copies, that it seems to be expedient to postpone their publication,
till it can be rendered more complete; to which end, the Biographer
ventures earnestly to entreat, that all who possess any original
Letters of Doctor Burney, whether addressed to themselves, or retained
by inheritance, will have the goodness—where there seems no objection
to their meeting the public eye—to forward them to Mr. MOXON, who will
carefully transmit them to the Biographer, by whom they will afterwards
be restored to their owners, with the most grateful acknowledgments.




  MEMOIRS

  OF

  DOCTOR BURNEY,

  ARRANGED

  FROM HIS OWN MANUSCRIPTS, FROM FAMILY PAPERS, AND
  FROM PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS.

  BY

  HIS DAUGHTER, MADAME D’ARBLAY.

    “O could my feeble powers thy virtues trace,
    By filial love each fear should be suppress’d;
    The blush of incapacity I’d chace,
    And stand—Recorder of Thy worth!—confess’d.”

    _Anonymous Dedication of Evelina, to Dr. Burney, in 1778._

  IN THREE VOLUMES.

  VOL. I.

  LONDON:

  EDWARD MOXON, 64, NEW BOND STREET.

  1832.




  LONDON:
  BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS,
  BOUVERIE STREET.




PREFACE, OR APOLOGY.


THE intentions, or, rather, the directions of Dr. Burney that his
Memoirs should be published; and the expectation of his family and
friends that they should pass through the hands of his present Editor
and Memorialist, have made the task of arranging the ensuing collations
with her own personal recollections, appear to her a sacred duty from
the year 1814.[1]

But the grief at his loss, which at first incapacitated her from such
an effort, was soon afterwards followed by change of place, change of
circumstances—almost of existence—with multiplied casualties that,
eventually, separated her from all her manuscript materials. And these
she only recovered when under the pressure of a new affliction that
took from her all power, or even thought, for their investigation.
During many years, therefore, they have been laid aside, though never
forgotten.

But if Time, as so often we lament, will not stand still upon
happiness, it would be graceless not to acknowledge, with gratitude
to Providence, that neither is it positively stationary upon sorrow:
for though there are calamities which it cannot obliterate, and wounds
which Religion alone can heal, Time yet seems endowed with a secret
principle for producing a mental calm, through which life imperceptibly
glides back to its customary operations; however powerless Time
itself—earthly Time!—must still remain for restoring lost felicity.

Now, therefore,—most unexpectedly,—that she finds herself
sufficiently recovered from successive indispositions and afflictions
to attempt the acquittal of a debt which has long hung heavily upon her
mind, she ventures to re-open her manuscript stores, and to resume,
though in trembling, her long-forsaken pen.

That the life of so eminent a man should not pass away without some
authenticated record, will be pretty generally thought; and the
circumstances which render her its recorder, grow out of the very
nature of things: she possesses all his papers and documents; and,
from her earliest youth to his latest decline, not a human being was
more confidentially entrusted than herself with the occurrences, the
sentiments, and the feelings of his past and passing days.

Although, as biography, from time immemorial, has claimed the privilege
of being more discursive than history, the Memorialist may seek to
diversify the plain recital of facts by such occasional anecdotes
as have been hoarded from childhood in her memory; still, and most
scrupulously, not an opinion will be given as Dr. Burney’s, either of
persons or things, that was not literally his own: and fact will as
essentially be the basis of every article, as if its object were still
lent to earth, and now listening to this exposition of his posthumous
memoirs with her own recollections.

Nevertheless, though nothing is related that does not belong to Dr.
Burney and his history, the accounts are not always rigidly confined to
his presence, where scenes, or traits, still strong in the remembrance
of the Editor, or still before her eyes in early letters or diaries,
invite to any characteristic details of celebrated personages.

Not slight, however, is the embarrassment that struggles with the
pleasure of these mingled reminiscences, from their appearance of
personal obtrusion: yet, when it is seen that they are never brought
forward but to introduce some incident or speech, that must else
remain untold of Dr. Johnson, Mr. Burke, Mrs. Delany, Mrs. Thrale,
Mr. Bruce—nay, Napoleon—and some other high-standing names, of
recent date to the aged, yet of still living curiosity to the youthful
reader—these apparent egotisms may be something more,—perhaps—than
pardoned.

Where the life has been as private as that of Dr. Burney, its history
must necessarily be simple, and can have little further call upon
the attention of the world, than that which may belong to a wish of
tracing the progress of a nearly abandoned Child, from a small village
of Shropshire, to a Man allowed throughout Europe to have risen to
the head of his profession; and thence, setting his profession aside,
to have been elevated to an intellectual rank in society, as a Man of
Letters—

  “Though not First, in the very first line”

with most of the eminent men of his day,—Dr. Johnson and Mr. Burke,
soaring above any contemporary mark, always, like Senior Wranglers,
excepted.

And to this height, to which, by means and resources all his own,
he arose, the Genius that impelled him to Fame, the Integrity that
established his character, and the Amiability that magnetized all
hearts,—in the phrase of Dr. Johnson—_to go forth to meet him_, were
the only materials with which he worked his way.




INTRODUCTION.

COPIED FROM A MANUSCRIPT MEMOIR IN THE DOCTOR’S OWN HAND-WRITING.


IF the life of a humble individual, on whom neither splendid
appointments, important transactions, nor atrocious crimes have called
the attention of the public, can afford amusement to the friends he
leaves behind, without being offered either as a model to follow, or
a precipice to shun, the intention of the writer of these Memoirs
will be fully accomplished. But there is no member of society who, by
diligence, talents, or conduct, leaves his name and his race a little
better than those from which he sprung, who is totally without some
claim to attention on the means by which such advantages were achieved.

My life, though it has been frequently a tissue of toil, sickness,
and sorrow, has yet been, upon the whole, so much more pleasant and
prosperous than I had a title to expect, or than many others with
higher claims have enjoyed, that its incidents, when related, may,
perhaps, help to put mediocrity in good-humour, and to repress the
pride and overrated worth and expectations of indolence.

Perhaps few have been better enabled to describe, from an actual
survey, the manners and customs of the age in which he lived than
myself; ascending from those of the most humble cottagers, and lowest
mechanics, to the first nobility, and most elevated personages, with
whom circumstances, situation, and accident, at different periods of my
life, have rendered me familiar. Oppressed and laborious husbandmen;
insolent and illiberal yeomanry; overgrown farmers; generous and
hospitable merchants; men of business and men of pleasure; men of
letters; men of science; artists; sportsmen and country ’squires;
dissipated and extravagant voluptuaries; gamesters; ambassadors;
statesmen; and even sovereign princes, I have had opportunities of
examining in almost every point of view: all these it is my intention
to display in their respective situations; and to delineate their
virtues, vices, and apparent degrees of happiness and misery.

A book of this kind, though it may mortify and offend a few persons
of the present age, may be read with avidity at the distance of some
centuries, by antiquaries and lovers of anecdotes; though it will have
lost the poignancy of personality.

My grandfather, James Macburney, who, by letters which I have seen of
his writing, and circumstances concerning him which I remember to have
heard from my father and mother, was a gentleman of a considerable
patrimony at Great Hanwood, a village in Shropshire, had received a
very good education; but, from what cause does not appear, in the
latter years of his life, was appointed land steward to the Earl of
Ashburnham. He had a house in Privy Garden, Whitehall. In the year
1727, he walked as esquire to one of the knights, at the coronation of
King George the Second.

My father, James, born likewise at Hanwood, was well educated also,
both in school learning and accomplishments. He was a day scholar
at Westminster School, under the celebrated Dr. Busby, while my
grandfather resided at Whitehall. I remember his telling a story of the
severe chastisement he received from that terrific disciplinarian,
Dr. Busby, for playing truant after school hours, instead of returning
home. My grandfather, who had frequently admonished him not to
loiter in the street, lest he should make improper and mischievous
acquaintance, finding no attention was paid to his injunctions, gave
him a letter addressed to the Reverend Dr. Busby; which he did not
fail to deliver, with ignorant cheerfulness, on his entrance into the
school. The Doctor, when he had perused it, called my father to him,
and, in a very mild, and seemingly good-humoured voice, said, “Burney,
can you read writing?” “Yes, Sir,” answered my father, with great
courage and flippancy. “Then read this letter aloud,” says the Doctor;
when my father, with an audible voice, began: “Sir, My son, the bearer
of this letter, having long disregarded my admonitions against stopping
to play with idle boys in his way home from school—” Here my father’s
voice faltered. “Go on,” says his master; “you read very well.” “I am
sorry to be under the necessity of entreating you to—to—to—to cor—”
Here he threw down the letter, and fell on his knees, crying out:
“Indeed, Sir, I’ll never do so again!—Pray forgive me!” “O, you read
perfectly well,” the Doctor again tells him, “pray finish the Letter:”
And making him pronounce aloud the words, “correct him;” complied with
my grandfather’s request in a very liberal manner.

Whether my father was intended for any particular profession, I know
not, but, during his youth, besides his school learning, he acquired
several talents and accomplishments, which, in the course of his life,
he was obliged professionally to turn to account. He danced remarkably
well; performed well on the violin, and was a portrait painter of no
mean talents.

Notwithstanding the Mac which was prefixed to my grandfather’s name,
and which my father retained for some time, I never could find at what
period any of my ancestors lived in Scotland or in Ireland, from one of
which it must have been derived. My father and grandfather were both
born in Shropshire, and never even visited either of those countries.

Early in his life, my father lost the favour of his sire, by eloping
from home, to marry a young actress of Goodman’s-fields’ theatre,
by whom he had a very large family. My grandfather’s affection was
completely alienated by this marriage; joined to disapproving his
son’s conduct in other respects. To the usual obduracy of old age,
he afterwards added a far more than similar indiscretion himself, by
marrying a female domestic, to whom, and to a son, the consequence
of that marriage, he bequeathed all his possessions, which were very
considerable. Joseph, this son, was not more prudent than my father;
for he contrived, early in life, to dissipate his patrimony; and he
subsisted for many years in Norfolk, by teaching to dance. I visited
him in 1756, in a tour I made to Yarmouth. He lived then at Ormsby, a
beautiful village near that town, with an amiable wife, and a large
family of beautiful children, in an elegant villa, with a considerable
garden; and he appeared, at that time, in perfectly restored and easy
circumstances.

N. B.—The fragment whence this is taken here stops.

       *       *       *       *       *

This Introduction, which is copied literally from the hand-writing
of Dr. Burney, was both begun and dropped, as appears by a marginal
note, in the year 1782; but, from what cause is unknown, was neither
continued, nor resumed, save by occasional memorandums, till the year
1807, when the Doctor had reached the age of eighty-one, and was under
the dejecting apprehension of a paralytic seizure. From that time,
nevertheless, he composed sundry manuscript volumes, of various sizes,
containing the history of his life, from his cradle nearly to his grave.

Out of the minute amplitude of this vast mass of matter, it has seemed
the duty of his Editor and Memorialist, to collect all that seemed to
offer any interest for the general reader; but to commit nothing to the
public eye that there is reason to believe the author himself would
have withheld from it at an earlier period; or would have obliterated,
even at a much later, had he revised his writings after the recovery of
his health and spirits.




MEMOIRS

OF

DOCTOR BURNEY.


CHARLES BURNEY was born at Shrewsbury, on the twelfth of April, 1726.

He was issue of a second marriage, of a very different colour with
respect to discretion, or to prejudice, from that with the account
of which he has opened his own narration. The poor actress was no
more; but neither her hardly judged, though enthusiastically admired
profession, nor her numerous offspring, nor the alienation she had
unhappily caused in the family, proved obstacles to the subsequent
union of her survivor with Miss * * * who in those days, though young
and pretty, was called Mrs. Ann Cooper, a Shropshire young lady, of
bright parts and great personal beauty; as well as an inheritress of
a fortune which, for the times, was by no means inconsiderable. The
parchments of the marriage settlement upon this occasion are still
remaining amongst the few family records that Dr. Burney preserved.

Whether attracted by her beauty, her sprightliness, or her portion; or
by the aggregate influence of those three mighty magnetizers of the
passions of man, is not known; but Wycherley, the famous poet, fine
gentleman, and Wit of the reign of Charles the Second, had been so
enamoured with Mrs. Ann Cooper in her earliest youth, which flourished
in his latest decadency, that he sought her for his bride.

The romance, however, of his adoration, did not extend to breaking his
heart; for though he expired within a few months after her rejection,
it was not from wearing the willow: another fair one, yet younger,
proved less cruel, and changed it to a wreath of myrtle. But the fates
were adverse to his tender propensities, and he outlived his fair
fortune and his nuptials only a fortnight.

A few years after this second marriage, Mr. Burney senior, finally,
and with tolerable success, fixed himself to the profession of
portrait-painting; and, quitting Shrewsbury, established himself in
the city of Chester; where, to his reputation in the delightful
arts of the pencil, he joined a far surpassing pre-eminence in
those of society. His convivial spirit, his ready repartee, and his
care-chasing pleasantry, made his intercourse sought by all to whom
such qualifications afford pleasure: and we are yet, I believe,
to learn where coin of such sterling value for exhilarating our
fellow-creatures, fails of passing current.

The then Earl of Cholmondeley was particularly partial to him, and his
most essential friend.

Charles, who was Mr. Burney’s last born son, had a twin sister, called
Susanna, whom he early lost, but for whom he cherished a peculiar
fondness that he seemed tenderly to transmit to the beloved and
meritorious daughter to whom he gave her name.[2]


CONDOVER.

From what cause is not known, and it is difficult to conceive any that
can justify such extraordinary neglect, young Charles was left in
Shropshire, upon the removal of his parents to Chester; and abandoned,
not only during his infancy, but even during his boyhood, to the care
of an uncultivated and utterly ignorant, but worthy and affectionate
old nurse, called Dame Ball, in the rustic village of Condover, not far
from Shrewsbury.

His reminiscences upon this period were amongst those the most
tenaciously minute, and the most agreeable to his fancy for detail, of
any part of his life; and the uncommon gaiety of his narratory powers,
and the frankness with which he set forth the pecuniary embarrassments
and provoking mischances, to which his thus deserted childhood was
exposed, had an ingenuousness, a good-humour, and a comicality, that
made the subject of Condover not more delectable to himself than
entertaining to his hearer.

Nevertheless, these accounts, when committed to paper, and produced
without the versatility of countenance, and the vivacious gestures that
animated the colloquial disclosures, so lose their charm, as to appear
vapid, languid, and tedious: and the editor only thus slightly recurs
to them for the purpose of pointing out how gifted must be the man who,
through disadvantages of so lowering a species, could become, in
after-life, not only one of the best informed, but one of the most
polished, members of society.

There were few subjects of his childish remembrance with which he was
himself more amused, than with the recital of the favourite couplets
which the good nurse Ball most frequently sang to him at her spinning
wheel; and which he especially loved to chaunt, in imitating her
longdrawn face, and the dolorous tones of her drawling sadness.

  “Good bye, my dear neighbours! My heart it is sore,
  For I must go travelling all the world o’er.
  And if I should chance to come home very rich,
  My friends and relations will make of me mich;
  But if I should chance to come home very poor,
  My friends and relations will turn me out of door,
  After I have been travelling, travelling, travelling, all the
    world o’er.”


CHESTER.

The education of the subject of these memoirs, when, at length, he was
removed from this his first instructress, whom he quitted, as he always
protested, with agony of grief, was begun at the Free School at Chester.

It can excite no surprise, his brilliant career through life
considered, that his juvenile studies were assiduous, ardent, and
successful. He was frequently heard to declare that he had been once
only chastised at school, and that not for slackness, but forwardness
in scholastic lore. A favourite comrade, who shared his affections,
though not his application or his genius, was hesitating through an
ill-learnt lesson, and on the point of incurring punishment, when young
Burney, dropping his head on his breast to muffle his voice, whispered
the required answer.

“Burney prompts, Sir!” was loudly called out by a jealous, or
malevolent fellow-student: and Burney paid the ignoble tax at which his
incautious good nature, and superior talents, were assessed.

The resources of practical education ought, perhaps, to be judged
only by the experience which puts them into play; but incongruous, at
least to all thinking, though it may be incompetent, observers, must
seem the discipline that appoints to the instinctive zeal of youthful
friendship, the same degrading species of punishment that may be
necessary for counteracting the sluggard mischiefs of indolence, or the
dangerous examples of misconduct.

The prominent talents of young Burney for music fixed that tuneful
art for his profession; and happily so; for while its pursuit was his
business, its cultivation was his never-ceasing delight.

Yet not exclusively: far otherwise. He had a native love of literature,
in all its branches, that opened his intellects to observation, while
it furnished his mind with embellishments upon almost every subject;
a thirst of knowledge, that rendered science, as far as he had
opportunity for its investigation, an enlargement to his understanding;
and an imagination that invested all the arts with a power of
enchantment.


SHREWSBURY.

His earliest musical instructor was his eldest half brother, Mr. James
Burney, who was then, and for more than half a century afterwards,
organist of St. Margaret’s, Shrewsbury; in which city the young
musician elect began his professional studies.

It was, however, in age only that Mr. James Burney was his brother’s
senior or superior; from him, therefore, whatever could be given or
received, was finished almost ere it was begun, from the quickness
with which his pupil devoted himself to what he called the slavery of
conquering unmeaning difficulties in the lessons of the times.

The following spirited paragraph on his juvenile progress is
transcribed from his early memorandums.

  “The celebrated Felton, and after him, the first Dr. Hayes,
  came from Oxford to Shrewsbury on a tour, while I was
  studying hard, without instruction or example; and they
  amazed and stimulated me so forcibly by their performance
  on the organ, as well as by their encouragement, that I
  thenceforward went to work with an ambition and fury that
  would hardly allow me to eat or sleep.

  “The quantity of music which I copied at this time, of
  all kinds, was prodigious; and my activity and industry
  surprised every body; for, besides writing, teaching, tuning,
  and playing for my brother, at my _momens perdus_, I was
  educating myself in every way I was able. With copy-books,
  I improved my hand-writing so much, that my father did not
  believe I wrote my letters to him myself. I tried hard to
  at least keep up the little Latin I had learned; and I
  diligently practised both the spinet and violin; which,
  with reading, transcribing music for business, and poetry
  for pleasure; attempts at composition, and attention to my
  brother’s affairs, filled up every minute of the longest day.

  “I had, also, a great passion for angling; but whenever I
  could get leisure to pursue that sport, I ran no risk of
  losing my time, if the fish did not bite; for I had always
  a book in my pocket, which enabled me to wait with patience
  their pleasure.”

Another paragraph, which is singular and amusing, is transcribed, also,
from the Shrewsbury Annals:—

  “CHARACTER OF LADY TANKERVILLE.[3]

  “This lady was the daughter of Sir John Ashley, of the Abbey
  Foregate, Shrewsbury. She manifested a passion for music very
  early, in practising on the German flute, which was then
  little known in the country, Sir William Fowler and this lady
  being the only performers on that instrument that obtained,
  or deserved the least notice. Miss Ashley practised the
  harpsichord likewise, and took lessons of my brother: and she
  used to make little Matteis, the language master, and first
  violinist of the place, accompany her. She was an _espiegle_,
  and doted on mischief; and no sooner found that Matteis was
  very timid and helpless at the slightest distress or danger,
  than she insisted, during summer, upon taking her lessons in
  the middle of an old and lofty oak tree; placing there a seat
  and a desk, adroitly well arranged for her accommodation;
  while another seat and desk, upon a thick but tottering
  branch, was put up for poor Matteis, who was so terrified,
  that he could not stop a note in tune; yet so fearful, that
  he could not bring himself to resist her orders.

  “In 1738, she married Lord Ossulston, son of the Earl of
  Tankerville: and I remember leading off a choral song, or
  hymn, by her direction, to chaunt her out of St. Julian’s
  Church. I was then quite a boy; and I heard no more of her
  till I was grown up, and settled in London.”


CHESTER.

On quitting Shrewsbury to return to his parents at Chester, the ardour
of young Burney for improvement was such as to absorb his whole being;
and his fear lest a moment of daylight should be profitless, led him to
bespeak a labouring boy, who rose with the sun, to awaken him regularly
with its dawn. Yet, as he durst not pursue his education at the expense
of the repose of his family, he hit upon the ingenious device of tying
one end of a ball of pack-thread round his great toe, and then letting
the ball drop, with the other end just within the boy’s reach, from an
aperture in the old-fashioned casement of his bed-chamber window.

This was no contrivance to dally with his diligence; he could not
choose but rise.

He was yet a mere youth, when, while thus unremittingly studious, he
was introduced to Dr. Arne, on the passage of that celebrated musician
through the city of Chester, when returning from Ireland: and this most
popular of English vocal composers since the days of Purcel, was so
much pleased with the talents of this nearly self-instructed performer,
as to make an offer to Mr. Burney senior, upon such conditions as are
usual to such sort of patronage, to complete the musical education of
this lively and aspiring young man; and to bring him forth to the world
as his favourite and most promising pupil.

To this proposal Mr. Burney senior was induced to consent; and, in the
year 1714, at the age of seventeen, the eager young candidate for fame
rapturously set off, in company with Dr. Arne, for the metropolis.


LONDON.

Arrived in London, young Burney found himself unrestrainedly his own
master, save in what regarded his articled agreement with Dr. Arne.
Every part of his numerous family was left behind him, or variously
dispersed, with the single exception of his elder and only own brother,
Richard Burney, afterwards of Worcester, but who, at this period, was
settled in the capital.

This brother was a man of true worth and vigorous understanding,
enriched with a strong vein of native humour. He was an indefatigable
and sapient collector of historical portraits, and passionately fond
of the arts; and he was father of a race of children who severally,
and with distinction, shone in them all; and who superadded to their
ingenuity and their acquirements the most guileless hearts and
scrupulous integrity.


DR. ARNE.

Dr. Arne, professionally, has been fully portrayed by the pupil who,
nominally, was under his guidance; but who, in after-times, became the
historian of his tuneful art.

Eminent, however, in that art as was Dr. Arne, his eminence was to
that art alone confined. Thoughtless, dissipated, and careless, he
neglected, or rather scoffed at all other but musical reputation.
And he was so little scrupulous in his ideas of propriety, that he
took pride, rather than shame, in being publicly classed, even in the
decline of life, as a man of pleasure.

Such a character was ill qualified to form or to protect the morals
of a youthful pupil; and it is probable that not a notion of such a
duty ever occurred to Dr. Arne; so happy was his self-complacency in
the fertility of his invention and the ease of his compositions,
and so dazzled by the brilliancy of his success in his powers of
melody—which, in truth, for the English stage, were in sweetness and
variety unrivalled—that, satisfied and flattered by the practical
exertions and the popularity of his fancy, he had no ambition, or,
rather, no thought concerning the theory of his art.

The depths of science, indeed, were the last that the gay master had
any inclination to sound; and, in a very short time, through something
that mingled jealousy with inability, the disciple was wholly left
to work his own way as he could through the difficulties of his
professional progress.

Had neglect, nevertheless, been the sole deficiency that young Burney
had had to lament, it would effectually have been counteracted
by his own industry: but all who are most wanting to others, are
most rapacious of services for themselves; and the time in which
the advancement of the scholar ought to have been blended with the
advantage of the teacher, was almost exclusively seized upon for the
imposition of laborious tasks of copying music: and thus, a drudgery
fitted for those who have no talents to cultivate; or those who, in
possessing them, are driven from their enjoyment by distress, filled
up nearly the whole time of the student, and constituted almost wholly
the directions of the tutor.


MRS. CIBBER.

Young Burney, now, was necessarily introduced to Dr. Arne’s celebrated
sister, the most enchanting actress of her day, Mrs. Cibber; in whose
house, in Scotland-yard, he found himself in a constellation of wits,
poets, actors, authors, and men of letters.

The social powers of pleasing, which to the very end of his long life
endeared him to every circle in which he mixed, were now first lighted
up by the sparks of convivial collision which emanate, in kindred
minds, from the electricity of conversation. And though, as yet, he
was but a gazer himself in the splendour of this galaxy, he had parts
of such quick perception, and so laughter-loving a taste for wit and
humour, that he not alone received delight from the sprightly sallies,
the ludicrous representations, or the sportive mimicries that here,
with all the frolic of high-wrought spirits, were bandied about from
guest to guest; he contributed personally to the general enjoyment, by
the gaiety of his participation; and appeared, to all but his modest
self, to make an integral part of the brilliant society into which he
was content, nay charmed, to seem admitted merely as an auditor.


GARRICK.

Conspicuous in this bright assemblage, Garrick, then hardly beyond the
glowing dawn of his unparalleled dramatic celebrity, shone forth with a
blaze of lustre that struck young Burney with enthusiastic admiration.

And nearly as prompt was the kind impression made in return, by the new
young associate, on the fancy and the liking of this inimitable outward
delineator of the inward human character; who, to the very close of
that splendid circle which he described in the drama and in literature,
retained for this early conquest a distinguishing, though not, perhaps,
a wholly unremitting partiality; for where is the spoilt child,
whether of the nursery or of the public, who is uniformly exempt from
fickleness or caprice,—those wayward offsprings of lavish indulgence?

Not dense, however, nor frequent, were the occasional intermissions
to the serenity of their intercourse; and the sunshine by which they
were dispersed, beamed from an heightened esteem that, in both parties,
terminated in cordial affection.


THOMSON.

With Thomson, too, whose fame, happily for posterity, hung not upon
the ephemeral charm of accent, variety of attitude, or witchery of the
eye, like that of even the most transcendent of the votaries of the
buskins; with Thomson, too, his favoured lot led him to the happiness
of early and intimate, though, unfortunately, not of long-enduring
acquaintance, the destined race of Thomson, which was cut short nearly
in the meridian of life, being already almost run.

It was not in the house only of Mrs. Cibber that he met this impressive
and piety-inspiring painter of Nature, alike in her rural beauties and
her elemental sublimities: the young musician had the advantage of
setting to music a part of the mask of Alfred,[4] which brought him
into close contact with the author, and rivetted good will on one side
by high admiration on the other.

With various persons, renowned or interesting, of the same set, who
were gaily basking, at this period, in the smiles of popular sunshine,
the subject of these memoirs daily mixed; but, unfortunately, not a
memorandum of their intercourse has he left, beyond their names.

Mrs. Cibber herself he considered as a pattern of perfection in the
tragic art, from her magnetizing powers of harrowing and winning at
once every feeling of the mind, by the eloquent sensibility with which
she portrayed, or, rather, personified, Tenderness, Grief, Horror, or
Distraction.


KIT SMART.

With a different set, and at a different part of the town, young Burney
formed an intimacy with Kit Smart, the poet; a man then in equal
possession of those finest ingredients for the higher call of his art,
fire and fancy, and, for its comic call, of sport and waggery. No
indication, however, of such possession was granted to his appearance;
not a grace was bestowed on his person or manners; and his physiognomy
was of that round and stubbed form that seemed appertaining to a common
dealer behind a common counter, rather than to a votary of the Muses.
But his intellects, unhappily, were more brilliant than sound; and his
poetic turn, though it never warped his sentiments or his heart, was
little calculated to fortify his judgment.


DOCTOR ARMSTRONG.

And, at this same epoch, the subject of these memoirs began also an
intercourse with the celebrated Dr. Armstrong, as high, then, in the
theory of his art, medicine, as he was far from lucratively prosperous
in its practice. He had produced upon it a didactic poem, “The Art of
Preserving Health,” which young Burney considered to be as nervous
in diction as it was enlightening in precept. But Dr. Armstrong,
though he came from a part of the island whence travellers are by no
means proverbially smitten with the reproach of coming in vain; nor
often stigmatized with either meriting or being addicted to failure,
possessed not the personal skill usually accorded to his countrymen, of
adroitness in bringing himself forward. Yet he was as gaily amiable
as he was eminently learned; and though, from a keen moral sense of
right, he was a satirist, he was so free from malevolence, that the
smile with which he uttered a remark the most ironical, had a cast of
good-humoured pleasantry that nearly turned his sarcasm into simple
sport.


MISS MOLLY CARTER.

Now, also, opened to him an acquaintance with Miss Molly Carter, a
lady who, ultimately, proved the oldest friend that he sustained
through life; a sacred title, of which the rights, on both sides, were
affectionately acknowledged. The following account of her is copied
from Dr. Burney’s early manuscripts.

  “Miss Molly Carter, in her youth a very pretty girl, was, in
  the year 1745, of a large party of young ladies, consisting
  of five or six Miss Gores, and Miss Anderson, at William
  Thompson’s Esq., in the neighbourhood of Elsham, near Brig.
  Bob Thompson, Mr. Thompson’s brother, Billy Le Grand, and
  myself, composed the rest of the set, which was employed in
  nothing but singing, dancing, romping, and visiting, the
  whole time I was there; which time was never surpassed in
  hilarity at any place where I have been received in my life.”


QUEEN MAB.

Neither pleasure, however, nor literary pursuits, led young Burney to
neglect the cultivation of his musical talents. The mask of Alfred
was by no means his sole juvenile composition: he set to music the
principal airs in the English burletta called Robin Hood, which was
most flatteringly received at the theatre; and he composed the whole of
the music of the pantomime of Queen Mab.

He observed at this time the strictest incognito concerning all these
productions, though no motive for it is found amongst his papers; nor
does there remain any recollective explanation.

With regard to Queen Mab, it excited peculiar remark, from the
extraordinary success of that diverting pantomime; for when the
uncertainties of the representation were over, there was every stimulus
to avowal that could urge a young author to come forward; not with
adventurous boldness, nor yet with trembling timidity, but with the
frank delight of unequivocal success.

Queen Mab had a run which, to that time, had never been equalled, save
by the opening of the Beggar’s Opera; and which has not since been
surpassed, save by the representation of the Duenna.

Its music, pleasing and natural, was soon so popular, that it was
taught to all young ladies, set to all barrel organs, and played at
all familiar music parties. It aimed not at Italian refinement, nor
at German science; but its sprightly melody, and utter freedom from
vulgarity, made its way even with John Bull, who, while following the
hairbreadth agility of Harlequin, the skittish coquetries of Columbine,
and the merry dole of the disasters of the Clown and Pantaloon, found
himself insensibly caught, and unconsciously beguiled into ameliorated
musical taste.

In the present day, when English singers sometimes rise to the Italian
opera, and when Italian singers are sometimes invited to the English,
the music of Queen Mab could be received but in common with the feats
of its pantomime; so rapidly has taste advanced, and so generally have
foreign improvements become nearly indigenous.

To give its due to merit, and its rights to invention, we must always
go back to their origin, and judge them, not by any comparison with
what has followed them, but by what they met when they first started,
and by what they were preceded.

Why, when success was thus ascertained, the name of the composer was
concealed, leaving him thus singularly as unknown as he was popular,
may the more be regretted, as his disposition, though chiefly domestic,
was not of that effeminately sensitive cast that shrinks from the
world’s notice with a dread of publicity. His mind, on the contrary,
belonged to his sex; and was eminently formed to expand with that
manly ambition, which opens the portals of hope to the attainment of
independence, through intellectual honours.

The music, when printed, made its appearance in the world as the
offspring of _a society of the sons of Apollo_: and Oswald, a famous
bookseller, published it by that title, and knew nothing of its real
parentage.[5]

Sundry airs, ballads, cantatas, and other light musical productions,
were put forth also, as from that imaginary society; but all sprang
from the same source, and all were equally unacknowledged.

The sole conjecture to be formed upon a self-denial, to which no virtue
seems attached; and from which reason withdraws its sanction, as
tending to counteract the just balance between merit and recompense,
is, that possibly the articles then in force with Dr. Arne, might
disfranchise young Burney from the liberty of publication in his own
name.


EARL OF HOLDERNESSE.

The first musical work by the subject of these memoirs that he openly
avowed, was a set of six sonatas for two violins and a bass, printed
in 1747, and dedicated to the Earl of Holdernesse; to whose notice the
author had been presented by some of the titled friends and protectors
to whom he had become accidentally known.

The Earl not only accepted with pleasure the music and the dedication,
but conceived a regard for the young composer, that soon passed from
his talents to his person and character. Many notes of Lord Holdernesse
still remain of kind engagements for meetings, even after his time was
under the royal, though honourable restraint, of being governor of the
heir apparent.[6] That high, and nearly exclusive occupation, lessened
not the favour which his lordship had had the taste and discernment to
display so early for a young man whom, afterwards, with pleasure, if
not with pride, he must have seen rise to equal and general favour in
the world.

At Holdernesse House,[7] the fine mansion of this earl, young Burney
began an acquaintance, which in after years ripened into intimacy, with
Mr. Mason, the poet, who was his lordship’s chaplain.


FULK GREVILLE.

While connexions thus various, literary, classical, noble, and
professional, incidentally occurred, combatting the deadening toil of
the copyist, and keeping his mind in tune for intellectual pursuits and
attainments, new scenes, most unexpectedly, opened to him the world at
large, and suddenly brought him to a familiar acquaintance with high
life.

Fulk Greville, a descendant of _The Friend of Sir Philip Sydney_,
and afterwards author of Characters, Maxims, and Reflections, was
then generally looked up to as the finest gentleman about town. His
person, tall and well-proportioned, was commanding; his face, features,
and complexion, were striking for masculine beauty; and his air and
carriage were noble with conscious dignity.

He was then in the towering pride of healthy manhood and athletic
strength. He excelled in all the fashionable exercises, riding,
fencing, hunting, shooting at a mark, dancing, tennis, &c.; and worked
at every one of them with a fury for pre-eminence, not equalled,
perhaps, in ardour for superiority in personal accomplishments, since
the days of the chivalrous Lord Herbert of Cherbury.

His high birth, and higher expectation—for a coronet at that time,
from some uncertain right of heritage, hung almost suspended over his
head—with a splendid fortune, wholly unfettered, already in his hands,
gave to him a consequence in the circles of modish dissipation that, at
the clubs of St. James’s-street, and on the race ground at Newmarket,
nearly crowned him as chief. For though there were many competitors of
more titled importance, and more powerful wealth, neither the blaze
of their heraldry, nor the weight of their gold, could preponderate,
in the buckish scales of the day, over the elegance of equipment, the
grandeur, yet attraction of demeanour, the supercilious brow, and the
resplendent smile, that marked the lofty yet graceful descendant of Sir
Philip Sydney.

This gentleman one morning, while trying a new instrument at the
house of Kirkman, the first harpsichord maker of the times, expressed
a wish to receive musical instruction from some one who had mind
and cultivation, as well as finger and ear; lamenting, with strong
contempt, that, in the musical tribe, the two latter were generally
dislocated from the two former; and gravely asking Kirkman whether he
knew any young musician who was fit company for a gentleman.

Kirkman, with honest zeal to stand up for the credit of the art by
which he prospered, and which he held to be insulted by this question,
warmly answered that he knew many; but, very particularly, one member
of the harmonic corps, who had as much music in his tongue as in his
hands, and who was as fit company for a prince as for an orchestra.

Mr. Greville, with much surprise, made sundry and formal inquiries
into the existence, situation, and character of what he called so great
a phenomenon; protesting there was nothing he so much desired as the
extraordinary circumstance of finding any union of sense with sound.

The replies of the good German were so exciting, as well as
satisfactory, that Mr. Greville became eager to see the youth thus
extolled; but charged Mr. Kirkman not to betray a word of what had
passed, that the interview might be free from restraint, and seem to be
arranged merely for shewing off the several instruments that were ready
for sale, to a gentleman who was disposed to purchase one of the most
costly.

To this injunction Mr. Kirkman agreed, and conscientiously adhered.

A day was appointed, and the meeting took place.

Young Burney, with no other idea than that of serving Kirkman,
immediately seated himself at an instrument, and played various pieces
of Geminiani, Corelli, and Tartini, whose compositions were then most
in fashion. But Mr. Greville, secretly suspicious of some connivance,
coldly and proudly walked about the room; took snuff from a finely
enamelled snuff-box, and looked at some prints, as if wholly without
noticing the performance.

He had, however, too much penetration not to perceive his mistake, when
he remarked the incautious carelessness with which his inattention was
returned; for soon, conceiving himself to be playing to very obtuse
ears, young Burney left off all attempt at soliciting their favour;
and only sought his own amusement by trying favourite passages, or
practising difficult ones, with a vivacity which shewed that his
passion for his art rewarded him in itself for his exertions. But
coming, at length, to keys of which the touch, light and springing,
invited his stay, he fired away in a sonata of Scarlatti’s, with an
alternate excellence of execution and expression, so perfectly in
accord with the fanciful flights of that wild but masterly composer,
that Mr. Greville, satisfied no scheme was at work to surprise or to
win him; but, on the contrary, that the energy of genius was let loose
upon itself, and enjoying, without premeditation, its own lively sports
and vagaries; softly drew a chair to the harpsichord, and listened,
with unaffected earnestness, to every note.

Nor were his ears alone curiously awakened; his eyes were equally
occupied to mark the peculiar performance of intricate difficulties;
for the young musician had invented a mode of adding neatness to
brilliancy, by curving the fingers, and rounding the hand, in a manner
that gave them a grace upon the keys quite new at that time, and
entirely of his own devising.

To be easily pleased, however, or to make acknowledgment of being
pleased at all, seems derogatory to strong self-importance; Mr.
Greville, therefore, merely said, “You are fond, Sir, it seems, of
Italian music?”

The reply to this was striking up, with all the varying undulations
of the crescendo, the diminuendo, the pealing swell, and the “dying,
dying fall,” belonging to the powers of the pedal, that most popular
masterpiece of Handel’s, the Coronation Anthem.

This quickness of comprehension, in turning from Italian to German,
joined to the grandeur of the composition, and the talents of the
performer, now irresistibly vanquished Mr. Greville; who, convinced
of Kirkman’s truth with regard to the harmonic powers of this son of
Apollo, desired next to sift it with regard to the wit.

Casting off, therefore, his high reserve, with his jealous surmises,
he ceased to listen to the music, and started some theme that was meant
to lead to conversation.

But as this essay, from not knowing to what the youth might be equal,
consisted of such inquiries as, “Have you been in town long, Sir?” or,
“Does your taste call you back to the country, Sir?” &c. &c., his young
hearer, by no means preferring this inquisitorial style to the fancy of
Scarlatti, or the skill and depth of Handel, slightly answered, “Yes,
Sir,” or “No, Sir;” and, perceiving an instrument not yet tried, darted
to it precipitately, and seated himself to play a voluntary.

The charm of genuine simplicity is nowhere more powerful than with the
practised and hackneyed man of the world; for it induces what, of all
things, he most rarely experiences, a belief in sincerity.

Mr. Greville, therefore, though thwarted, was not displeased; for in a
votary of the art he was pursuing, he saw a character full of talents,
yet without guile; and conceived, from that moment, an idea that it was
one he might personally attach. He remitted, therefore, to some other
opportunity, a further internal investigation.

Mr. Kirkman now came forward to announce, that in the following week
he should have a new harpsichord, with double keys, and a deepened
bass, ready for examination.

They then parted, without any explanation on the side of Mr. Greville;
or any idea on that of the subject of these memoirs, that he and his
acquirements were objects of so peculiar a speculation.

At the second interview, young Burney innocently and eagerly flew at
once to the harpsichord, and tried it with various recollections from
his favourite composers.

Mr. Greville listened complacently and approvingly; but, at the end
of every strain, made a speech that he intended should lead to some
discussion.

Young Burney, however, more alive to the graces of melody than to
the subtleties of argument, gave answers that always finished with
full-toned chords, which as constantly modulated into another movement;
till Mr. Greville, tired and impatient, suddenly proposed changing
places, and trying the instrument himself.

He could not have devised a more infallible expedient to provoke
conversation; for he thrummed his own chosen bits by memory with so
little skill or taste, yet with a pertinacity so wearisome, that young
Burney, who could neither hearken to such playing, nor turn aside from
such a player, caught with alacrity at every opening to discourse, as
an acquittal from the fatigue of mock attention.

This eagerness gave a piquancy to what he said, that stole from him the
diffidence that might otherwise have hung upon his inexperience; and
endued him with a courage for uttering his opinions, that might else
have faded away under the trammels of distant respect.

Mr. Greville, however, was really superior to the mawkish parade
of unnecessary etiquette in private circles, where no dignity can
be offended, and no grandeur be let down by suffering nature, wit,
or accident to take their bent, and run their race, unfettered by
punctilio.

Yet was he the last of men to have borne any designed infringement upon
the long established claims of birth, rank, or situation; which, in
fact, is rarely practised but to lead to a succession of changes, that
circulate, like the names written in a round robin, to end just where
they began;—

          “Such chaos, where degree is suffocate,
  Follows the choaking.”[8]

In the subject of these memoirs, this effervescence of freedom was
clearly that of juvenile artlessness and overflowing vivacity; and
Mr. Greville desired too sincerely to gather the youth’s notions and
fathom his understanding, for permitting himself to check such amusing
spirits, by proudly wrapping himself up, as at less favourable moments
he was wont to do, in his own consequence. He grew, therefore, so
lively and entertaining, that young Burney became as much charmed with
his company as he had been wearied by his music; and an interchange
of ideas took place, as frankly rapid, equal, and undaunted, as if
the descendant of _the friend of Sir Philip Sydney_ had encountered a
descendant of Sir Philip Sydney himself.

This meeting concluded the investigation; music, singing her gay
triumph, took her stand at the helm; and a similar victory for capacity
and information awaited but a few intellectual skirmishes, on poetry,
politics, morals, and literature,—in the midst of which Mr. Greville,
suddenly and gracefully holding out his hand, fairly acknowledged his
scheme, proclaimed its success, and invited the unconscious victor to
accompany him to Wilbury House.

The amazement of young Burney was boundless; but his modesty, or
rather his ignorance that not to think highly of his own abilities
merited that epithet, was most agreeably surprised by so complicate a
flattery to his character, his endowments, and his genius.

But his articles with Dr. Arne were in full force; and it was not
without a sigh that he made known his confined position.

Unaccustomed to control his inclinations himself, or to submit to
their control from circumstances, expense, or difficulty, Mr. Greville
mocked this puny obstacle; and, instantly visiting Dr. Arne in person,
demanded his own terms for liberating his Cheshire pupil.

Dr. Arne, at first, would listen to no proposition; protesting that a
youth of such promise was beyond all equivalent. But no sooner was a
round sum mentioned, than the Doctor, who, in common with all the dupes
of extravagance, was evermore needy, could not disguise from himself
that he was dolorously out of cash; and the dazzling glare of three
hundred pounds could not but play most temptingly in his sight, for one
of those immediate, though imaginary wants, that the man of pleasure is
always sure to see waving, with decoying allurement, before his longing
eyes.

The articles, therefore, were cancelled: and young Burney was received
in the house of Mr. Greville as a desired inmate, a talented professor,
and a youth of genius: to which appellations, from his pleasantry,
gaiety, reading, and readiness, was soon superadded the title—not of a
humble, but of a chosen and confidential companion.

       *       *       *       *       *

Young Burney now moved in a completely new sphere, and led a completely
new life. All his leisure nevertheless was still devoted to improvement
in his own art, by practice and by composition. But the hours for such
sage pursuits were soon curtailed from half the day to its quarter;
and again from that to merely the early morning that preceded any
communication with his gay host: for so partial grew Mr. Greville to
his new favourite, that, speedily, there was no remission of claim upon
his time or his talents, whether for music or discourse.

Nor even here ended the requisition for his presence; his company
had a charm that gave a zest to whatever went forward: his opinions
were so ingenious, his truth was so inviolate, his spirits were so
entertaining, that, shortly, to make him a part of whatever was said
or done, seemed necessary to Mr. Greville for either speech or action.


GAMING CLUBS.

The consequence of this taste for his society carried young Burney into
every scene of high dissipation which, at that period, made the round
of the existence of a buckish fine gentleman; and he was continually of
the party at White’s, at Brookes’s, and at every other superfine club
house, whether public or private, to which the dangerous allurement
of gaming, or the scarcely less so of being _à la mode_, tempted his
fashionable patron.

As Mr. Greville uniformly, whether at cards, dice, or betting, played
with Honour, his success, of course, was precarious; but as he never
was so splendidly prosperous as to suffer himself to be beguiled out
of all caution; nor yet so frequently unfortunate as to be rendered
desperate, he was rarely distressed, though now and then he might be
embarrassed.

At these clubs, the subject of these memoirs witnessed scenes that were
ever after rivetted on his memory. Cards, betting, dice, opened every
nocturnal orgie with an _éclat_ of expectation, hope, ardour, and
fire, that seemed to cause a mental inflammation of the feelings and
faculties of the whole assembly in a mass.

On the first night of the entrance of young Burney into this set, Mr.
Greville amused himself with keeping out of the way, that he might
make over the new comer to what was called the humour of the thing; so
that, by being unknown, he might be assailed, as a matter of course,
for bets, holding stakes, choosing cards, &c. &c., and become initiated
in the arcana of a modish gaming house; while watchful, though apart,
Mr. Greville enjoyed, with high secret glee, the novelty of the youth’s
confusion.

But young Burney had the native good sense to have observed already,
that a hoax soon loses its power of ridicule where it excites no alarm
in its object. He gaily, therefore, treated as a farce every attempt
to bring him forward, and covered up his real ignorance upon such
subjects by wilful blunders that apparently doubled it; till, by making
himself a pretended caricature of newness and inaptness, he got, what
in coteries of that sort is always successful, the laugh on his side.

As the evening advanced, the busy hum of common-place chattery
subsided; and a general and collected calmness ensued, such as might
best dispose the gambling associates to a wily deliberation, how most
coolly to penetrate into the mystic obscurities that brought them
together.

All, however, was not yet involved in the gaping cauldron of chance,
whence so soon was to emerge the brilliant prize, or desolating blank,
that was to blazon the lustre, or stamp the destruction, of whoever,
with his last trembling mite, came to sound its perilous depths. They
as yet played, or prowled around it, lightly and slightly; not more
impatient than fearful of hurrying their fate; and seeking to hide
from themselves, as well as from their competitors, their anticipating
exultation or dread.

Still, therefore, they had some command of the general use of their
faculties, and of what was due from them to general social commerce.
Still some vivacious sallies called forth passing smiles from those
who had been seldomest betrayed, or whose fortunes had least been
embezzled; and still such cheeks as were not too dragged or haggard to
exhibit them, were able to give graceful symptoms of self-possession,
by the pleasing and becoming dimples produced through arch, though
silent observance.

But by degrees the fever of doubt and anxiety broke forth all around,
and every breath caught its infection. Every look then showed the
contagion of lurking suspicion: every eye that fixed a prosperous
object, seemed to fix it with the stamp of detection. All was contrast
the most discordant, unblended by any gradation; for wherever the
laughing brilliancy of any countenance denoted exulting victory, the
glaring vacancy of some other hard by, displayed incipient despair.

Like the awe of death was next the muteness of taciturnity, from the
absorption of agonizing attention while the last decisive strokes,
upon which hung affluence or beggary, were impending. Every die, then,
became a bliss or a blast; every extorted word was an execration; every
fear whispered ruin with dishonour; every wish was a dagger to some
antagonist!—till, finally, the result was proclaimed, which carried
off the winner in a whirl of maddening triumph; and to the loser left
the recovery of his nervous, hoarse, husky, grating voice, only for
curses and oaths, louder and more appalling than thunder in its deepest
roll.


NEWMARKET.

The next vortex of high dissipation into which, as its season arrived,
young Burney was ushered, was that of Newmarket: and there, as far as
belonged to the spirit of the race, and the beauty, the form, and the
motions of the noble quadrupeds, whose rival swiftness made running
seem a flight, and that flight appear an airy game, or gambol, of some
fabled animal of elastic grace and celerity, he was enchanted with his
sojourn. And the accompanying scenes of gambling, betting, &c., though
of the same character and description as those of St. James’s-street,
he thought less darkly terrible, because the winners or losers seemed
to him more generally assorted according to their equality in rank
or fortune: though no one, in the long run, however high, or however
low, escaped becoming the dupe, or the prey, of whoever was most
adroit,—whether plebeian or patrician.


BATH.

The ensuing initiation into this mingled existence of inertness and
effort, of luxury and of desolation, was made at Bath. But Bath, from
its buildings and its position, had a charm around it for the subject
of these memoirs, to soften off the monotony of this wayward taste, and
these wilful sufferings; though the seat of dissipation alone he found
to be changed; its basis—cards, dice, or betting—being always the
same.

Nevertheless, that beautiful city, then little more than a splendid
village in comparison with its actual metropolitan size and grandeur,
had intrinsic claims to the most vivid admiration, and the strongest
incitements to youthful curiosity, from the antiquity of its origin,
real as well as fabulous; from its Bladud, its baths, its cathedral;
and its countless surrounding glories of military remains; all
magically followed up, to vary impression, and stimulate approbation,
by its rising excellence in Grecian and Roman architecture.

Born with an enthusiastic passion for rural scenery, the picturesque
view of this city offered to the ravished eye of young Burney some new
loveliness, or striking effect, with an endless enchantment of variety,
at almost every fresh opening of every fresh street into which he
sauntered.

And here, not only did he find this perpetual, yet changeful, prospect
of Nature in her most smiling attire, and of Art in her most chaste
and elegant constructions; Bath had yet further attraction to its new
visitor; another captivation stronger still to a character soaring
to intellectual heights, caught him in its chains,—it was that of
literary eminence; Bath, at this moment, being illumined by that
sparkling but dangerous Meteor of philosophy, politics, history, and
metaphysics, St. John, Lord Bolingbroke.

Happily, perhaps, for his safety, it was in vain that young Burney
struggled, by every effort of ingenuity he could exert, to bask in the
radiance of this Meteor’s wit and eloquence. Every attempt at that
purpose failed; and merely a glimpse of this extraordinary personage,
was all that the utmost vigilance of romantic research ever caught.

Young Burney could not, at that period, have studied the works of Lord
Bolingbroke, who was then chiefly known by his political honours and
disgraces; his exile and his pardon; and by that most perfect panegyric
that ever, perhaps, poet penned, of Pope:

    “Come then, my friend! my Genius!——
     Oh, master of the poet and the song!”

Fortunately, therefore, the ingenuous youth and inexperience of the
subject of these memoirs, escaped the brilliant poison of metaphysical
sophistry, that might else have disturbed his peace, and darkened his
happiness.

The set to which Mr. Greville belonged, was as little studious to seek,
as likely to gain, either for its advantage or its evil, admission to a
character so eminently scholastic, or so personally fastidious, as that
of Lord Bolingbroke; though, had he been unhampered by such colleagues,
Lord Bolingbroke, as a metaphysician, would have been sought with
eager, nay, fond alacrity, by Mr. Greville; metaphysics being, in
his own conception and opinion, the proper bent of his mind and
understanding. But those with whom he now was connected, encompassed
him with snares that left little opening to any higher pursuits than
their own.

The aim, therefore, of young Burney, was soon limited to obtaining a
glance of the still noble, though infirm figure, and still handsome,
though aged countenance of this celebrated statesman. And of these, for
the most transitory view, he would frequently, with a book in his hand,
loiter by the hour opposite to his lordship’s windows, which were _vis
à vis_ to those of Mr. Greville; or run, in circular eddies, from side
to side of the sedan chair in which his lordship was carried to the
pump-room.

Mr. Greville, though always entertained by the juvenile eagerness of
his young favourite, pursued his own modish course with the alternate
ardour and apathy, which were then beginning to be what now is
called the order of the day; steering—for he thought that was _the
thing_—with whatever was most in vogue, even when it was least to his
taste; and making whatever was most expensive the criterion for his
choice, even in diversions; because that was what most effectually
would exclude plebeian participation.

And to this lofty motive, rather than to any appropriate fondness for
its charms, might be attributed, in its origin, his fervour for gaming;
though gaming, with that poignant stimulus, self-conceit, which, where
calculation tries to battle with chance, goads on, with resistless
force, our designs by our presumption, soon left wholly in the back
ground every attempt at rivalry by any other species of recreation.

Hunting therefore, shooting, riding, music, drawing, dancing, fencing,
tennis, horse-racing, the joys of Bacchus, and numerous other exertions
of skill, of strength, of prowess, and of ingenuity, served but, ere
long, to fill up the annoying chasms by which these nocturnal orgies
were interrupted through the obtrusion of day.


FULK GREVILLE.

Such was the new world into which the subject of these memoirs was
thus abruptly let loose; but, happily, his good taste was as much
revolted as his morality, against its practices. And his astonishment
at the dreadful night-work that has been described; so absorbent,
concentrating, and fearful, hung round with such dire prognostics,
pursued with so much fury, or brooded over with such despondence; never
so thoughtlessly wore away as to deaden his horror of its perils.

Mr. Greville himself, though frequenting these scenes as an expert and
favourite member of the coteries in which they were enacted, had too
real a sense of right, and too sincere a feeling of humanity, to intend
involving an inexperienced youth in a passion for the amusements of
hazard; or to excite in him a propensity for the dissolute company of
which its followers are composed; who, satiated with every species of
pleasure that is innoxious, are alive alone to such as can rescue them
from ruin, even though at the fatal price of betraying into its gulph
the associates with whom they chiefly herd.

Nevertheless, he gave no warning to young Burney of danger. Aware that
there was no fortune to lose, he concluded there was no mischief to
apprehend; and, satisfied that the sentiments of the youth were good,
to meddle with his principles seemed probably a work of supererogation.
Without reflection, therefore, rather than with any project, he was
glad of a sprightly participator, with whom he could laugh the next
morning, at whatever had been ludicrous over-night; though to utter
either caution or counsel, he would have thought moralizing, and,
consequently, _fogrum_; a term which he adopted for whatever speech,
action, or mode of conduct, he disdainfully believed to be beneath the
high _ton_ to which he considered himself to be born and bred.

From such _fogrum_ sort of work, therefore, he contemptuously recoiled,
deeming it fitted exclusively for schoolmasters, or for priests.


WILBURY HOUSE.

Not solely, however, to public places were the pleasures, or the
magnificence, of Mr. Greville confined. He visited, with great fondness
and great state, his family seat in Wiltshire; and had the highest
gratification in receiving company there with splendour, and in
awakening their surprise, and surpassing their expectations, by the
spirit and the changes of their entertainment.

He travelled in a style that was even princely; not only from his
equipages, out-riders, horses, and liveries, but from constantly
having two of his attendants skilled in playing the French horn. And
these were always stationed to recreate him with marches and warlike
movements, on the outside of the windows, where he took any repast.

Wilbury House, the seat of Mr. Greville, situated near Andover, in
Wiltshire, was a really pretty place; but it had a recommendation to
those who possess wealth and taste with superfluous time, far greater
than any actual beauty, by requiring expensive alterations, and being
susceptible of lavish improvements.

This enhanced all its merits to Mr. Greville, who, when out of other
employment for his thoughts, devoted them to avenues, plantations,
rising hills, sinking dales, and unexpected vistas; to each of which he
called upon whatever guests were at his house, during their creation,
for as much astonishment as applause.

The call, however, was frequently unanswered; it was so palpable that
he was urged to this pursuit by lassitude rather than pleasure; by
flourishing ostentation rather than by genuine picturesque taste; so
obvious that to draw forth admiration to the beauties of his grounds,
was far less his object than to stir up wonder at the recesses of his
purse; that the wearied and wary visitor, who had once been entrapped
to follow his footsteps, in echoing his exclamations of delight at his
growing embellishments, was, ever after, sedulous, when he was with his
workmen and his works, to elude them: though all alike were happy to
again rejoin him at his sports and at his table; for there he was gay,
hospitable, and pleasing, brilliant in raillery, and full of enjoyment.


SAMUEL CRISP, ESQ.

The first entrance of young Burney into Wilbury House was engraven,
ever after it took place, in golden characters of sacred friendship
upon his mind, for there he first met with Mr. Crisp. And as his
acquaintance with Mr. Greville had opened new roads and pursuits in
life to his prospects, that of Mr. Crisp opened new sources and new
energies to his faculties, for almost every species of improvement.

Mr. Crisp, by birth and education a gentleman, according to the
ordinary acceptation of that word, was in mind, manners, and habits
yet more truly so, according to the most refined definition of the
appellation, as including honour, spirit, elegance, language, and grace.

His person and port were distinguished; his address was even courtly;
his face had the embellishment of a strikingly fine outline; bright,
hazel, penetrating, yet arch eyes; an open front; a noble Roman nose;
and a smile of a thousand varied expressions.

But all that was external, however attractive, however full of promise,
however impossible to pass over, was of utterly inferior worth
compared with the inward man; for there he was rare indeed. Profound
in wisdom; sportive in wit; sound in understanding. A scholar of the
highest order; a critic of the clearest acumen; possessing, with equal
delicacy of discrimination, a taste for literature and for the arts;
and personally excelling, as a _dilettante_, both in music and painting.

It was difficult to discuss any classical or political work, that his
conversation did not impregnate with more information and more wit
than, commonly speaking, their acutest authors had brought forward.
And such was his knowledge of mankind, that it was something beyond
difficult, it was scarcely even possible, to investigate any subject
requiring worldly sagacity, in which he did not dive into the abysses
of the minds and the propensities of the principals, through whom the
business was to be transacted, with a perspicuity so masterly, that
while weighing all that was presented to him, it developed all that was
held back; and fathomed at once the intentions and the resources of his
opponents.

And with abilities thus grand and uncommon for great and important
purposes, if to such he had been called, he was endowed with discursive
powers for the social circle, the most varied in matter, the most solid
in reasoning, and the most delighting in gaiety—or nearly so—that
ever fell to favoured mortal’s lot.

The subject of these memoirs was but seventeen years of age, when
first he had the incalculable advantage of being attracted to explore
this Mine of wisdom, experience, and accomplishments. His musical
talents, and a sympathy of taste in the choice of composers, quickly
caught the responsive ears of Mr. Crisp; which vibrated to every
passage, every sound, that the young musician embellished by graces
intuitively his own, either of expression or execution. And whenever
Mr. Crisp could contrive to retreat, and induce his new Orpheus to
retreat, from the sports of the field, it was even with ardour that he
escaped from the clang of horses and hounds, to devote whole mornings
to the charms,

  Softly sweet, in Lydian measures,

of harmony. And harmony indeed, in its most enlarged combinations,
united here the player and the auditor; for they soon discovered that
not in music alone, but in general sentiments, their hearts were tuned
to the same key, and expanded to the same “concord of sweet sounds.”

The love of music, in Mr. Crisp, amounted to passion; yet that passion
could not have differed more from modern enthusiasm in that art, if it
had been hatred; since, far from demanding, according to the present
mode, every two or three seasons, new compositions and new composers,
his musical taste and consistency deviated not from his taste and
consistency in literature: and where a composer had hit his fancy,
and a composition had filled him with delight, he would call for his
favourite pieces of Bach of Berlin, Handel, Scarlatti, or Echard, with
the same reiteration of eagerness that he would again and again read,
hear, or recite chosen passages from the works of his favourite bards,
Shakespeare, Milton, or Pope.

Mr. Greville was sometimes diverted, and sometimes nettled, by this
double defection; for in whatever went forward, he loved to be lord
of the ascendant: but Mr. Crisp, whose temper was as unruffled as his
understanding was firm, only smiled at his friend’s diversion; and
from his pique looked away. Mr. Greville then sought to combat this
musical mania by ridicule, and called upon his companions of the chase
to halloo the recreant huntsman to the field; affirming that he courted
the pipe and the song, only to avoid clearing a ditch, and elude
leaping a five-barred gate.

This was sufficient to raise the cry against the delinquent; for Man
without business or employment is always disposed to be a censor of
his neighbour; and whenever he thinks his antagonist on the road to
defeat, is always alert to start up for a wit. Mr. Crisp, therefore,
now, was assailed as a renegado from the chase; as a lounger; a
loiterer; scared by the horses; panic-struck by the dogs; and more
fearful of the deer, than the deer could be of the hunter.

In the well-poized hope, that the less the sportsmen were answered,
the sooner they would be fatigued and depart, Mr. Crisp now and then
gave them a nod, but never once a word; even though this forbearance
instigated a triumph, loud, merry, and exulting; and sent them off, and
brought them back, in the jovial persuasion that, in their own phrase,
they had dumb-founded him.

With this self-satisfied enjoyment, Mr. Crisp unresistingly indulged
them; though with a single pointed sentence, he could rapidly have
descended them from their fancied elevation. But, above all petty
pride of superiority in trifles, he never held things of small import
to be worth the trouble of an argument. Still less, however, did he
choose to be put out of his own way; which he always pursued with
placid equanimity whenever it was opposed without irrefragable reason.
Good-humouredly, however, he granted to his adversaries, in whose
laughs and railing he sometimes heartily joined, the full play of their
epigrams; internally conscious that, if seriously provoked, he could
retort them by lampoons. Sometimes, nevertheless, when he was hard
beset by gibes and jeers at his loss of sport; or by a chorus of mock
pitiers shouting out, “Poor Crisp! poor fellow! how consumedly thou art
moped!” he would quietly say, with a smile of inexpressible archness,
“Go to, my friends, go to! go you your way, and let me go mine! And
pray, don’t be troubled for me; depend upon it there is nobody will
take more care of Samuel Crisp than I will!”

       *       *       *       *       *

In this manner, and in these sets, rapidly, gaily, uncounted, and
untutored, glided on imperceptibly the first youth of the subject
of these memoirs: surrounded by temptations to luxury, expense, and
dangerous pleasures, that, in weaker intellects, might have sapped for
ever the foundations of religion and virtue. But a love of right was
the predominant feature of the mind of young Burney. Mr. Greville,
also, himself, with whatever mockery he would have sneered away
any expression tending either to practice or meditation in piety,
instinctively held in esteem whatever was virtuous; and what was
vicious in scorn: though his esteem for virtue was never pronounced,
lest it should pass for pedantry; and his scorn for vice was studiously
disguised, lest he should be set down himself for a Fogrum.


MISS FANNY MACARTNEY.

New scenes, and of deeper interest, presented themselves ere long.
A lovely female, in the bloom of youth, equally high in a double
celebrity, the most rarely accorded to her sex, of beauty and of wit,
and exquisite in her possession of both, made an assault upon the
eyes, the understanding, and the heart of Mr. Greville; so potent in
its first attack, and so varied in its after stages, that, little as
he felt at that time disposed to barter his boundless liberty, his
desultory pursuits, and his brilliant, though indefinite expectations,
for a bondage so narrow, so derogatory to the swing of his wild
will, as that of marriage appeared to him; he was caught by so many
charms, entangled in so many inducements, and inflamed by such a whirl
of passions, that he soon almost involuntarily surrendered to the
besieger; not absolutely at discretion, but very unequivocally from
resistless impulse.

This lady was Miss Fanny Macartney, the third daughter of Mr.
Macartney, a gentleman of large fortune, and of an ancient Irish family.

In Horace Walpole’s Beauties, Miss Fanny Macartney was the Flora.

In Greville’s Maxims, Characters, and Reflections, she was also Flora,
contrasted with Camilla, who was meant for Mrs. Garrick.

Miss Fanny Macartney was of a character which, at least in its latter
stages, seems to demand two pencils to delineate; so diversely was it
understood, or appreciated.

To many she passed for being pedantic, sarcastic, and supercilious:
as such, she affrighted the timid, who shrunk into silence; and
braved the bold, to whom she allowed no quarter. The latter, in
truth, seemed to stimulate exertions which brought her faculties into
play; and which—besides creating admiration in all who escaped her
shafts—appeared to offer to herself a mental exercise, useful to her
health, and agreeable to her spirits.

Her understanding was truly masculine; not from being harsh or rough,
but from depth, soundness, and capacity; yet her fine small features,
and the whole style of her beauty, looked as if meant by Nature for the
most feminine delicacy: but her voice, which had something in it of a
croak; and her manner, latterly at least, of sitting, which was that
of lounging completely at her ease, in such curves as she found most
commodious, with her head alone upright; and her eyes commonly fixed,
with an expression rather alarming than flattering, in examination
of some object that caught her attention; probably caused, as they
naturally excited, the hard general notion to her disadvantage above
mentioned.

This notion, nevertheless, though almost universally harboured in the
circle of her public acquaintance, was nearly reversed in the smaller
circles that came more in contact with her feelings. By this last
must be understood, solely, the few who were happy enough to possess
her favour; and to them she was a treasure of ideas and of variety.
The keenness of her satire yielded its asperity to the zest of her
good-humour, and the kindness of her heart. Her noble indifference
to superior rank, if placed in opposition to superior merit; and her
delight in comparing notes with those with whom she desired to balance
opinions, established her, in her own elected set, as one of the first
of women. And though the fame of her beauty must pass away in the same
oblivious rotation which has withered that of her rival contemporaries,
the fame of her intellect must ever live, while sensibility may be
linked with poetry, and the Ode to Indifference shall remain to shew
their union.

The various incidents that incited and led to the connexion that
resulted from this impassioned opening, appertain to the history of Mr.
Greville; but, in its solemn ratification, young Burney took a part so
essential, as to produce a striking and pleasing consequence to much of
his after-life.

The wedding, though no one but the bride and bridegroom themselves
knew why, was a stolen one; and kept profoundly secret; which,
notwithstanding the bride was under age, was by no means, at that
time, difficult, the marriage act having not yet passed. Young Burney,
though the most juvenile of the party, was fixed upon to give the lady
away;[9] which evinced a trust and a partiality in the bridegroom, that
were immediately adopted by his fair partner; and by her unremittingly
sustained, with the frankest confidence, and the sincerest esteem,
through the whole of a long and varied life. With sense and taste such
as hers, it was not, indeed, likely she should be slack to discern and
develop a merit so formed to meet their perceptions.

When the new married pair went through the customary routine of
matrimonial elopers, namely, that of returning home to demand pardon
and a blessing, Mr. Macartney coolly said: “Mr. Greville has chosen to
take a wife out of the window, whom he might just as well have taken
out of the door.”

The immediate concurrence of the lovely new mistress of Wilbury House,
in desiring the society, even more than enjoying the talents, of her
lord and master’s favourite, occasioned his residence there to be
nearly as unbroken as their own. And the whole extensive neighbourhood
so completely joined in this kindly partiality, that no engagement,
no assemblage whatsoever took place, from the most selectly private,
to the most gorgeously public, to which the Grevilles were invited,
in which he was not included: and he formed at that period many
connections of lasting and honourable intimacy; particularly with Dr.
Hawkesworth, Mr. Boone, and Mr. Cox.

They acted, also, sundry proverbs, interludes, and farces, in which
young Burney was always a principal personage. In one, amongst
others, he played his part with a humour so entertaining, that its
nick-name was fastened upon him for many years after its appropriate
representation. It would be difficult, indeed, not to accord him
theatrical talents, when he could perform with success a character so
little congenial with his own, as that of a finical, conceited coxcomb,
a paltry and illiterate poltroon; namely, Will Fribble, Esq., in
Garrick’s farce of Miss in her Teens. Mr. Greville himself was Captain
Flash, and the beautiful Mrs. Greville was Miss Biddy Bellair; by which
three names, from the great diversion their adoption had afforded, they
corresponded with one another during several years.

The more serious honour that had been conferred upon young Burney, of
personating the part of father to Mrs. Greville, was succeeded, in
due season after these gay espousals, by that of personating the part
of god-father to her daughter; in standing, as the representative of
the Duke of Beaufort, at the baptism of Miss Greville, afterwards the
all-admired, and indescribably beautiful Lady Crewe.

Little could he then foresee, that he was bringing into the christian
community a permanent blessing for his own after-life, in one of the
most cordial, confidential, open-hearted, and unalterable of his
friends.


ESTHER.

But not to Mr. Greville alone was flung one of those blissful or
baneful darts, that sometimes fix in a moment, and irreversibly, the
domestic fate of man; just such another, as potent, as pointed, as
piercing, yet as delicious, penetrated, a short time afterwards, the
breast of young Burney; and from eyes perhaps as lovely, though not as
celebrated; and from a mind perhaps as highly gifted, though not as
renowned.

Esther Sleepe—this memorialist’s mother—of whom she must now with
reverence, with fear—yet with pride and delight—offer the tribute of
a description—was small and delicate, but not diminutive, in person.
Her face had that sculptural oval form which gives to the air of the
head something like the ideal perfection of the poet’s imagination.
Her fair complexion was embellished by a rosy hue upon her cheeks of
Hebe freshness. Her eyes were of the finest azure, and beaming with
the brightest intelligence; though they owed to the softness of their
lustre a still more resistless fascination: and they were set in her
head with such a peculiarity of elegance in shape and proportion,
that they imparted a nobleness of expression to her brow and to her
forehead, that, whether she were beheld when attired for society; or
surprised under the negligence of domestic avocation; she could be
viewed by no stranger whom she did not strike with admiration; she
could be broken in upon by no old friend who did not look at her with
new pleasure.

It was at a dance that she first was seen by young Burney, at the house
of his elder brother, in Hatton Garden; and that first sight was to him
decisive, for he was not more charmed by her beauty than enchanted by
her conversation.

So extraordinary, indeed, were the endowments of her mind, that, her
small opportunity for their attainment considered, they are credible
only from having been known upon proof.

Born in the midst of the city—but not in one of those mansions where,
formerly,[10] luxury and riches revelled with a lavish preponderance
of magnificence, that left many of those of the nobles of the west
plain or old-fashioned in comparison: not in one of those dwellings
of the hospitable English merchant of early days, whose boundless
liberality brought tributary under his roof the arts and sciences, in
the persons of their professors; and who rivalled the nobles in the
accomplishments of their progeny, till, by mingling in acquirements,
they mingled in blood:—the birth of the lovely Esther had nothing
to boast from parental dignity, parental opulence, nor—strange, and
stranger yet to tell—parental worth.

Alone stood the lovely Esther, unsustained by ancestry, unsupported by
wealth, unimpelled by family virtue——

Yet no!—in this last article there was a partnership that redeemed
the defection, since the Male parent was not more wanting in goodness,
probity, and conduct, than the Female was perfect in all—if perfect
were a word that, without presumption, might ever be applied to a human
being.

With no advantage, therefore, of education, save the simple one of
early learning, or, rather, imbibing the French language, from her
maternal grandfather, who was a native of France, but had been forced
from his country by the edict of Nantz; this gifted young creature
was one of the most pleasing, well-mannered, well-read, elegant, and
even cultivated, of her sex: and wherever she appeared in a social
circle, and was drawn forth—which the attraction of her beauty made
commonly one and the same thing—she was generally distinguished as the
first female of the party for sense, literature, and, rarer still, for
judgment; a pre-eminence, however, not more justly, than, by herself,
unsuspectedly her due; for, more than unassuming, she was ignorant of
her singular superiority.[11]

To excel in music, or in painting, so as to rival even professors,
save the highest, in those arts, had not then been regarded as the
mere ordinary progress of female education: nor had the sciences yet
become playthings for the nursery. These new roads of ambition for
juvenile eminence are undoubtedly improvements, where they leave not
out more essential acquirements. Yet, perhaps, those who were born
before this elevation was the mode; whose calls, therefore, were not
so multitudinous for demonstrative embellishments, may be presumed to
have risen to more solid advantages in mental attainments, and in the
knowledge and practice of domestic duties, than the super-accomplished
aspirants at excellence in a mass, of the present moment.

A middle course might, perhaps, be more intellectually salubrious,
because more simple and natural: and foremost herself, if she may be
judged by analogy, foremost herself, had stood this lovely Esther, in
amalgamating the two systems in her own studies and pursuits, had they
equally, at that time, been within the scope of her consciousness:
for straight-forward as was her design in all that she deemed right,
whatever was presented to even a glimpse of her perceptions that was
new and ingenious, rapidly opened to her lively understanding a fresh
avenue to something curious, useful, or amusing, that she felt herself
irresistibly invited to explore.

Botany, then, was no familiar accomplishment; but flowers and plants
she cultivated with assiduous care; sowing, planting, pruning,
grafting, and rearing them, to all the purposes of sight and scent
that belong to their fragrant enjoyment; though untutored in their
nomenclature, and unlearned in their classification.

Astronomy, though beyond her grasp as a science, she passionately
caught at in its elementary visibility, loving it for its intrinsic
glory, and enamoured of it yet more fondly from her own favourite idea,
that the soul of the righteous, upon the decease of the body, may
be wafted to realms of light, and permitted thence to look down, as
guardian angel, on those most precious to it left behind.

Yet so strict was her sense of duty, that she never suffered this
vivid imagination to put it out of its bias; and the clearness of
her judgment regulated so scrupulously the disposition of her hours,
that, without neglecting any real devoir, she made leisure, by skilful
arrangements and quickness of execution, for nearly every favourite
object that hit her fancy; holding almost as sacred the employment of
her spare moments, as most others hold the fulfilment of their stated
occupations.

And, indeed, so only could she, thus self-taught by self-investigation,
study, and labour, have risen to those various excellences that struck
all who saw, and impressed all who knew her, with admiration mingled
with wonder.

Critical was the first instant of meeting between two young persons
thus similarly self-modelled, and thus singularly demonstrating, that
Education, with all her rules, her skill, her experienced knowledge,
and her warning wisdom, may so be supplied, be superseded, by Genius,
when allied to Industry, as to raise beings who merit to be pointed out
as examples, even to those who have not a difficulty to combat, who are
spurred by encouragement, and instructed by able teachers; to all which
advantages young Burney and Esther—though as far removed from distress
as from affluence—were equally strangers.

Who shall be surprised that two such beings, thus opening into life
and distinction through intellectual vigour, and thus instinctively
sustaining unaided conflicts against the darkness of ignorance, the
intricacies of new doctrines, and all the annoying obstructions of
early prejudices,—who shall be surprised, that two such beings, where,
on one side, there was so much beauty to attract, and on the other so
much discernment to perceive the value of her votary, upon meeting each
other at the susceptible age of ardent youth, should have emitted,
spontaneously, and at first sight, from heart to heart, sparks so
bright and pure that they might be called electric, save that their
flame was exempt from any shock?

Young Burney at this time had no power to sue for the hand, though he
had still less to forbear suing for the heart, of this fair creature:
not only he had no fortune to lay at her feet, no home to which he
could take her, no prosperity which he could invite her to share;
another barrier, which seemed to him still more formidable, stood
imperviously in his way—his peculiar position with Mr. Greville.

That gentleman, in freeing the subject of these memoirs from his
engagements with Dr. Arne, meant to act with as much kindness as
munificence; for, casting aside all ostentatious parade, he had shown
himself as desirous to gain, as to become, a friend. Yet was there no
reason to suppose he purposed to rear a vine, of which he would not
touch the grapes.

To be liberal, suited at once the real good taste of his character,
and his opinion of what was due to his rank in life; and in procuring
to himself the double pleasure of the society and the talents of
young Burney, he thought his largess to Dr. Arne well bestowed; but it
escaped his reflections, that the youth whom he made his companion in
London, at Wilbury House, at Newmarket, and at Bath, in quitting the
regular pursuit of his destined profession, risked forfeiting the most
certain guarantee to prosperity in business, progressive perseverance.

Nevertheless, those drawbacks to this splendid connection occurred not
at its beginning, nor yet for many a day after, to the young votary
of Apollo. The flattering brilliancy of the change, and the sort of
romance that hung upon its origin, kept aloof all calculations of its
relative mischiefs; which only distantly to have contemplated, in the
sparkling novelty that mingled such gay pleasure with his gratitude,
would have appeared to him ungenerous, if not sordid. Youth is rarely
enlightened by foresight upon prudential prospects; and the mental
optic of young Burney was not quickened to this perception, till the
desire of independence to his fortune was excited by the loss of it to
his heart; for never had he missed his liberty, till he sighed to make
it a fresh sacrifice to a more lasting bondage.

It was then he first felt the torment of uncertain situation; it
was then he appreciated the high male value of self-dependence; it
was then he first conceived, that, though gaiety may be found, and
followed, and met, and enjoyed abroad, not there, but at home, is
happiness! Yet, from the moment a bosom whisper softly murmured to him
the name of Esther, he had no difficulty to believe in the distinct
existence of happiness from pleasure; and—still less to devise
where—for him—it must be sought.

When he made known to his fair enslaver his singular position, and
entreated her counsel to disentangle him from a net, of which, till
now, the soft texture had impeded all discernment of the confinement,
the early wisdom with which she preached to him patience and
forbearance, rather diminished than augmented his power of practising
either, by an increase of admiration that doubled the eagerness of his
passion.

Nevertheless, he was fain to comply with her counsel, though less from
acquiescence than from helplessness how to devise stronger measures,
while under this nameless species of obligation to Mr. Greville, which
he could not satisfy his delicacy in breaking; nor yet, in adhering to,
justify his sense of his own rights.

He could consent, however, to be passive only while awaiting some
happy turn for propitiating his efforts to escape from the sumptuous
scenes, which, with his heart away from them, he now looked upon as
obscuring, not illuminating, his existence; since they promoted not
the means of arriving at all he began to hold worth pursuit, “Home,
sweet home!” which he now severely saw could be reached only by regular
assiduity in his profession.

From this time it was with difficulty he could assume spirit sufficient
for sustaining his intercourse, hitherto so happy, so lively, with the
Grevilles; not alone from the sufferings of absence, but from hard
secret conflicts, whether or not to reveal his distress. Mr. Greville,
who, a short time back would quickly have discerned his latent
uneasiness, was now so occupied by his own new happiness, conjugal and
paternal, that though he welcomed young Burney with unabated kindness,
his own thoughts, and his observations, were all centered in his two
Fannys.

During the first fair breathings of early wedded love, the scoff
of the tender passion, the sneer against romance, the contempt of
refined reciprocations of sentiment, are done away, even from the most
sarcastic, by a newly imbibed consciousness of the felicity of virtuous
tenderness; which were its permanence more frequently equal to its
enjoyment, would irresistibly convert the scorn of its deriders into
envy. But constancy in affection from long dissipated characters, must
always, whether in friendship or in love, be as rare as it is right;
for constancy requires virtue to be leagued with the passions.

Unmarked, therefore, young Burney kept to himself his unhappiness;
though he was not now impeded from communication by fears of the
raillery with which, previously to his marriage, Mr. Greville would
have held up to mockery a tale of love in a cottage, as a proper
pendant to a tale of love in bedlam. But still he was withheld from
all genial confidence, by apprehensions of remonstrances which he
now considered as mercenary, if not derogatory, against imprudent
connexions; and of representations of his own claims to higher views;
which he now, from his belief that his incomparable choice would
out-balance in excellence all vain attempts at competition, deemed
profane if not insane.

Mrs. Greville, having no clew to his secret feelings, was not aware of
their disturbance; she might else easily, and she would willingly, have
drawn forth his confidence, from the kindly disposition that subsisted,
on both sides, to trust and to friendship.

But a discovery the most painful of the perturbed state of his mind,
was soon afterwards impelled by a change of affairs in the Grevilles,
which they believed would enchant him with pleasure; but which they
found, to their unspeakable astonishment, overpowered him with
affliction.

This was no other than a plan of going abroad for some years, and of
including him in their party.

Concealment was instantly at an end. The sudden dismay of his ingenuous
countenance, though it told not the cause, betrayed past recall his
repugnance to the scheme.

With parts so lively, powers of observation so ready, and a spirit so
delighting in whatever was uncommon and curious, they had expected
that such a prospect of visiting new countries, surveying new scenes,
mingling with new characters; and traversing the foreign world, under
their auspices, in all its splendour, would have raised in him a
buoyant transport, exhilarating to behold. But the sudden paleness
that overspread his face; his downcast eye; the quiver of his lips;
and the unintelligible stammer of his vainly attempted reply, excited
interrogatories so anxious and so vehement, that they soon induced an
avowal that a secret power had gotten possession of his mind, and
sturdily exiled from it all ambition, curiosity, or pleasure, that came
not in the form of an offering to its all-absorbing shrine.

Every objection and admonition which he had anticipated, were
immediately brought forward by this confession; but they were presented
with a lenity that showed his advisers to be fully capable of
conceiving, though persuaded that they ought to oppose, his feelings.

Disconcerted, as well as dejected, because dissatisfied as well as
unhappy in his situation, from mental incertitudes what were its real
calls; and whether or not the ties of interest and obligation were
here of sufficient strength to demand the sacrifice of those of love;
he attempted not to vindicate, unreflectingly, his wishes; and still
less did he permit himself to treat them as his intentions. With faint
smiles, therefore, but stifled sighs, he heard, with civil attention,
their opinions; though, determined not to involve himself in any
embarrassing conditions, he would risk no reply; and soon afterwards,
curbing his emotion, he started abruptly another subject.

  “They thought him wise, and followed as he led.”

All the anguish, however, that was here suppressed, found vent with
redoubled force at the feet of the fair partner in his disappointment;
who, while unaffectedly sharing it, resolutely declined receiving
clandestinely his hand, though tenderly she clung to his heart. She
would listen to no project that might lead him to relinquish such solid
friends, at the very moment that they were preparing to give him the
strongest proof of their fondness for his society, and of their zeal in
his benefit and improvement.

Young Burney was not the less unhappy at this decision from being
sensible of its justice, since his judgment could not but thank her, in
secret, for pronouncing the hard dictates of his own.

All that he now solicited was her picture, that he might wear her
resemblance next his heart, till that heart should beat to its
responsive original.

With this request she gracefully complied; and she sat for him to
Spencer, one of the most famous miniature painters of that day.

Of striking likeness was this performance, of which the head and
unornamented hair were executed with the most chaste simplicity;
and young Burney reaped from this possession all that had power to
afford him consolation; since he now could soften off the pangs of
separation, by gliding from company, public places or assemblages, to
commune by himself with the countenance of all he held most dear.

Thus solaced, he resigned himself with more courage to his approaching
misfortune.

The Grevilles, it is probable, from seeing him apparently revived,
imagined that, awakened from his flights of fancy, he was recovering
his senses: but when, from this idea, they started, with light
raillery, the tender subject, they found their utter mistake. The
most distant hint of abandoning such excellence, save for the moment,
and from the moment’s necessity, nearly convulsed him with inward
disturbance; and so changed his whole appearance, that, concerned as
well as amazed, they were themselves glad to hasten from so piercing a
topic.

Too much moved, however, to regain his equilibrium, he could not
be drawn from a disturbed taciturnity, till shame, conquering his
agitation, enabled him to call back his self-command. He forced, then,
a laugh at his own emotion; but, presently afterwards seized with an
irresistible desire of shewing what he thought its vindication, he
took from his bosom the cherished miniature, and placed it, fearfully,
almost awfully, upon a table.

It was instantly and eagerly snatched from hand to hand by the gay
couple; and young Burney had the unspeakable relief of perceiving
that this impulsive trial was successful. With expansive smiles they
examined and discussed the charm of the complexion, the beauty of
the features, and the sensibility and sweetness conveyed by their
expression: and what was then the joy, the pride of heart, the soul’s
delight of the subject of these memoirs, when those fastidious judges,
and superior self-possessors of personal attractions, voluntarily and
generously united in avowing that they could no longer wonder at his
captivation.

As a statue he stood fixed before them; a smiling one, indeed; a happy
one; but as breathless, as speechless, as motionless.

Mr. Greville then, with a laugh, exclaimed, “But why, Burney, why don’t
you marry her?”

Whether this were uttered sportively, inadvertently, or seriously,
young Burney took neither time nor reflection to weigh; but, starting
forward with ingenuous transport, called out, “May I?”

No negative could immediately follow an interrogatory that had thus
been invited; and to have pronounced one in another minute would have
been too late; for the enraptured and ardent young lover, hastily
construing a short pause into an affirmative, blithely left them to the
enjoyment of their palpable amusement at his precipitancy; and flew,
with extatic celerity, to proclaim himself liberated from all mundane
shackles, to her with whom he thought eternal bondage would be a state
celestial.

From this period, to that of their exquisitely happy union,

  “Gallopp’d apace the fiery-footed steeds,”

that urged on Time with as much gay delight as prancing rapidity;
for if they had not, in their matrimonial preparations, the luxuries
of wealth, neither had they its fatiguing ceremonies; if they had
not the security of future advantage, they avoided the torment of
present procrastination; and if they had but little to bestow upon one
another, they were saved, at least, the impatiency of waiting for the
seals, signatures, and etiquettes of lawyers, to bind down a lucrative
prosperity to survivorship.

To the mother of the bride, alone of her family, was confided, on the
instant, this spontaneous, this sudden felicity. Little formality
was requisite, before the passing of the marriage act, for presenting
at the hymeneal altar its destined votaries; and contracts the most
sacred could be rendered indissoluble almost at the very moment of
their projection: a strange dearth of foresight in those legislators
who could so little weigh the chances of a minor’s judgment upon what,
eventually, may either suit his taste or form his happiness, for the
larger portion of existence that commonly follows his majority.

This mother of the bride was of a nature so free from stain, so
elementally white, that it would scarcely seem an hyperbole to
denominate her an angel upon earth—if purity of mind that breathed
to late old age the innocence of infancy, and sustained the whole
intervening period in the constant practice of self-sacrificing
virtue, with piety for its sole stimulus, and holy hope for its
sole reward, can make pardonable the hazard of such an anticipating
appellation,—from which, however, she, her humble self, would have
shrunk as from sacrilege.

She was originally of French extraction, from a family of the name of
Dubois; but though her father was one of the conscientious victims
of the Edict of Nantz, she, from some unknown cause— probably of
maternal education—had been brought up a Roman Catholic. The inborn
religion of her mind, however, counteracted all that was hostile to her
fellow-creatures, in the doctrine of the religion of her ancestors; and
her gentle hopes and fervent prayers were offered up as devoutly for
those whom she feared were wrong, as they were vented enthusiastically
for those whom she was bred to believe were right.

Her bridal daughter, who had been educated a Protestant, and who
to that faith adhered steadily and piously through life, loved her
with that devoted love which could not but emanate from sympathy of
excellence. She was the first pride of her mother,—or, rather, the
first delight; for pride, under any form, or through any avenue, direct
or collateral, by which that subtle passion works or swells its way to
the human breast, her mother knew not; though she was endued with an
innate sense of dignity that seemed to exhale around her a sentiment of
reverence that, notwithstanding her genuine and invariable humility,
guarded her from every species and every approach of disrespect.

She could not but be gratified by an alliance so productive, rather
than promising, of happiness to her favourite child; and Mr.
Burney—as the married man must now be called—soon imbibed the filial
veneration felt by his wife, and loved his mother-in-law as sincerely
as if she had been his mother-in-blood.

All plan of going abroad was now, of course, at an end; and the
Grevilles, and their beautiful infant daughter, leaving behind them
Benedict the married man, set out, a family trio, upon their tour.

The customary compliments of introduction on one hand, and of
congratulation on the other, passed, in their usual forms upon such
occasions, between the bridegroom and his own family.

       *       *       *       *       *

Rarely can the highest zest of pleasure awaken, in its most active
votary, a sprightliness of pursuit more gay or more spirited, than
Mr. Burney now experienced and exhibited in the commonly grave and
sober career of business, from the ardour of his desire to obtain
self-dependence.

He worked not, indeed, with the fiery excitement of expectation; his
reward was already in his hands; but from the nobler impulse he worked
of meriting his fair lot; while she, his stimulus, deemed her own the
highest prize from that matrimonial wheel whence issue bliss or bane to
the remnant life of a sensitive female.


THE CITY.

It was in the city, in consequence of his wife’s connexions, that Mr.
Burney made his first essay as a housekeeper; and with a prosperity
that left not a doubt of his ultimate success. Scholars, in his musical
art, poured in upon him from all quarters of that British meridian;
and he mounted so rapidly into the good graces of those who were most
opulent and most influential, that it was no sooner known that there
was a vacancy for an organist professor, in one of the fine old fabrics
of devotion which decorate religion in the city and reflect credit on
our commercial ancestors, than the Fullers, Hankeys, and all other
great houses of the day to which he had yet been introduced, exerted
themselves in his service with an activity and a warmth that were
speedily successful; and that he constantly recounted with pleasure.

Anxious to improve as well as to prosper in his profession, he also
elaborately studied composition, and brought forth several musical
pieces; all of which that are authenticated, will be enumerated in a
general list of his musical works.

And thus, with a felicity that made toil delicious, through labour
repaid by prosperity; exertions, by comfort; fatigue, by soothing
tenderness; and all the fond passions of juvenile elasticity, by the
charm of happiest sympathy,—began, and were rolling on, equally
blissful and busy, the first wedded years of this animated young
couple;—when a storm suddenly broke over their heads, which menaced
one of those deadly catastrophes, that, by engulphing one loved object
in that “bourne whence no traveller returns,” tears up for ever by
the root all genial, spontaneous, unsophisticated happiness, from the
survivor.

Mr. Burney, whether from overstrained efforts in business; or from
an application exceeding his physical powers in composition; or from
the changed atmosphere of Cheshire, Shropshire, and Wiltshire, for
the confined air of our great and crowded city; which had not then,
as now, by a vast mass of improvement, been made nearly as sane as it
is populous; suddenly fell, from a state of the most vigorous health,
to one the most alarming, of premature decay. And to this defalcation
of strength was shortly added the seizure of a violent and dangerous
fever that threatened his life.

The sufferings of the young wife, who was now also a young mother, can
only be conceived by contrasting them with her so recent happiness.
Yet never did she permit grief to absorb her faculties, nor to
vanquish her fortitude. She acted with the same spirited force of
mind, as if she had been a stranger to the timid terrors of the heart.
She superintended all that was ordered; she executed, where it was
possible, all that was performed; she was sedulously careful that no
business should be neglected; and her firmness in all that belonged to
the interests of her husband, seemed as invulnerable as if that had
been her sole occupation; though never, for a moment, was grief away
from her side, and though perpetually, irresistibly she wept,—for
sorrow with the youthful is always tearful. Yet she strove to disallow
herself that indulgence; refusing time even for gently wiping from her
cheeks the big drops of liquid anguish which coursed their way; and
only, and hastily, almost with displeasure, brushing them off with her
hand; while resolutely continuing, or renewing, some useful operation,
as if she were but mechanically engaged.

All this was recorded by her adoring husband in an elegy of after-times.

The excellent and able Dr. Armstrong, already the friend of the
invalid, was now sent to his aid by the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Home, who
had conceived the warmest esteem for the subject of these memoirs.
The very sight of this eminent physician was medicinal; though the
torture he inflicted by the blister after blister with which he deemed
it necessary to almost cover, and almost flay alive, his poor patient,
required all the high opinion in which that patient held the doctor’s
skill for endurance.

The unsparing, but well-poised, prescriptions of this poetical
Æsculapius, succeeded, however, in dethroning and extirpating the
raging fever, that, perhaps, with milder means, had undermined the
sufferer’s existence. But a consumptive menace ensued, with all its
fearful train of cough, night perspiration, weakness, glassy eyes,
and hectic complexion; and Dr. Armstrong, foreseeing an evil beyond
the remedies of medicine, strenuously urged an adoption of their most
efficient successor, change of air.

The patient, therefore, was removed to Canonbury-house; whence, ere
long, by the further advice, nay, injunction, of Dr. Armstrong, he was
compelled to retire wholly from London; after an illness by which, for
thirteen weeks, he had been confined to his bed.

Most fortunately, Mr. Burney, at this time, had proposals made to him
by a Norfolk baronet, Sir John Turner, who was member for Lynn Regis,
of the place of organist of that royal borough; of which, for a young
man of talents and character, the Mayor and Corporation offered to
raise the salary from twenty to one hundred pounds a year; with an
engagement for procuring to him the most respectable pupils from all
the best families in the town and its neighbourhood.

Though greatly chagrined and mortified to quit a situation in which he
now was surrounded by cordial friends, who were zealously preparing
for him all the harmonical honours which the city holds within its
patronage; the declining health of the invalid, and the forcibly
pronounced opinion of his scientific medical counsellor, decided the
acceptance of this proposal; and Mr. Burney, with his first restored
strength, set out for his new destination.


LYNN REGIS.

Mr. Burney was compelled to make his first essay of the air, situation,
and promised advantages of Lynn, without the companion to whom he owed
the re-establishment of health that enabled him to try the experiment:
his Esther, as exemplary in her maternal as in her conjugal duties, was
now indispensably detained in town by the most endearing of all ties to
female tenderness, the first offsprings of a union of mutual love; of
which the elder could but just go alone, and the younger was still in
her arms.

Mr. Burney was received at Lynn with every mark of favour, that could
demonstrate the desire of its inhabitants to attach and fix him to that
spot. He was introduced by Sir John Turner to the mayor, aldermen,
recorder, clergy, physicians, lawyers, and principal merchants, who
formed the higher population of the town; and who in their traffic, the
wine trade, were equally eminent for the goodness of their merchandize
and the integrity of their dealings.

All were gratified by an acquisition to their distant and quiet town,
that seemed as propitious to society as to the arts; the men with
respect gave their approbation to his sense and knowledge; the women
with smiles bestowed theirs upon his manners and appearance. His air
was so lively, and his figure was so youthful, that the most elegant as
well as beautiful woman of the place, Mrs. Stephen Allen, took him for
a Cambridge student, who, at that time, was expected at Lynn.

He was not insensible to such a welcome; yet the change was so great
from the splendid or elegant, the classical or amusing circles, into
which he had been initiated in the metropolis, that, in looking, he
said, around him, he seemed to see but a void.

The following energetic lament to his Esther, written about a week
after his Lynn residence, will best explain his tormented sensations at
this altered scene of life. He was but in his twenty-fourth year, when
he gave way to this quick burst of chagrin.

  “TO MRS. BURNEY.
  “_Lynn Regis, Monday._

  “Now, my amiable friend, let me unbosom myself to thee, as if
  I were to enjoy the incomparable felicity of thy presence.
  And first—let me exclaim at the unreasonableness of man’s
  desires; at his unbounded ambition and avarice, and at the
  inconstancy of his temper, which impels him, the moment he
  is in the possession of the thing that once employed all his
  thoughts and wishes, to relinquish it, and to fix his “mind’s
  eye” on some bauble that next becomes his point of view, and
  that, if attained, he would wish as much to change for still
  another toy, of still less consequence to his interest and
  quiet. Oh thou constant tenant of my heart! to apply the
  above to myself,—thou art the only good I have been constant
  to! the only blessing I have been thankful to Providence
  for! the only one, I feel, I shall ever continue to have
  a true sense of! Ought I not to blush at this character’s
  suiting me? Indeed I ought, and I do. Not that I think it
  one peculiar to myself; I believe it would fit more than
  half mankind. But it shames me to think how little I knew
  myself, when I fancied I should be happy in this place. Oh
  God! I find it impossible I should ever be so. Would you
  believe it, that I have more than a hundred times wished I
  had never heard its name? Nothing but the hope of acquiring
  an independent fortune in a short space of time will keep me
  here; though I am too deeply entered to retreat without great
  loss. But happiness cannot be too dearly purchased. In short,
  I would gladly change again for London, at any rate.

       *       *       *       *       *

  “The organ is execrably bad; and, add to that, a total
  ignorance of the most known and common musical merits runs
  through the whole body of people I have yet conversed with.
  Even Sir J. T., who is the oracle of Apollo in this country,
  is, in these matters, extremely shallow. Now the bad organ,
  with the ignorance of my auditors, must totally extinguish
  the few sparks of genius for composition that I may have,
  and entirely discourage practice; for where would any pains
  I may take to execute the most difficult piece of music be
  repaid, if, like poor Orpheus, I am to perform to sticks and
  stones?”

Ere long, however, Mr. Burney saw his prospects in a fairer point of
view. He found himself surrounded by some very worthy and amiable
persons, perfectly disposed to be his friends; and he became attached
to their kindness. The unfixed state of his health made London a
perilous place of abode for him; and his Esther pleaded for his
accommodating himself to his new situation.

He took, therefore, a pretty and convenient house, and sent for what,
next to his lovely wife, he most valued, his books; and when they came,
and when she herself was coming, he revived in his hopes and spirits,
and hastened her approach by the following affectionate rhymes—they
must not, in these fastidious days, be called verses. The austere
critic is besought, therefore, not to fall on the fair fame of the
writer, by considering them as produced for public inspection; nor as
assuming the high present character of poetry. They are inserted only
biographically, from a dearth of any further prose document, by which
might be conveyed, in the simplicity of his own veracious diction,
some idea of the sympathy and the purity of his marriage happiness, by
the rare picture which these lines present of an intellectual lover in
a tender husband.

  “TO MRS. BURNEY.
  “_Lynn Regis._

      “Come, my darling!—quit the town;
    Come!—and me with rapture crown.

         *       *       *       *       *

      If ’tis meet to fee or bribe
    A leech of th’ Æsculapius tribe,
    We Hepburn have, who’s wise as Socrates,
    And deep in physic as Hippocrates.
      Or, if ’tis meet to take the air,
    You borne shall be on horse or mare;
    And, ’gainst all chances to provide,
    I’ll be your faithful ’squire and guide.
      If unadulterate wine be good
    To glad the heart, and mend the blood,
    We that in plenty boast at Lynn,
    Would make with pleasure Bacchus grin.
      Should nerves auricular demand
    A head profound, and cunning hand,
    The charms of music to display,
    Pray,—cannot _I_ compose and play?
    And strains to your each humour suit
    On organ, violin, or flute?

      If these delights you deem too transient,
    We modern authors have, or antient,
    Which, while I’ve lungs from phthisicks freed,
    To thee with rapture, sweet, I’ll read.
      If Homer’s bold, inventive fire,
    Or Virgil’s art, you most admire;
    If Pliny’s eloquence and ease,
    Or Ovid’s flowery fancy please;
    In fair array they marshall’d stand,
    Most humbly waiting your command.
      To humanize and mend the heart,
    Our serious hours we’ll set apart.

         *       *       *       *       *

      We’ll learn to separate right from wrong,
    Through Pope’s mellifluous moral song.
      If wit and humour be our drift,
    We’ll laugh at knaves and fools with Swift.
      To know the world, its follies see,
    Ourselves from ridicule to free,
    To whom for lessons shall we run,
    But to the pleasing Addison?
      Great Bacon’s learning; Congreve’s wit,
    By turns thy humour well may hit.
      How sweet, original, and strong,
    How high the flights of Dryden’s song!
    He, though so often careless found,
    Lifts us so high above the ground
    That we disdain terrestrial things,
    And scale Olympus while he sings.
      Among the bards who mount the skies
    Whoe’er to such a height could rise
    As Milton? he, to whom ’twas given
    To plunge to Hell, and mount to Heaven.
    How few like thee—my soul’s delight!
    Can follow him in every flight?
      La Mancha’s knight, on gloomy day,
    Shall teach our muscles how to play,
    And at the black fanatic class,
    We’ll sometimes laugh with Hudibras.
      When human passions all subside,
    Where shall we find so sure a guide
    Through metaphysics’ mazy ground
    As Locke—scrutator most profound?
      One bard there still remains in store,
    And who has him need little more:
    A bard above my feeble lay;
    Above what wiser scribes can say.
    He would the secret thoughts reveal
    Of all the human mind can feel:
    None e’er like him in every feature
    So fair a likeness drew of Nature.
    No passion swells the mortal breast
    But what his pencil has exprest:
    Nor need I tell my heart’s sole queen
    That Shakespeare is the bard I mean.
      May heaven, all bounteous in its care,
    These blessings, and our offspring spare!
    And while our lives are thus employ’d,
    No earthly bliss left unenjoy’d,
    May we—without a sigh or tear—
    Together finish our career!
    Together gain another station
    Without the pangs of separation!
      And when our souls have travelled far
    Beyond this little dirty star,
    Beyond the reach of strife, or noise,
    To taste celestial, stable joys—
    O may we still together keep—
    Or may our death he endless sleep!

    “_Lynn Regis, 19th Dec. 1751._”

The wife and the babies were soon now in his arms; and this generous
appreciator of the various charms of the one, and kind protector of
the infantile feebleness of the other, cast away every remnant of
discontent; and devoted himself to his family and profession, with an
ardour that left nothing unattempted that seemed within the grasp of
industry, and nothing unaccomplished that came within the reach of
perseverance.

He had immediately for his pupils the daughters of every house in Lynn,
whose chief had the smallest pretensions to belonging to the upper
classes of the town; while almost all persons of rank in its vicinity,
eagerly sought the assistance of the new professor for polishing the
education of their females: and all alike coveted his society for their
own information or entertainment.

First amongst those with whom these latter advantages might be
reciprocated, stood, as usual, in towns far off from the metropolis,
the physicians; who, for general education, learning, science, and
politeness, are as frequently the leaders in literature as they are the
oracles in health; and who, with the confraternity of the vicar, and
the superior lawyer, are commonly the allowed despots of erudition and
the belles lettres in provincial circles.

But while amongst the male inhabitants of the town, Mr. Burney
associated with many whose understandings, and some few whose tastes,
met his own; his wife, amongst the females, was less happy, though
not more fastidious. She found them occupied almost exclusively, in
seeking who should be earliest in importing from London what was newest
and most fashionable in attire; or in vying with each other in giving
and receiving splendid repasts; and in struggling to make their every
rotation become more and more luxurious.

By no means was this love of frippery, or feebleness of character among
the females, peculiar to Lynn: such, ALMOST[12] universally, is the
inheritance bequeathed from mother to daughter in small towns at a
distance from the metropolis; where there are few suspensive subjects
or pursuits of interest, ambition, or literature, that can enlist
either imagination or instruction into conversation.

That men, when equally removed from the busy turmoils of cities, or the
meditative studies of retirement, to such circumscribed spheres, should
manifest more vigour of mind, may not always be owing to possessing
it; but rather to their escaping, through the calls of business, that
inertness which casts the females upon themselves: for though many are
the calls more refined than those of business, there are few that more
completely do away with insignificancy.

In the state, however, in which Lynn then was found, Lynn will be found
no longer. The tide of ignorance is turned; and not there alone, nor
alone in any other small town, but in every village, every hamlet,
nay, every cottage in the kingdom; and though mental cultivation
is as slowly gradual, and as precarious of circulation, as Genius,
o’erleaping all barriers, and disdaining all auxiliaries, is rapid
and decisive, still the work of general improvement is advancing so
universally, that the dark ages which are rolling away, would soon be
lost even to man’s joy at their extirpation, but for the retrospective
and noble services of the press, through which their memory—if only to
be blasted—must live for ever.

There were two exceptions, nevertheless, to this stagnation of female
merit, that were flowing with pellucid clearness.

The first, Mrs. Stephen Allen, has already been mentioned. She was the
wife of a wine-merchant of considerable fortune, and of a very worthy
character. She was the most celebrated beauty of Lynn, and might have
been so of a much larger district, for her beauty was high, commanding,
and truly uncommon: and her understanding bore the same description.
She had wit at will; spirits the most vivacious and entertaining; and,
from a passionate fondness for reading, she had collected stores of
knowledge which she was always able, and “nothing loath” to display;
and which raised her to as marked a pre-eminence over her townswomen in
literary acquirements, as she was raised to exterior superiority from
her personal charms.

The other exception, Miss Dorothy Young, was of a different
description. She was not only denied beauty either of face or person,
but in the first she had various unhappy defects, and in the second
she was extremely deformed.

Here, however, ends all that can be said in her disfavour; for her mind
was the seat of every virtue that occasion could call into use; and her
disposition had a patience that no provocation could even momentarily
subdue; though her feelings were so sensitive, that tears started into
her eyes at every thing she either saw or heard of mortal sufferings,
or of mortal unkindness—to any human creature but herself.

It may easily be imagined that this amiable Dorothy Young, and the
elegant and intellectual Mrs. Allen, were peculiar and deeply attached
friends.

When a professional call brought Mr. Burney and his wife to this
town, that accomplished couple gave a new zest to rational, as well
as a new spring to musical, society. Mr. Burney, between business and
conviviality, immediately visited almost every house in the county; but
his wife, less easily known, because necessarily more domestic, began
her Lynn career almost exclusively with Mrs. Allen and Dolly Young, and
proved to both an inestimable treasure; Mrs. Allen generously avowing
that she set up Mrs. Burney as a model for her own mental improvement;
and Dolly Young becoming instinctively the most affectionate, as well
as most cultivated of Mrs. Burney’s friends; and with an attachment so
fervent and so sincere, that she took charge of the little family upon
every occasion of its increase during the nine or ten years of the Lynn
residence.[13]

With regard to the extensive neighbourhood, Mr. Burney had soon nothing
left to desire in hospitality, friendship, or politeness; and here, as
heretofore, he scarcely ever entered a house upon terms of business,
without leaving it upon those of intimacy.

The first mansions to which, naturally, his curiosity pointed, and
at which his ambition aimed, were those two magnificent structures
which stood loftily pre-eminent over all others in the county of
Norfolk, Holcomb and Haughton; though neither the nobleness of their
architecture, the grandeur of their dimensions, nor the vast expense of
their erection, bore any sway in their celebrity, that could compare
with what, at that period, they owed to the arts of sculpture and of
painting.


HOLCOMB.

At Holcomb, the superb collection of statues, as well as of pictures,
could not fail to soon draw thither persons of such strong native taste
for all the arts as Mr. Burney and his wife; though, as there were, at
that time, which preceded the possession of that fine mansion by the
Cokes, neither pupils nor a Male chief, no intercourse beyond that of
the civilities of reception on a public day, took place with Mr. Burney
and the last very ancient lady of the house of Leicester, to whom
Holcomb then belonged.


HAUGHTON HALL.

boasted, at that period, a collection of pictures that not only every
lover of painting, but every British patriot in the arts, must lament
that it can boast no longer.[14]

It had, however, in the heir and grandson of its founder, Sir Robert
Walpole, first Earl of Orford, a possessor of the most liberal cast; a
patron of arts and artists; munificent in promoting the prosperity of
the first, and blending pleasure with recompense to the second, by the
frank equality with which he treated all his guests; and the ease and
freedom with which his unaffected good-humour and good sense cheered,
to all about him, his festal board.

Far, nevertheless, from meriting unqualified praise was this noble
peer; and his moral defects, both in practice and example, were
as dangerous to the neighbourhood, of which he ought to have been
the guide and protector, as the political corruption of his famous
progenitor, the statesman, had been hurtful to probity and virtue, in
the courtly circles of his day, by proclaiming, and striving to bring
to proof, his nefarious maxim, “that every man has his price.”

At the head of Lord Orford’s table was placed, for the reception of
his visitors, a person whom he denominated simply “Patty;” and that so
unceremoniously, that all the most intimate of his associates addressed
her by the same free appellation.

Those, however, if such there were, who might conclude from this
degrading familiarity, that the Patty of Lord Orford was “every
body’s Patty,” must soon have been undeceived, if tempted to make any
experiment upon such a belief. The peer knew whom he trusted, though he
rewarded not the fidelity in which he confided; but the fond, faulty
Patty loved him with a blindness of passion, that hid alike from her
weak perceptions, her own frailties, and his seductions.

In all, save that blot, which, on earth, must to a female be ever
indelible, Patty was good, faithful, kind, friendly, and praise-worthy.

The table of Lord Orford, then commonly called Arthur’s Round Table,
assembled in its circle all of peculiar merit that its neighbourhood,
or rather that the county produced, to meet there the great, the
renowned, and the splendid, who, from their various villas, or the
metropolis, visited Haughton Hall.

Mr. Burney was soon one of those whom the penetrating peer selected for
a general invitation to his repasts; and who here, as at Wilbury House,
formed sundry intimacies, some of which were enjoyed by him nearly
through life. Particularly must be mentioned

Mr. Hayes, who was a scholar, a man of sense, and a passionate
lover of books and of prints. He had a great and pleasant turn for
humour, and a fondness and facility for rhyming so insatiable and
irrepressible, that it seemed, like Strife in Spencer’s Faerie Queene,
to be always seeking occasion.

Yet, save in speaking of that propensity, Strife and John Hayes ought
never to come within the same sentence; for in character, disposition,
and conduct, he was a compound of benevolence and liberality.

There was a frankness of so unusual a cast, and a warmth of affection,
that seemed so glowing from the heart, in Mr. Hayes for Lord Orford;
joined to so strong a resemblance in face and feature, that a belief,
if not something beyond, prevailed, that Mr. Hayes was a natural son
of Sir Robert Walpole, the first Earl of Orford, and, consequently, a
natural uncle of his Lordship’s grandson.


RAINHAM.

To name the several mansions that called for, or welcomed, Mr. Burney,
would almost be to make a Norfolk Register. At Rainham Castle he was
full as well received by its master, General Lord Townshend, as a
guest, as by its lady, the Baroness de Frerrars in her own right, for
an instructor; the lady being natively cold and quiet, though well bred
and sensible; while the General was warm-hearted, witty, and agreeable;
and conceived a liking for Mr. Burney, that was sustained, with only
added regard, through all his lordship’s various elevations.


FELBRIG.

But there was no villa to which he resorted with more certainty
of finding congenial pleasure, than to Felbrig, where he began an
acquaintance of highest esteem and respect with Mr. Windham, father
of the Right Honourable Privy Counsellor and orator; with whom, also,
long afterwards, he became still more closely connected; and who proved
himself just the son that so erudite and elegant a parent would have
joyed to have reared, had he lived to behold the distinguished rank
in the political and in the learned world to which that son rose; and
the admiration which he excited, and the pleasure which he expanded in
select society.


WILLIAM BEWLEY.

A name next comes forward that must not briefly be glided by; that of
William Bewley; a man for whom Mr. Burney felt the most enlightened
friendship that the sympathetic magnetism of similar tastes, humours,
and feelings, could inspire.

Mr. Bewley was truly a philosopher, according to the simplest, though
highest, acceptation of that word; for his love of wisdom was of that
unsophisticated species, that regards learning, science, and knowledge,
with whatever delight they may be pursued abstractedly, to be wholly
subservient, collectively, to the duties and practice of benevolence.

To this nobleness of soul, which made the basis of his character, he
superadded a fund of wit equally rare, equally extraordinary: it was a
wit that sparkled from the vivid tints of an imagination as pure as it
was bright; untarnished by malice, uninfluenced by spleen, uninstigated
by satire. It was playful, original, eccentric: but the depth with
which it could have cut, and slashed, and pierced around him, would
never have been even surmised, from the urbanity with which he forbore
making that missile use of its power, had he not frequently darted out
its keenest edge in ridicule against himself.

And not alone in this personal severity did he resemble the
self-unsparing Scarron; his outside, though not deformed, was
peculiarly unfortunate; and his eyes, though announcing, upon
examination, something of his mind, were ill-shaped, and ill set in his
head, and singularly small; and no other feature parried this local
disproportion; for his mouth, and his under-jaw, which commonly hung
open, were displeasing to behold.

The first sight, however, which of so many is the best, was of Mr.
Bewley, not only the worst, but the only bad; for no sooner, in the
most squeamish, was the revolted eye turned away, than the attracted
ear, even of the most fastidious, brought it back, to listen to genuine
instruction conveyed through unexpected pleasantry.

This original and high character, was that of an obscure surgeon of
Massingham, a small town in the neighbourhood of Haughton Hall. He had
been brought up with no advantages, but what laborious toil had worked
out of native abilities; and he only subsisted by the ordinary process
of rigidly following up the multifarious calls to which, in its
provincial practice, his widely diversified profession is amenable.

Yet not wholly in “the desert air,” were his talents doomed to be
wasted: they were no sooner spoken of at Haughton Hall, than the gates
of that superb mansion were spontaneously flung open, and its Chief
proved at once, and permanently remained, his noble patron and kind
friend.


LYNN REGIS.

The visits of Mr. Burney to Massingham, and his attachment to
its philosopher, contributed, more than any other connection, to
stimulate that love and pursuit of knowledge, that urge its votaries
to snatch from waste or dissipation those fragments of time, which,
by the general herd of mankind, are made over to Lethe, for reading;
learning languages; composing music; studying sciences; fathoming the
theoretical and mathematical depths of his own art; and seeking at
large every species of intelligence to which either chance or design
afforded him any clew.

As he could wait upon his country pupils only on horseback, he
purchased a mare that so exactly suited his convenience and his wishes,
in sure-footedness, gentleness and sagacity, that she soon seemed to
him a part of his family: and the welfare and comfort of Peggy became,
ere long, a matter of kind interest to all his house.

On this mare he studied Italian; for, obliged to go leisurely over the
cross roads with which Norfolk then abounded, and which were tiresome
from dragging sands, or dangerous from deep ruts in clay, half his
valuable time would have been lost in nothingness, but for his trust in
Peggy; who was as careful in safely picking her way, as she was adroit
in remembering from week to week whither she was meant to go.

Her master, at various odd moments, and from various opportunities,
had compressed, from the best Italian Dictionaries, every word of the
Italian language into a small octavo volume; and from this in one
pocket, and a volume of Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Ariosto, or Metastasio,
in another, he made himself completely at home in that language of
elegance and poetry.

His common-place book, at this period, rather merits the appellation of
_un_common, from the assiduous research it manifests, to illustrate
every sort of information, by extracts, abstracts, strictures, or
descriptions, upon the almost universality of subject-matter which it
contains.

It is without system or method; he had no leisure to put it into order;
yet it is possible, he might owe to his familiar recurrence to that
desultory assemblage of unconcocted materials, the general and striking
readiness with which he met at once almost every topic of discourse.

This manuscript of scraps, drawn from reading and observation, was,
like his Italian Dictionary, always in his great-coat pocket, when he
travelled; so that if unusually rugged roads, or busied haste, impeded
more regular study, he was sure, in opening promiscuously his pocket
collection of _odds and ends_, to come upon some remark worth weighing;
some point of science on which to ruminate; some point of knowledge to
fix in his memory; or something amusing, grotesque, or little known,
that might recreate his fancy.


THE GREVILLES.

Meanwhile, he had made too real an impression on the affections of
his first friends, to let absence of sight produce absence of mind.
With Mr. and Mrs. Greville he was always in correspondence; though, of
course, neither frequently nor punctually, now that his engagements
were so numerous, his obligations to fulfil them so serious, and that
his own fireside was so bewitchingly in harmony with his feelings, as
to make every moment he passed away from it a sacrifice.

He expounds his new situation and new devoirs, in reply to a letter
that had long been unanswered, of Mr. Greville’s, from the Continent,
with a sincerity so ingenuous that, though it is in rhyme, it is here
inserted biographically.


    “TO FULK GREVILLE, ESQ., AT PARIS.

    “Hence, ‘loathed business,’ which so long
    Has plunged me in the toiling throng.
    Forgive, dear Sir! and gentle Madam!
    A drudging younger son of Adam,
    Who’s forc’d from morn to night to labor
    Or at the pipe, or at the tabor:
    Nor has he hope ’twill e’er be o’er
    Till landed on some kinder shore;
    Some more propitious star, whose rays
    Benign, may cheer his future days.
      Ah, think for rest how he must pant
    Whose life’s the summer of an ant!
    With grief o’erwhelm’d, the wretched Abel[15]
    Is dumb as architect of Babel.
    —Three months of sullen silence—seem
    With black ingratitude to teem;
    As if my heart were made of stone
    Which kindness could not work upon;
    Or benefits e’er sit enshrin’d
    Within the precincts of my mind.
      But think not so, dear Sir! my crime
    Proceeds alone from want of time.
    No more a giddy youth, and idle,
    Without a curb, without a bridle,
    Who frisk’d about like colt unbroke,
    And life regarded as a joke.—
    No!—different duties now are mine;
    Nor do I at my cares repine:
    With naught to think of but myself
    I little heeded worldly pelf;
    But now, alert I act and move
    For others whom I better love.
      Should you refuse me absolution,
    Condemning my new institution,
    ’Twould chill at once my heart and zeal
    For this my little commonweal.—
    O give my peace not such a stab!
    Nor slay—as Cain did—name-sake Nab.

       *       *       *       *       *

      This prologue first premis’d, in hopes
    Such figures, metaphors, and tropes
    For pardon will not plead in vain,
    We’ll now proceed in lighter strain.

       *       *       *       *       *

The epistle then goes on to strictures frank and honest, though
softened off by courteous praise and becoming diffidence, on a
manuscript poem of Mr. Greville’s, that had been confidentially
transmitted to Lynn, for the private opinion and critical judgment of
Mr. Burney.

Mr. Greville, now, was assuming a new character—that of an author; and
he printed a work which he had long had in agitation, entitled “Maxims,
Characters, and Reflections, Moral, Serious, and Entertaining;” a title
that seemed to announce that England, in its turn, was now to produce,
in a man of family and fashion, a La Bruyere, or a La Rochefoucaul. And
Mr. Greville, in fact, waited for a similar fame with dignity rather
than anxiety, because with expectation unclogged by doubt.

With Mrs. Greville, also, Mr. Burney kept up an equal, or more than
equal, intercourse, for their minds were invariably in unison.

The following copy remains of a burlesque rhyming _billet-doux_,
written by Mr. Burney in his old dramatic character of Will Fribble,
and addressed to Mrs. Greville in that of Miss Biddy Bellair, upon her
going abroad.


    “WILLIAM FRIBBLE, ESQ.

    “TO HER WHO WAS ONCE MISS BIDDY BELLAIR.

    “_Greeting._

    “No boisterous hackney coachman clown, No frisky fair nymph of
    the town E’er wore so insolent a brow As Captain Flash, since
    Hymen’s vow To him in silken bonds has tied So sweet, so fair,
    so kind a bride. Well! curse me, now, if I can bear it!—
    Though to his face I’d not declare it— To think that you
    should take a dance With such a roister into France; And leave
    poor Will in torturing anguish To sigh and pine, to grieve and
    languish. ’Twas—let me tell you, Ma’am—quite cruel! Though
    Jack and I shall fight a duel If ever he to England come And
    does not skulk behind a drum. But—apropos to coming over, I
    hope you soon will land at Dover That I may fly, more swift
    than hawk, With you to have some _serus_ talk. The while, how
    great will be my bliss Should you but deign to let me kiss— O
    may these ardent vows prevail!— Your little finger’s vermeil
    nail! Who am, Till direful death to dust shall crumble, My
    dearest _cretur_! yours,
      most humble,
        “WILL FRIBBLE.”

Mrs. Greville, too, had commenced being an author; but without either
the throes of pain or the joys of hope. It was, in fact, a burst of
genius emanating from a burst of sorrow, which found an alleviating
vent in a supplication to Indifference.

This celebrated ode was no sooner seen than it was hailed with a blaze
of admiration, that passed first from friend to friend; next from
newspapers to magazines; and next to every collection of fugitive
pieces of poetry in the English language.[16]

The constant friendship that subsisted between this lady and Mr. Burney
bad been cemented after his marriage, by the grateful pleasure with
which he saw his chosen partner almost instantly included in it by
a triple bond. The quick-sighted, and quick-feeling author of that
sensitive ode, needed nor time nor circumstance for animating her
perception of such merit as deserved a place in her heart; which had
not, at that early period, become a suppliant for the stoical composure
with which her wounded sensibility sought afterwards to close its
passage.

She had first seen the fair Esther in the dawning bloom of youthful
wedded love, while new-born happiness enlivened her courage,
embellished her beauty, and enabled her to do honour to the choice of
her happy husband; who stood so high in the favour of Mrs. Greville,
that the sole aim of that lady, in the opening of the acquaintance,
had been his gratification; aided, perhaps, by a natural curiosity,
which attaches itself to the sight of any object who has inspired an
extraordinary passion.

Far easier to conceive than to delineate was the rapture of the young
bridegroom when, upon a meeting that, unavoidably, must have been
somewhat tremendous, he saw the exertions of his lovely bride to
substitute serenity for bashfulness; and read, in the piercing eyes of
Mrs. Greville, the fullest approbation of such native self-possession.

From that time all inferiority of worldly situation was counteracted by
intellectual equality.[17]

But the intercourse had for several years been interrupted from the
Grevilles living abroad. It was renewed, however, upon their return
to England; and the Burneys, with their eldest daughter,[18] visited
Wilbury House upon every vacation that allowed time to Mr. Burney
for the excursion. And every fresh meeting increased the zest for
another. They fell into the same train of observation upon characters,
things, and books; and enjoyed, with the same gaiety of remark, all
humorous incidents, and all traits of characteristic eccentricity.
Mrs. Greville began a correspondence with Mrs. Burney the most open
and pleasantly communicative. But no letters of Mrs. Burney remain;
and two only of Mrs. Greville have been preserved. These two, however,
demonstrate all that has been said of the terms and the trust of their
sociality.[19]


DOCTOR JOHNSON.

How singularly Mr. Burney merited encouragement himself, cannot more
aptly be exemplified than by portraying the genuine ardour with which
he sought to stimulate the exertions of genius in others, and to
promote their golden as well as literary laurels.

Mr. Burney was one of the first and most fervent admirers of those
luminous periodical essays upon morals, literature, and human nature,
that adorned the eighteenth century, and immortalized their author,
under the vague and inadequate titles of the Rambler and the Idler. He
took them both in; he read them to all his friends; and was the first
to bring them to a bookish little coterie that assembled weekly at
Mrs. Stephen Allen’s. And the charm expanded over these meetings, by
the original lecture of these refined and energetic lessons of life,
conduct, and opinions, when breathed through the sympathetic lips of
one who felt every word with nearly the same force with which every
word had been dictated, excited in that small auditory a species of
enthusiasm for the author, that exalted him at once in their ideas, to
that place which the general voice of his country has since assigned
him, of the first writer of the age.

Mr. Bewley more than joined in this literary idolatry; and the works,
the character, and the name of Dr. Johnson, were held by him in a
reverence nearly enthusiastic.

At Haughton, at Felbrig, at Rainham, at Sir A. Wodehouse’s, at
Major Mackenzie’s, and wherever his judgment had weight, Mr. Burney
introduced and recommended these papers. And when, in 1755, the plan
of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary reached Norfolk, Mr. Burney, by the zeal
with which he spread the fame of that lasting monument of the Doctor’s
matchless abilities, was enabled to collect orders for a Norfolk packet
of half a dozen copies of that noble work.

This empowered him to give some vent to his admiration; and the
following letter made the opening to a connection that he always
considered as one of the greatest honours of his life.[20]

  MR. BURNEY TO MR. JOHNSON.

  “Sir,

  “Though I have never had the happiness of a personal
  knowledge of you, I cannot think myself wholly a stranger to
  a man with whose sentiments I have so long been acquainted;
  for it seems to me as if the writer, who was sincere, had
  effected the plan of that philosopher who wished men had
  windows at their breasts, through which the affections of
  their hearts might be viewed.

  “It is with great self-denial that I refrain from giving way
  to panegyric in speaking of the pleasure and instruction
  I have received from your admirable writings; but knowing
  that transcendent merit shrinks more at praise, than either
  vice or dulness at censure, I shall compress my encomiums
  into a short compass, and only tell you that I revere your
  principles and integrity, in not prostituting your genius,
  learning, and knowledge of the human heart, in ornamenting
  vice or folly with those beautiful flowers of language due
  only to wisdom and virtue. I must add, that your periodical
  productions seem to me models of true genius, useful
  learning, and elegant diction, employed in the service of the
  purest precepts of religion, and the most inviting morality.

  “I shall waive any further gratification of my wish to
  tell you, Sir, how much I have been delighted by your
  productions, and proceed to the _business_ of this letter;
  which is no other than to beg the favour of you to inform
  me, by the way that will give you the least trouble, when,
  and in what manner, your admirably planned, and long
  wished-for Dictionary will be published? If it should be
  by subscription, or you should have any books at your own
  disposal, I shall beg of you to favour me with six copies for
  myself and friends, for which I will send you a draft.

  “I ought to beg pardon of the public as well as yourself,
  Sir, for detaining you thus long from your useful labours;
  but it is the fate of men of eminence to be persecuted by
  insignificant friends as well as enemies; and the simple
  cur who barks through fondness and affection, is no less
  troublesome than if stimulated by anger and aversion.

  “I hope, however, that your philosophy will incline you to
  forgive the intemperance of my zeal and impatience in making
  these inquiries; as well as my ambition to subscribe myself,
  with very great regard,

  “Sir, your sincere admirer, and most humble servant,

  “CHARLES BURNEY.”

  “_Lynn Regis, 16th Feb. 1755._”

Within two months of the date of this letter, its writer was honoured
with the following answer.

  “_To Mr. Burney, in Lynn Regis, Norfolk._

  “SIR,

  “If you imagine that by delaying my answer I intended to shew
  any neglect of the notice with which you have favoured me,
  you will neither think justly of yourself nor of me. Your
  civilities were offered with too much elegance not to engage
  attention; and I have too much pleasure in pleasing men like
  you, not to feel very sensibly the distinction which you have
  bestowed upon me.

  “Few consequences of my endeavours to please or to benefit
  mankind, have delighted me more than your friendship thus
  voluntarily offered; which, now I have it, I hope to keep,
  because I hope to continue to deserve it.

  “I have no Dictionaries to dispose of for myself; but shall
  be glad to have you direct your friends to Mr. Dodsley,
  because it was by his recommendation that I was employed in
  the work.

  “When you have leisure to think again upon me, let me be
  favoured with another letter, and another yet, when you
  have looked into my Dictionary. If you find faults, I shall
  endeavour to mend them: if you find none, I shall think you
  blinded by kind partiality: but to have made you partial in
  his favour will very much gratify the ambition of,

  “Sir,

  “Your most obliged

  “And most humble servant,

  “SAM. JOHNSON.”

  “_Gough-square, Fleet-street_,

  “_April 8, 1755_.”

A reply so singularly encouraging, demanding “another letter,” and
yet “another,” raised the spirits, and flattered the hopes—it might
almost be said the foresight—of Mr. Burney, with a prospect of future
intimacy, that instigated the following unaffected answer.

  “SIR,

  “That you should think my letter worthy of notice was what I
  began to despair of; and, indeed, I had framed and admitted
  several reasons for your silence, more than sufficient for
  your exculpation. But so highly has your politeness overrated
  my intentions, that I find it impossible for me to resist
  accepting the invitation with which you have honoured me, of
  writing to you again, though conscious that I have nothing to
  offer that can by any means merit your attention.

  “It is with the utmost impatience that I await the possession
  of your great work, in which every literary difficulty will
  he solved, and curiosity gratified, at least as far as
  English literature is concerned: nor am I fearful of letting
  expectation rise to the highest summit in which she can
  accompany reason.

  “From what you are pleased to say concerning Mr. Dodsley, I
  shall ever think myself much his debtor; but yet I cannot
  help suspecting that you intended him a compliment when you
  talked of _recommendation_. Is it possible that the world
  should be so blind, or booksellers so stupid, as to need
  other recommendation than your own? Indeed, I shall honour
  _both_, world and booksellers, so far as to substitute
  _solicitation_ in the place of the above humiliating term.


  “Perhaps you will smile when I inform you, that since first
  the rumour of your Dictionary’s coming abroad this winter
  was spread, I have been supposed to be marvellously deep in
  politics: not a sun has set since the above time without
  previously lighting me to the coffee-house; nor risen,
  without renewing my curiosity. But time, the great revealer
  of secrets, has at length put an end to my solicitude;
  for, if there be truth in book men, I can now, by cunning
  calculation, foretell the day and hour when it will arrive at
  Lynn.

  “If, which is probable, I should fix my future abode in
  London, I cannot help rejoicing that I shall then be an
  inhabitant of the same town, and exulting that I shall then
  be a fellow citizen with Mr. Johnson; and were it possible
  I could be honoured with a small share of his esteem, I
  should regard it as the most grateful circumstance of my
  life. And—shall I add, that I have a female companion, whose
  intellects are sufficiently masculine to enter into the
  true spirit of your writings, and, consequently, to have an
  enthusiastic zeal for them and their author? How happy would
  your presence make us over our tea, so often meliorated by
  your productions!

  “If, in the mean time, your avocations would permit you to
  bestow a line or two upon me, without greatly incommoding
  yourself, it would communicate the highest delight to

  “Sir,

  “Your most obedient,

  “And most humble servant,

  “CHA^s. BURNEY.”

  “Have you, Sir, ever met with a little French book, entitled,
  ‘Synonimes François, par M. l’Abbé Girard?’ I am inclined to
  imagine, if you have not seen it, that it would afford you,
  as a philologer, some pleasure, it being written with great
  spirit, and, I think, accuracy: but I should rejoice to have
  my opinion either confirmed or corrected by yours. If you
  should find any difficulty in procuring the book, mine is
  wholly at your service.”

  “_Lynn Regis, April 14th, 1755._”

To this letter there was little chance of any answer, the demanded
“another,” relative to the Dictionary, being still due.

That splendid, and probably, from any single intellect, unequalled
work, for vigour of imagination and knowledge amidst the depths of
erudition, came out in 1756. And, early in 1757, Mr. Burney paid his
faithful homage to its author.

  “_To Mr. Johnson, Gough-square._

  “SIR,

  “Without exercising the greatest self-denial, I should not
  have been able thus long to withhold from you my grateful
  acknowledgments for the delight and instruction you have
  afforded me by means of your admirable Dictionary—a work,
  I believe, not yet equalled in any language; for, not
  to mention the accuracy, precision, and elegance of the
  definitions, the illustrations of words are so judiciously
  and happily selected as to render it a repository, and, I
  had almost said, universal register of whatever is sublime
  or beautiful in English literature. In looking for words, we
  constantly find things. The road, indeed, to the former, is
  so flowery as not to be travelled with speed, at least by
  me, who find it impossible to arrive at the intelligence I
  want, without bating by the way, and revelling in collateral
  entertainment. Were I to express all that I think upon this
  subject, your Dictionary would be stript of a great part of
  its furniture: but as praise is never gratefully received
  by the justly deserving till a deduction is first made of
  the ignorance or partiality of him who bestows it, I shall
  support my opinion by a passage from a work of reputation
  among our neighbours, which, if it have not yet reached you,
  I shall rejoice at being the first to communicate, in hopes
  of augmenting the satisfaction arising from honest fame,
  and a conviction of having conferred benefits on mankind:
  well knowing with how parsimonious and niggard a hand men
  administer comfort of the kind to modest merit.

  “‘Le savant et ingenieux M. Samuel Johnson, qui, dans
  l’incomparable feuille periodique intitulée le Rambler,
  apprenoit à ses compatriotes à penser avec justesse sur
  les matières les plus interessantes, vient de leur fournir
  des secours pour bien parler, et pour écrire correctement;
  talens que personne, peut être, ne possede dans un degré
  plus eminent que lui. Il n’y a qu’une voix sur le succés de
  l’auteur pour epurer, fixer, et enricher une langue dont son
  Rambler montre si admirablement l’abondance et la force,
  l’elegance et l’harmonie.’

  “_Bibliotheque des Savans._ Tom. iii. p. 482.

  “Though I had constantly in my remembrance the encouragement
  with which you flattered me in your reply to my first letter,
  yet knowing that civility and politeness seem often to
  countenance actions which they would not perform, I could
  hardly think myself entitled to the permission you gave me
  of writing to you again, had I not lately been apprised of
  your intention to oblige the admirers of Shakespeare with
  a new edition of his works by subscription. But, shall I
  venture to tell you, notwithstanding my veneration for you
  and Shakespeare, that I do not partake of the joy which the
  selfish public seem to feel on this occasion?—so far from
  it, I could not but be afflicted at reflecting, that so
  exalted, so refined a genius as the author of the Rambler,
  should submit to a task so unworthy of him as that of a mere
  editor: for who would not grieve to see a Palladio, or a
  Jones, undergo the dull drudgery of carrying rubbish from an
  old building, when he should be tracing the model of a new
  one? But I detain you too long from the main subject of this
  letter, which is to beg a place in the subscription for,

  The Right Hon. the Earl of Orford,
  Miss Mason,
  Brigs Carey, Esq.
  Archdale Wilson, Esq.
  Richard Fuller, Esq.

  “And for, Sir,

  “Your most humble, and extremely devoted servant,

  “CHARLES BURNEY.”

  “_Lynn Regis_,
  _28th March, 1757._”

It was yet some years later than this last date of correspondence,
before Mr. Burney found an opportunity of paying his personal respects
to Dr. Johnson; who then, in 1760, resided in chambers at the Temple.
No account, unfortunately, remains of this first interview, except an
anecdote that relates to Mr. Bewley.

While awaiting the appearance of his revered host, Mr. Burney
recollected a supplication from the philosopher of Massingham, to be
indulged with some token, however trifling or common, of his friend’s
admission to the habitation of this great man. Vainly, however,
Mr. Burney looked around the apartment for something that he might
innoxiously purloin. Nothing but coarse and necessary furniture was in
view; nothing portable—not even a wafer, the cover of a letter, or a
split pen, was to be caught; till, at length, he had the happiness to
espie an old hearth broom in the chimney corner. From this, with hasty
glee, he cut off a bristly wisp, which he hurried into his pocket-book;
and afterwards formally folded in silver paper, and forwarded, in a
frank, to Lord Orford, for Mr. Bewley; by whom the burlesque offering
was hailed with good-humoured acclamation, and preserved through life.


LYNN REGIS.

In this manner passed on, quick though occupied, and happy though
toilsome, nine or ten years in Norfolk; when the health of Mr. Burney
being re-established, and his rising reputation demanding a wider field
for expansion, a sort of cry was raised amongst his early friends to
spur his return to the metropolis.

Fully, however, as he felt the flattery of that cry, and ill as, in
its origin, he had been satisfied with his Lynn residence, he had now
experienced from that town and its vicinity, so much true kindness, and
cordial hospitality, that his reluctance to quit them was verging upon
renouncing such a measure; when he received the following admonition
upon the subject from his first friend, and earliest guide, Mr. Crisp.

  “TO MR. BURNEY.

  *       *       *

  “I have no more to say, my dear Burney, about harpsichords:
  and if you remain amongst your foggy aldermen, I shall be
  the more indifferent whether I have one or not. But really,
  among friends, is not settling at Lynn, planting your youth,
  genius, hopes, fortune, &c., against a north wall? Can you
  ever expect ripe, high-flavoured fruit, from such an aspect?
  Your underrate prices in the town, and galloping about the
  country for higher, especially in the winter—are they worthy
  of your talents? In all professions, do you not see every
  thing that has the least pretence to genius, fly up to the
  capital—the centre of riches, luxury, taste, pride,
  extravagance,—all that ingenuity is to fatten upon? Take, then, your
  spare person, your pretty mate, and your brats, to that propitious
  mart, and,

  ‘Seize the glorious, golden opportunity,’

  while yet you have youth, spirits, and vigour to give fair
  play to your abilities, for placing them and yourself in a
  proper point of view. And so I give you my blessing.

  “SAMUEL CRISP.”

Mr. Crisp, almost immediately after this letter, visited, and for some
years, the continent.

This exhortation, in common with whatever emanated from Mr. Crisp,
proved decisive; and Mr. Burney fixed at once his resolve upon
returning to the capital; though some years still passed ere he could
put it in execution.

The following are his reflections, written at a much later period, upon
this determination.

After enumerating, with warm regard, the many to whom he owed kindness
in the county of Norfolk, he adds:

  “All of these, for nearly thirty miles round, had their
  houses and tables pressingly open to me: and, in the town
  of Lynn, my wife, to all evening parties, though herself
  no card player, never failed to be equally invited; for
  she had a most delightful turn in conversation, seasoned
  with agreeable wit, and pleasing manners; and great powers
  of entering into the humours of her company; which, with
  the beauty of her person, occasioned her to receive more
  invitations than she wished; as she was truly domestic, had
  a young family on her hands, and, generally, one of them at
  her breast. But whenever we could spend an evening at home,
  without disappointing our almost too kind inviters, we had a
  course of reading so various and entertaining, in history,
  voyages, poetry, and, as far as Chambers’ Dictionary, the
  Philosophical Transactions, and the French Encyclopedia, to
  the first edition of which I was a subscriber, could carry
  us, in science, that those _tête à tête_ seclusions were what
  we enjoyed the most completely.

  “This, of course, raised my wife far above all the females of
  Lynn, who were, then, no readers, with the exception of Mrs.
  Stephen Allen and Dolly Young. And this congeniality of taste
  brought on an intimacy of friendship in these three females,
  that lasted during their several lives.

  “My wife was the delight of all her acquaintance; excellent
  mother—zealous friend—of highly superior intellects.

  “We enjoyed at Lynn tranquillity and social happiness—”

       *       *       *       *       *


Here again must be inserted another poetical epistle, written, during a
short separation, while still at Lynn; which shews that, with whatever
fervour of passion he married, he himself was “that other happy man,”
in the words of Lord Lyttleton, who had found “How much the wife is
dearer than the bride.”


    “TO MRS. BURNEY.

      “To thee, henceforth, my matchless mate,
    My leisure hours I’ll dedicate;
    To thee my inmost thoughts transmit,
    Whene’er the busy scene I quit.
    For thee, companion dear! I feel
    An unextinguishable zeal;
    A love implanted in the mind,
    From all the grosser dregs refined.
    Ah! tell me, must not love like mine
    Be planted by a hand divine,
    Which, when creation’s work was done,
    Our heart-strings tuned in unison?
      If business, or domestic care
    The vigour of my mind impair;
    If forc’d by toil from thee to rove,
    ’Till wearied limbs forget to move,
    At night, reclin’d upon thy breast,
    Thy converse lulls my soul to rest.
      If sickness her distemper’d brood
    Let loose,—to burn, or freeze my blood,
    Thy tender vigilance and care,
    My feeble frame can soon repair.
      When in some doubtful maze I stray,
    ’Tis thou point’st out the unerring way;
    If judgment float on wavering wings,
    In notions vague of men and things;
    If different views my mind divide,
   Thy nod instructs me to decide.

    My pliant soul ’tis thou can’st bend,
    My help! companion! wife! and friend!
      When, in the irksome day of trouble
    The mental eye sees evils double,
    Sweet partner of my hopes and fears!
    ’Tis thou alone can’st dry my tears.
    ’Tis thou alone can’st bring relief,
    Partner of every joy and grief!
    E’en when encompass’d with distress,
    Thy smile can every ill redress.
      On thee, my lovely, faithful friend,
    My worldly blessings all depend:
    But if a cloud thy visage low’r,      }
    Not all the wealth in Plutus’ power,  }
    Could buy my heart one peaceful hour. }
    Then, lodg’d within that aching heart,
    Is sorrow’s sympathetic dart.

         *       *       *       *       *

      But when upon that brow, the seat
    Of sense refin’d, and beauty sweet,
    The graces and the loves are seen,
    And Venus sits by Wisdom’s queen;
    Pale sadness takes her heavy flight,
    And, envious, shuns the blissful sight.
      So when the sun has long endur’d
    His radiant face to be obscur’d
    By baleful mists and vapours dense,
    All nature mourns with grief intense:
    But the refulgent God of Day
    Soon shews himself in bright array;
    And as his glorious visage clears,
    The globe itself in smiles appears.”

      “_Lynn_, 1753.”

The last act of Mr. Burney in relinquishing his residence in Norfolk,
was drawing up a petition to Lord Orford to allow park-room in the
Haughton grounds, for the rest of its life, to his excellent, faithful
mare, the intelligent Peggy; whose truly useful services he could not
bear to requite, according to the unfeeling usage of the many, by
selling her to hard labour in the decline of her existence.

Lord Orford good-humouredly complied with the request; and the
justly-prized Peggy, after enjoying for several years the most perfect
ease and freedom, died the death of old age, in Haughton Park.


LONDON.

In 1760 Mr. Burney, with his wife and young family, returned to
London; but no longer to the city, which has the peculiar fate, whilst
praised and reverenced by the many who to its noble encouragement owe
their first dawn of prosperity, of being almost always set aside and
relinquished, when that prosperity is effected. Is it that Fortune,
like the sun, while it rises, cold, though of fairest promise, in the
East, must ever, in its more luxuriant splendour, set in the West?

The new establishment was in Poland-street; which was not then, as it
is now, a sort of street that, like the rest of its neighbourhood,
appears to be left in the lurch. House-fanciers were not yet as
fastidious as they are become at present, from the endless variety
of new habitations. Oxford-road, as, at that time, Oxford-street was
called, into which Poland-street terminated, had little on its further
side but fields, gardeners’ grounds, or uncultivated suburbs. Portman,
Manchester, Russel, Belgrave squares, Portland-place, &c. &c., had not
yet a single stone or brick laid, in signal of intended erection: while
in plain Poland-street, Mr. Burney, then, had successively for his
neighbours, the Duke of Chandos, Lady Augusta Bridges, the Hon. John
Smith and the Miss Barrys, Sir Willoughby and the Miss Astons; and,
well noted by Mr. Burney’s little family, on the visit of his black
majesty to England, sojourned, almost immediately opposite to it, the
Cherokee King.

The opening of this new plan of life, was as successful to Mr. Burney
as its projection had been promising. Pupils of rank, wealth, and
talents, were continually proposed to him; and, in a very short time,
he had hardly an hour unappropriated to some fair disciple.

Lady Tankerville, amongst the rest, resumed her lessons with her early
master, obligingly submitting her time to his convenience, be it what
it might, rather than change her first favourite instructor. Ere long,
however, she resided almost wholly abroad, having attached herself with
enthusiastic fervour to the Princess Amelia, sister to Frederick the
Great of Prussia. The Countess even accepted the place of Dame d’Atour
to that accomplished princess; whose charms, according to poetical
record, banished for a while their too daring admirer, Voltaire, from
the Court of Berlin.

This enterprising Countess retained her spirit of whim, singularity,
and activity, through a long life; for when, many years later, she
returned to her own country, quite old, while Dr. Burney had not yet
reached the zenith of his fame, she again applied to him for musical
tuition; and when he told her, with regret, that his day was completely
filled up, from eight o’clock in the morning; “Come to me, then,”
cried she, with vivacity, “at seven!” which appointment literally, and
twice a week, took place.

All the first friends of Mr. Burney were happy to renew with him
their social intercourse. Mrs. Greville, when in town, was foremost
in eagerly seeking his Esther; and Mr. Greville met again his early
favourite with all his original impetuosity of regard: while their
joint newer friends of Norfolk, Mrs. Stephen Allen and Miss Dorothy
Young in particular, warmly sustained an unremitting communication by
letters: and Lords Orford, Eglinton, and March, General Lord Townshend,
Charles Boone, and many others, sought this enlivening couple, with an
unabating sense of their worth, upon every occasion that either music
or conversation offered, for accepting, or desiring, admission to their
small parties: for so uncommon were the powers of pleasing which they
possessed, that all idea of condescension in their worldly superiors
seemed superseded, if not annihilated, by personal eagerness to enjoy
their rare society.


ESTHER.

Thus glided away, in peace, domestic joys, improvement, and prosperity,
this first—and last! happy year of the new London residence. In the
course of the second, a cough, with alarming symptoms, menaced the
breast of the life and soul of the little circle; consisting now of six
children, clinging with equal affection around each parent chief.

She rapidly grew weaker and worse. Her tender husband hastened her
to Bristol Hotwells, whither he followed her upon his first possible
vacation; and where, in a short time, he had the extasy to believe that
he saw her recover, and to bring her back to her fond little family.

But though hope was brightened, expectation was deceived! stability
of strength was restored no more; and, in the ensuing autumn, she was
seized with an inflammatory disorder with which her delicate and shaken
frame had not force to combat. No means were left unessayed to stop the
progress of danger; but all were fruitless! and, after less than a week
of pain the most terrific, the deadly ease of mortification suddenly,
awfully succeeded to the most excruciating torture.

Twelve stated hours of morbid bodily repose became, from that
tremendous moment of baleful relief, the counted boundary of her
earthly existence.

The wretchedness of her idolizing husband at the development of
such a predestined termination to her sufferings, when pronounced
by the celebrated Dr. Hunter, was only not distraction. But she
herself, though completely aware that her hours now were told,
met the irrevocable doom with open, religious, and even cheerful
composure—sustained, no doubt, by the blessed aspirations of mediatory
salvation; and calmly declaring that she quitted the world with
perfect tranquillity, save for leaving her tender husband and helpless
children. And, in the arms of that nearly frantic husband, who, till
that fatal epoch, had literally believed her existence and his own, in
this mortal journey, to be indispensably one—she expired.

When the fatal scene was finally closed, the disconsolate survivor
immured himself almost from light and life, through inability to speak
or act, or yet to bear witnesses to his misery.

He was soon, however, direfully called from this concentrated anguish,
by the last awful summons to the last awful rites to human memory,
the funeral; which he attended in a frame of mind that nothing,
probably, could have rescued from unrestrained despair, save a pious
invocation to submission that had been ejaculated by his Esther, when
she perceived his rising agony, in an impressive “Oh, Charles!”—almost
at the very moment she was expiring: an appeal that could not but still
vibrate in his penetrated ears, and control his tragic passions.

The character, and its rare, resplendent worth, of this inestimable
person, is best committed to the pen of him to whom it best was
known; as will appear by the subsequent letter, copied from his
own hand-writing. It was found amongst his posthumous papers, so
ill-written and so blotted by his tears, that he must have felt himself
obliged to re-write it for the post.

It may be proper to again mention, that though Esther was maternally of
French extraction, and though her revered mother was a Roman Catholic,
she herself was a confirmed Protestant. But that angelic mother had
brought her up with a love and a practice of genuine piety which
undeviatingly intermingled in every action, and, probably, in every
thought of her virtuous life, so religiously, so deeply, that neither
pain nor calamity could make her impatient of existence; nor yet could
felicity the most perfect make her reluctant to die.

To paint the despairing grief produced by this deadly blow must be
cast, like the portrait of its object, upon the sufferer; and the
inartificial pathos, the ingenuous humility, with which both are marked
in the affecting detail of her death, written in answer to a letter of
sympathizing condolence from the tenderest friend of the deceased, Miss
Dorothy Young, so strongly speak a language of virtue as well as of
sorrow, that, unconsciously, they exhibit his own fair unsophisticated
character in delineating that of his lost love. A more touching
description of happiness in conjugal life, or of wretchedness in its
dissolution, is rarely, perhaps, with equal simplicity of truth, to be
found upon record.

  “TO MISS DOROTHY YOUNG.

  “I had not thought it possible that any thing could urge me
  to write in the present deplorable disposition of my mind;
  but my dear Miss Young’s letter haunts me! Neither did I
  think it possible for any thing to add to my affliction,
  borne down and broken-hearted as I am. But the current
  of your woes and sympathetic sorrows meeting mine, has
  overpowered all bounds which religion, philosophy, reason,
  or even despair, may have been likely to set to my grief.
  Oh Miss Young! you knew her worth—you were one of the few
  people capable of seeing and feeling it. Good God! that
  she should be snatched from me at a time when I thought
  her health re-establishing, and fixing for a long old age!
  when our plans began to succeed, and we flattered ourselves
  with enjoying each other’s society ere long, in a peaceable
  and quiet retirement from the bustling frivolousness of a
  capital, to which our niggard stars had compelled us to fly
  for the prospect of establishing our children.

  “Amongst the numberless losses I sustain, there are none that
  unman me so much as the total deprivation of domestic comfort
  and converse—that converse from which I tore myself with
  such difficulty in a morning, and to which I flew back with
  such celerity at night! She was the source of all I could
  ever project or perform that was praise-worthy—all that I
  could do that was laudable had an eye to her approbation.
  There was a rectitude in her mind and judgment, that rendered
  her approbation so animating, so rational, so satisfactory!
  I have lost the spur, the stimulus to all exertions, all
  warrantable pursuits,—except those of another world. From an
  ambitious, active, enterprising Being, I am become a torpid
  drone, a listless, desponding wretch!—I know you will bear
  with my weakness, nay, in part, participate in it; but this
  is a kind of dotage unfit for common eyes, or even for common
  friends, to be entrusted with.

  “You kindly, and truly, my dear Miss Young, styled her one
  of the greatest ornaments of society; but, apart from the
  ornamental, in which she shone in a superior degree, think,
  oh think, of her high merit as a daughter, mother, wife,
  sister, friend! I always, from the first moment I saw her
  to the last, had an ardent passion for her person, to which
  time had added true friendship and rational regard. Perhaps
  it is honouring myself too much to say, few people were more
  suited to each other; but, at least, I always endeavoured
  to render myself more worthy of her than nature, perhaps,
  had formed me. But she could mould me to what she pleased! A
  distant hint—a remote wish from her was enough to inspire me
  with courage for any undertaking. But all is lost and gone in
  losing her—the whole world is a desert to me! nor does its
  whole circumference afford the least hope of succour—not a
  single ray of that fortitude She so fully possessed!

  “You, and all who knew her, respected and admired her
  understanding while she was living. Judge, then, with what
  awe and veneration I must be struck to hear her counsel when
  dying!—to see her meet that tremendous spectre, death, with
  that calmness, resignation, and true religious fortitude,
  that no stoic philosopher, nor scarcely christian, could
  surpass; for it was all in privacy and simplicity. Socrates
  and Seneca called their friends around them to give them
  that courage that perhaps solitude might have robbed them
  of, and to spread abroad their fame to posterity; but she,
  dear pattern of humility! had no such vain view; no parade,
  no grimace! When she was aware that all was over—when she
  had herself pronounced the dread sentence, that she felt she
  should not outlive the coming night, she composedly gave
  herself up to religion, and begged that she might not be
  interrupted in her prayers and meditations.

  “Afterwards she called me to her, and then tranquilly talked
  about our family and affairs, in a manner quite oracular.

  “Sometime later she desired to see Hetty,[21] who, till
  that day, had spent the miserable week almost constantly at
  her bed-side, or at the foot of the bed. Fanny, Susan, and
  Charley, had been sent, some days before, to the kind care
  of Mrs. Sheeles in Queen-Square, to be out of the way; and
  little Charlotte was taken to the house of her nurse.

  “To poor Hetty she then discoursed in so kind, so feeling,
  so tender a manner, that I am sure her words will never be
  forgotten. And, this over, she talked of her own death—her
  funeral—her place of burial,—with as much composure as
  if talking of a journey to Lynn! Think of this, my dear
  Miss Young, and see the impossibility of supporting such a
  loss—such an adieu, with calmness! I hovered over her till
  she sighed, not groaned, her last—placidly sighed it—just
  after midnight.

  “Her disorder was an inflammation of the stomach, with which
  she was seized on the 19th of September, after being on that
  day, and for some days previously, remarkably in health
  and spirits. She suffered the most excruciating torments
  for eight days, with a patience, a resignation, nearly
  quite silent. Her malady baffled all medical skill from the
  beginning. I called in Dr. Hunter.

  “On the 28th, the last day! she suffered, I suppose, less,
  perhaps nothing! as mortification must have taken place,
  which must have afforded that sort of ease, that those who
  have escaped such previous agony shudder to think of! On that
  ever memorable, that dreadful day, she talked more than she
  had done throughout her whole illness. She forgot nothing,
  nor threw one word away! always hoping we should meet and
  know each other hereafter!—She told poor Hetty how sweet
  it would be if she could see her constantly from whence she
  was going, and begged she would invariably suppose that that
  would be the case. What a lesson to leave to a daughter!—She
  exhorted her to remember how much her example might influence
  the poor younger ones; and bid her write little letters,
  and fancies, to her in the other world, to say how they all
  went on; adding, that she felt as if she should surely know
  something of them.

  “Afterwards, feeling probably her end fast approaching, she
  serenely said, with one hand on the head of Hetty, and the
  other grasped in mine: “Now this is dying pleasantly! in the
  arms of one’s friends!” I burst into an unrestrained agony of
  grief, when, with a superiority of wisdom, resignation, and
  true religion,—though awaiting, consciously, from instant
  to instant awaiting the shaft of death,—she mildly uttered,
  in a faint, faint voice, but penetratingly tender, “Oh
  Charles!—”

  “I checked myself instantaneously, over-awed and stilled as
  by a voice from one above. I felt she meant to beg me not to
  agitate her last moments!—I entreated her forgiveness, and
  told her it was but human nature. “And so it is!” said she,
  gently; and presently added, “Nay, it is worse for the living
  than the dying,—though a moment sets us even!—life is but a
  paltry business—yet

    “‘Who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey
    This pleasing—anxious being e’er resign’d?
      Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
    Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?’”

  “She had still muscular strength left to softly press both
  our hands as she pronounced these affecting lines.

  “Other fine passages, also, both from holy writ, and from
  what is most religious in our best poets, she from time to
  time recited, with fervent prayers; in which most devoutly we
  joined.

  “These, my dear Miss Young, are the outlines of her sublime
  and edifying exit—— —— —What a situation was mine!
  but for my poor helpless children, how gladly, how most
  gladly should I have wished to accompany her hence on the
  very instant, to that other world to which she so divinely
  passed!—for what in this remains for me?”

Part of a letter, also, to Mrs. Stephen Allen, the friend to whom, next
to Miss Dorothy Young, the departed had been most attached, seems to
belong to this place. Its style, as it was written at a later period,
is more composed; but it evinces in the wretched mourner the same
devotion to his Esther’s excellences, and the same hopelessness of
earthly happiness.

  “TO MRS. STEPHEN ALLEN.

       *       *       *       *       *
  “Even prosperity is insipid without participation with
  those we love; for me, therefore, heaven knows, all is at
  an end—all is accumulated wretchedness! I have lost a
  soul congenial with my own;—a companion, who in outward
  appurtenances and internal conceptions, condescended to
  assimilate her ideas and manners with mine. Yet believe not
  that all my feelings are for myself; my poor girls have
  sustained a loss far more extensive than they, poor innocents!
  are at present sensible of. Unprovided as I should have
  left them with respect to fortune, had it been my fate to
  resign her and life first, I should have been under no great
  apprehension for the welfare of my children, in leaving them
  to a mother who had such inexhaustible resources in her mind
  and intellects. It would have grieved me, indeed, to have
  quitted her oppressed by such a load of care; but I could
  have had no doubt of her supporting it with fortitude and
  abilities, as long as life and health had been allowed her.
  Fortitude and abilities she possessed, indeed, to a degree
  that, without hyperbole, no human being can conceive but
  myself, who have seen her under such severe trials as alone
  can manifest, unquestionably, true parts and greatness of
  mind. I am thoroughly convinced she was fitted for any
  situation, either exalted or humble, which this life can
  furnish. And with all her nice discernment, quickness of
  perception, and delicacy, she could submit, if occasion seemed
  to require it, to such drudgery and toil as are suited to the
  meanest domestic; and that, with a liveliness and alacrity
  that, in general, are to be found in those only who have never
  known a better state. Yet with a strength of reason the most
  solid, and a capacity for literature the most intelligent,
  she never for a moment relinquished the female and amiable
  softness of her sex with which, above every other attribute,
  men are most charmed and captivated.”

Such, in their early effervescence, was the vent which this man of
affliction found to his sorrows, in the sympathy of his affectionate
friends.

At other times, they were beguiled from their deadly heaviness by the
expansion of fond description in melancholy verse. To this he was less
led by poetical enthusiasm—for all of fire, fancy, and imagery, that
light up the poet’s flame, was now extinct, or smothered—than by a
gentle request of his Esther, uttered in her last days, that he would
address to her some poetry; a request intended, there can be no doubt,
as a stimulus to some endearing occupation that might tear him from
his first despondence, by an idea that he had still a wish of hers to
execute.

Not as poetry, in an era fastidious as the present in metrical
criticism, does the editor presume to offer the verses now about to be
selected and copied from a vast mass of elegiac laments found amongst
the posthumous papers of Dr. Burney: it is biographically alone, like
those that have preceded them, that they are brought forward. They are
testimonies of the purity of his love, as well as of the acuteness of
his bereavement; and, as such, they certainly belong to his memoirs.
The reader, therefore, is again entreated to remember that they were
not designed for the press, though they were committed, unshackled,
to the discretion of the editor. If that be in fault, the motive will
probably prove a palliative that will make the heart, not the head, of
the reader, the seat of his judgment.

      “She’s gone!—the all-pervading soul is fled
    T’ explore the unknown mansions of the dead,
    Where, free from earthly clay, the immortal mind
    Casts many a pitying glance on those behind;
    Sees us deplore the wife—the mother—friend—
    Sees fell despair our wretched bosoms rend!
      Oh death!—thy dire inexorable dart
    Of every blessing has bereft my heart!
    Better to have died like her, in hope of rest,
    Than live forlorn, and life and light detest.—
      In hope of rest? ah no! her fervent pray’r
    Was that her soul, when once dissolv’d in air
    Might, conscious of its pre-existent state,
    On those she lov’d alive, benignly wait,—
    Our genius, and our guardian angel be
    Till fate unite us in eternity!
      But—the bless’d shade to me no hope bequeaths
    Till death his faulchion in my bosom sheaths!
    Sorrowing, I close my eyes in restless sleep;
    Sorrowing, I wake the live-long day to weep.
    No future comfort can this world bestow,
    ’Tis blank and cold, as overwhelm’d with snow.

         *       *       *       *       *

      When dying in my arms, she softly said:
    “Write me some verses!”—and shall be obey’d.
    The sacred mandate vibrates in my ears,
    And fills my eyes with reverential tears.
    For ever on her virtues let me dwell,
    A Patriarch’s life too short her worth to tell.
    Such manly sense to female softness join’d,
    Her person grac’d, and dignified her mind,
    That she in beauty, while she trod life’s stage,
    A Venus seem’d—in intellect, a sage.
      Before I her beheld, the untutor’d mind
    Still vacant lay, to mental beauty blind:
    But when her angel form my sight had bless’d
    The flame of passion instant fill’d my breast;
    Through every vein the fire electric stole,
    And took dominion of my inmost soul.
    By her ... possess’d of every pow’r to please,
      Each toilsome task was exercis’d with ease.

         *       *       *       *       *

    For me, comprising every charm of life,
    Friend—Mistress—Counsellor—Companion—Wife—
    Wife!—wife!—oh honour’d name! for ever dear,
    Alike enchanting to the eye and ear!
      Let the corrupt, licentious, and profane
    Rail, scoff, and murmur at the sacred chain:
    It suits not them. Few but the wise and good
    Its blessings e’er have priz’d or understood.
    Matur’d in virtue first the heart must glow,
    Ere happiness can vegetate and grow.
      From her I learnt to feel the holy flame,
    And found that she and virtue were the same.
    From dissipation, though I might receive—
    Ere yet I knew I had a heart to give—
    An evanescent joy, untouch’d the mind
    Still torpid lay, to mental beauty blind;
    Till by example more than precept taught
    From her, to act aright, the flame I caught.
      How chang’d the face of nature now is grown!

         *       *       *       *       *

    Illusive hope no more her charms displays;
    Her flattering schemes no more my spirits raise;
    Each airy vision which her pencil drew
    Inexorable death has banish’d from my view.
    Each gentle solace is withheld by fate
    Till death conduct me through his awful gate.
      Come then, Oh Death! let kindred souls be join’d!
    Oh thou, so often cruel—once be kind!”

A total chasm ensues of all account of events belonging to the period
of this irreparable earthly blast. Not a personal memorandum of the
unhappy survivor is left; not a single document in his hand-writing,
except of verses to her idea, or to her memory; or of imitations,
adapted to his loss, and to her excellences, from some selected sonnets
of Petrarch, whom he considered to have loved, entombed, and bewailed
another Esther in his Laura.

When this similitude, which soothed his spirit and flattered his
feelings, had been studied and paralleled in every possible line of
comparison, he had recourse to the works of Dante, which, ere long,
beguiled from him some attention; because, through the difficulty of
idiom, he had not, as of nearly all other favourite authors, lost all
zest of the beauties of Dante in solitude, from having tasted the
sweetness of his numbers with a pleasure exalted by participation:
for, during the last two years that his Esther was spared to him, her
increased maternal claims from a new baby;[22] and augmented domestic
cares from a new residence, had checked the daily mutuality of their
progress in the pursuit of improvement; and to Esther this great poet
was scarcely known.

To Dante, therefore, he first delivered over what he could yet summon
from his grief-worn faculties; and to initiate himself into the works,
and nearly obsolete style, of that hardest, but most sublime of Italian
poets, became the occupation to which, with the least repugnance, he
was capable of recurring.

A sedulous, yet energetic, though prose translation of the Inferno,
remains amongst his posthumous relics, to demonstrate the sincere
struggles with which, even amidst this overwhelming calamity, he strove
to combat that most dangerously consuming of all canker-worms upon life
and virtue, utter inertness.

Of his children, James,[23] his eldest son, had already, at ten years
of age, been sent to sea, a nominal midshipman, in the ship of Admiral
Montagu.

The second son, Charles,[24] who was placed, several years later, in
the Charterhouse, by Mr. Burney’s first and constant patron, the Earl
of Holdernesse, was then but a child.

The eldest daughter was still a little girl; and the last born of her
three sisters could scarcely walk alone. But all, save the seaman, who
was then aboard his ship, were now called back to the paternal roof of
the unhappy father.

None of them, however, were of an age to be companionable; his fondness
for them, therefore, full of care and trouble, procured no mitigation
to his grief by the pleasure of society: and the heavy march of time,
where no solace is accepted from abroad, or attainable at home, gave
a species of stagnation to his existence, that made him take, in the
words of Young,

                “No note of time,
  Save by its loss!”

His tenderness, however, as a father; his situation as a man; and his
duties as a Christian, drew, tore him, at length, from this retreat
of lonely woe; and, in the manuscript already quoted from, which was
written many years after the period of which it speaks, he says: “I was
forced, ere long, to plunge into business; and then found, that having
my time occupied by my affairs was a useful dissipation of my sorrows,
as it compelled me to a temporary inattention to myself, and to the
irreparable loss I had sustained.”

Still, however, all mitigation to his grief that was not imposed upon
him by necessity, he avoided even with aversion; and even the sight of
those who most had loved and esteemed the departed, was the sight most
painful to him in sharpening his regrets, “which, therefore, no meeting
whatsoever,” he says, “could blunt; since to love and admire her, had
been universally the consequence of seeing and knowing her.”

From this mournful monotony of life, he was especially, however,
called, by reflecting that his eldest daughter was fast advancing to
that age when education is most requisite to improvement; and that,
at such a period, the loss of her mother and instructress might be
permanently hurtful to her, if no measure should be taken to avert the
possible consequences of neglect.

Yet the idea of a governess, who, to him, unless his children were
wholly confined to the nursery, must indispensably be a species of
companion, was not, in his present desolate state of mind, even
tolerable. Nevertheless masters without superintendence, and lessons
without practice, he well knew to be nugatory. Projects how to remedy
this evil, as fruitless as they were numberless, crossed his mind; till
a plan occurred to him, that, by combining economy with novelty, and
change of scene for himself, with various modes of advantage to his
daughters, ripened into an exertion that brought him, about a month
after its formation, to the gates of Paris.

The design of Mr. Burney was to place two of his daughters in some
convent, or boarding-house, where their education might be forwarded by
his own directions.

Sundry reasons decided him to make his third daughter, Susanna, take
place, in this expedition, of his second, Frances; but, amongst them,
the principal and most serious motive, was a fearful tendency to a
consumptive habit in that most delicate of his young plants, that
seemed to require the balsamic qualities of a warmer and clearer
atmosphere.

Another reason, which he acknowledged, in after-times, to have had
great weight with him for this arrangement, was the tender veneration
with which Frances was impressed for her maternal grandmother; whose
angelic piety, and captivating softness, had won her young heart with
such reverential affection, that he apprehended there might be danger
of her being led to follow, even enthusiastically, the religion of so
pure a votary, if she should fall so early, within the influence of any
zealot in the work of conversion. He determined, therefore, as he could
part with two of them only at a time, that Fanny and Charlotte should
follow their sisters in succession, at a later period.


PARIS.

Immediately upon his arrival at Paris, Mr. Burney, by singular good
fortune, had the honour to be introduced to Lady Clifford, a Roman
Catholic dowager, of a character the most benevolent, who resided
entirely in France, for the pious purpose of enjoying with facility the
rites of her religion, which could not, at that period, be followed in
England without peril of persecution.

This lady took the children of Mr. Burney into her kindest favour, and
invited their father to consult with her unreservedly upon his projects
and wishes; and, through such honourable auspices, scarcely ten days
elapsed, ere Esther and Susan were placed under the care of Madame St.
Mart, a woman of perfect goodness of heart, and of a disposition the
most affectionate.

Madame St. Mart was accustomed to the charge of _des jeunes Anglaises_,
two daughters of Sir Willoughby Aston, Selina and Belinda, being then
under her roof.

Highly satisfied with this arrangement, Mr. Burney now visited the
delightful capital of France; made himself acquainted with its
antiquities, curiosities, public buildings, public places, general
laws, and peculiar customs; its politics, its resources, its
festivities, its arts and its artists; as well as with the arbitrary
tyrannies, and degrading oppressions towards the lower classes,
which, at that epoch, were, to an English looker-on, incomprehensibly
combined, not with murmurs nor discontent, but with the most lively
animal spirits, and the freshest glee of national gaiety.

But his chosen haunts were the Public Libraries, to which an easiness
of access, at that time deplorably unknown in England, encouraged, nay,
excited, the intelligent visitor, who might be mentally inclined to any
literary project, to hit upon some subject congenial to his taste; by
rousing in him that spirit of emulation, which ultimately animates the
humbly instructed, to soar to the heights that distinguish the luminous
instructor.

Collections of books, even the most multitudinous and the most rare,
may hold, to the common runner through life, but an ordinary niche in
places of general resort; nevertheless, the Public Libraries, those
Patrons of the Mind, must always be entered with a glow of grateful
pleasure, by those who, instinctively, meditate upon the vast mass of
thought that they contain.

To wander amidst those stores, that commit talents to posterity as
indubitably as the Herald’s Register transmits names and titles;
to develop as accurately the systems of nations, the conditions of
communities, the progress of knowledge, and the turn of men’s minds,
two or three thousand years ago, as in this our living minute; to
visit, in fact, the Brains of our fellow-creatures,—not alone with
the harrowing knife to dissect physical conformation, but, with
the piercing eye of penetration to dive into the recesses of human
intelligence, the sources of imagination, and the springs of genius;
and there, in those sacred receptacles of mental remains, to survey,
in clear, indestructible evidence, all of the soul that man is able to
bequeath to man— —

Views such as these of the powers of his gifted, though gone
fellow-creatures, seen thus abstractedly through their intellectual
attributes; purified equally from the frailties and selfishness of
active life, and the sickly humours and baleful infirmities of age;
seen through the medium of learned, useful, or fanciful productions;
and beheld in so insulated a moment of vacuity of any positive plan
of life, instinctively roused the dormant faculties of the subject of
these memoirs, by setting before him a comprehensive chart of human
capabilities, which involuntarily incited a conscious inquiry: what,
peradventure, might be his own share, if sought for, in such heavenly
gifts?

And it was now that, vaguely, yet powerfully, he first fell into
that stream of ideas, or visions, that seemed to hail him to that
class indefinable and indescribable, from its mingled elevation and
abjectness, which, by joining the publicity of the press to the
secret intercourse of the mind with the pen, insensibly allures its
adventurous votaries to make the world at large the judge of their
abilities, or their deficiencies—namely, the class of authors.

For this was the real, though not yet the ostensible epoch, whence may
be traced the opening of his passion for literary pursuits.

And from this period, to the very close of his long mortal career,
this late, though newly chosen occupation, became all that was most
consoling to his sorrows, most diversifying to his ideas, and most
animating to his faculties.

Some new stimulus had been eminently wanting to draw a man of his
natively ardent and aspiring character from the torpid blight of
availless misery; which, in despoiling him of all bosom felicity, had
left only to an attempt at some untried project and purpose, any chance
for the restoration of his energies.

He did not immediately fix on a subject for any work, though he had
the wisdom, at once, and the modesty, to resolve, since so tardily he
entered such lists, to adopt no plan that might wean him from his
profession—for his profession was his whole estate! but rather to seek
one that might amalgamate his rising desire of fame in literature, with
his original labours to be distinguished as a follower of Orpheus.

He took notes innumerable in the public libraries, which he meant
to revisit on returning to Paris for his daughters, of the books,
subjects, passages, and authors which invited re-perusal; and which,
hereafter, might happily conduct to some curious investigation, or
elucidating commentary.

He made himself master of a beautiful collection of what then was
esteemed to be most select of the French classics.

He completed, by adding to what already he possessed, all that recently
had been published of that noblest work that had yet appeared in the
republic of letters, the original Encyclopedia.

He opened an account with the reigning bookseller of the day, whose
reputation in his mind-enlightening business still sustains its renown,
M. Guy, whom he commissioned to send over to England the principal
works then suspending over the heights of the French Parnassus; where
resplendently were grouped all that was most attractive in Wit,
Poetry, Eloquence, Science, Pathos, and Entertainment; from Rousseau,
Voltaire, d’Alembert, Marmontel, Destouches, Marivaux, Gilbert,
Diderot, Fontenelle, de Jaucourt; and many others.

It will easily be conceived how wistfully Mr. Burney must have coveted
to make acquaintance with this brilliant set; his high veneration for
genius having always led him to consider the first sight of an eminent
author to form a data in his life.

But he had neither leisure, nor recommendatory letters; nor, perhaps,
courage for such an attempt; the diffidence of his nature by no means
anticipating the honourable place he himself was destined to hold in
similar circles.

Not small, however, was his solace, while missing every ray of living
light from this foreign constellation, when he found himself shone upon
by a fixed star of the first magnitude belonging to his own system;
for at the house of the English ambassador, the Earl of Hertford, he
became acquainted with the celebrated secretary of his lordship, the
justly admired, and justly censured DAVID HUME; who, with the skilful
discernment that waited neither name nor fame for its stimulus, took
Mr. Burney immediately and warmly into his favour.

Had this powerful and popular author, in his erudite, spirited, and
intellectual researches and reflections, given to mankind his luminous
talents, and his moral philosophy, for fair, open, and useful purposes,
suited to the high character which he bore, not alone for genius, but
for worth and benevolence; instead of bending, blending, involving
them with missive weapons of baneful sarcasm, insidiously at work to
undermine our form of faith; he would have been hailed universally, not
applauded partially, as, in every point, one of the first of British
writers.

To the world no man is accountable for his thoughts and his
ruminations; but for their propagation, if they are dangerous or
mischievous, the risks which he may allure others to share, seem
impelled by wanton lack of feeling; if not by an ignorant yet
presumptuous dearth of foresight to the effect he is working to
produce: two deficiencies equally impossible to be attributed to a man
to whom philanthropy is as unequivocally accorded as philosophy.

Unsolved therefore, perhaps, yet remains, as a problem in the history
of human nature, how a being, at once wise and benign, could have
refrained from the self-examination of demanding: what—had he been
successful in exterminating from the eyes and the hearts of men the
lecture and the doctrines of the Holy Scriptures, would have been
achieved? Had he any other more perfect religion to offer? More
purifying from evil? more fortifying in misfortune? more consoling in
woe?—No!—indubitably no!—Nothing fanatical, or mystic, could cope
with judgment such as his. To undermine, not to construct, is all the
obvious purpose of his efforts—of which he laments the failure as
a calamity![25] He leaves, therefore, nothing to conjecture of his
motives but what least seems to belong to a character of his sedate
equanimity; a personal desire to proclaim to mankind their folly in
their belief, and his sagacity in his infidelity.


LONDON.

Mr. Burney now, greatly lightened, and somewhat brightened in spirits,
returned to his country and his home. His mind seemed no longer
left in desolating inertness to prey upon itself. Nutriment of an
invigorating nature was in view, though not yet of a consistence to
afford spontaneous refreshment. On the contrary, it required taste
for selection, labour for culture, and skill for appropriation. But
such nutriment, if attainable, was precisely that which best could
re-inforce the poor “tenement of clay,”[26] which the lassitude of
unbraced nerves had nearly “fretted to decay.”

Sketches, hints, notes, and scattered ideas of all sorts, began to
open the way to some original composition; though the timidity of his
Muse, not the dearth of his fancy, long kept back the force of mind for
meeting the public eye, that now, in these more easy, dauntless times,
urges almost every stripling to present his mental powers to the world,
nearly ere his physical ones have emerged from leading-strings in the
nursery.

The first, because the least responsible, method of facing the critic
eye, that occurred to him, was that of translation; and he began
with acutely studying d’Alembert’s _Elémens de Musique théorique et
pratique, selon les principes de Rameau_; in which he was assiduously
engaged, when the appearance of the celebrated musical _Dictionaire_ of
the still more celebrated Rousseau, from its far nearer congeniality
to his taste, surprised him into inconstancy.

Yet this also, from circumstances that intervened, was laid aside; and
his first actual essay was a trifle, though a pleasing one, from which
no real fame could either accrue, or be marred; it was translating, and
adapting to the stage, the little pastoral afterpiece of Rousseau, _Le
Devin du Village_.


GARRICK.

To this he was urged by Garrick; and the execution was appropriate,
and full of merit. But though the music, from its simplicity and the
sweetness of its melody, was peculiarly fitted to refine the public
taste amongst the middle classes; while it could not fail to give
passing pleasure even to the highest; the drama was too denuded of
intricacy or variety for the amusement of John Bull; and the appearance
of only three interlocuters caused a gaping expectation of some
followers, that made every new scene begin by inflicting disappointment.

Mr. Garrick, and his accomplished, high-bred, and engaging wife, La
Violetta, had been amongst the earliest of the pristine connexions of
Mr. Burney, who had sought him, with compassionate kindness, as soon
after his heart-breaking loss as he could admit any friends to his
sight. The ensuing paragraph on his warm sentiments of this talented
and bewitching pair, is copied from one of his manuscript memorandums.

  “My acquaintance, at this time, with Mrs. as well as Mr.
  Garrick, was improved into a real friendship; and frequently,
  on the Saturday night, when Mr. Garrick did not act, he
  carried me to his villa at Hampton, whence he brought me to
  my home early on Monday morning. I seldom was more happy
  than in these visits. His wit, humour, and constant gaiety
  at home; and Mrs. Garrick’s good sense, good breeding, and
  obliging desire to please, rendered their Hampton villa, on
  these occasions, a terrestrial paradise.

  “Mrs. Garrick had every faculty of social judgment, good
  taste, and steadiness of character, which he wanted. She was
  an excellent appreciator of the fine arts; and attended all
  the last rehearsals of new or of revived plays, to give her
  opinion of effects, dresses, scenery, and machinery. She
  seemed to be his real other half; and he, by his intelligence
  and accomplishments, seemed to complete the Hydroggynus.”

This eminent couple paid their court to Mr. Burney in the manner that
was most sure to be successful, namely, by their endearing and good
natured attentions to his young family; frequently giving them, with
some chaperon of their father’s appointing, the lightsome pleasure of
possessing Mrs. Garrick’s private box at Drury Lane Theatre; and that,
from time to time, even when the incomparable Roscius acted himself;
which so enchanted their gratitude, that they nearly—as Mr. Burney
laughingly quoted to Garrick from Hudibras—

          “Did,—as was their duty,
  Worship the shadow of his shoe-tie.”

Garrick, who was passionately fond of children, never withheld his
visits from Poland-street on account of the absence of the master
of the house; for though it was the master he came to seek, he
was too susceptible to his own lively gift of bestowing pleasure,
to resist witnessing the ecstacy he was sure to excite, when he
burst in unexpectedly upon the younger branches: for so playfully
he individualised his attentions, by an endless variety of comic
badinage,—now exhibited in lofty bombast; now in ludicrous
obsequiousness; now by a sarcasm skilfully implying a compliment; now
by a compliment archly conveying a sarcasm; that every happy day that
gave them but a glimpse of this idol of their juvenile fancy, was
exhilarated to its close by reciprocating anecdotes of the look, the
smile, the bow, the shrug, the start, that, after his departure, each
enraptured admirer could describe.

A circumstance of no small weight at that time, contributed to allure
Mr. Garrick to granting these joyous scenes to the young Burney tribe.
When he made the tour of Italy, for the recovery of his health, and the
refreshment of his popularity, he committed to the care of Mr. Burney
and his young family his own and Mrs. Garrick’s favourite little dog,
Phill, a beautiful black and white spaniel, of King Charles’s breed,
luxuriant in tail and mane, with the whitest breast, and spotted with
perfect symmetry.

The fondness of Mr. Garrick for this little spaniel was so great, that
one of his first visits on his return from the continent was to see,
caress, and reclaim him. Phill was necessarily resigned, though with
the most dismal reluctance, by his new friends: but if parting with
the favoured little quadruped was a disaster, how was that annoyance
overpaid, when, two or three days afterwards, Phill re-appeared! and
when the pleasure of his welcome to the young folks was increased by a
message, that the little animal had seemed so moping, so unsettled,
and so forlorn, that Mr. and Mrs. Garrick had not the heart to break
his new engagements, and requested his entire acceptance and adoption
in Poland-street.

During the life of this favourite, all the juvenile group were sought
and visited together, by the gay-hearted Roscius; and with as much glee
as he himself was received by these happy young creatures, whether
two-footed or four.

On the first coming-out of the “Cunning Man,” Mr. Garrick, who
undoubtedly owed his unequalled varieties in delineating every species
of comic character, to an inquisitive observance of Nature in all her
workings, amused himself in watching from the orchestra, where he
frequently sat on the first night of new pieces, the young auditory
in Mrs. Garrick’s box; and he imitatingly described to Mr. Burney the
innocent confidence of success with which they all openly bent forward,
to look exultingly at the audience, when a loud clapping followed
the overture: and their smiles, or nods: or chuckling and laughter,
according to their more or less advanced years, during the unmingled
approbation that was bestowed upon about half the piece—contrasted
with, first the amazement; next, the indignation; and, lastly, the
affright and disappointment, that were brought forth by the beginning
buzz of hissing, and followed by the shrill horrors of the catcall: and
then the return—joyous, but no longer dauntless!—of hope, when again
the applause prevailed.

In these various changes, Mr. Garrick altered the expression of
his features, and almost his features themselves, by apparent
transformations—which, however less poetical, were at least more
natural than those of Ovid.

Mr. Garrick possessed not only every possible inflexion of voice, save
for singing, but also of countenance; varying his looks into young,
old, sick, vigorous, downcast, or frolicsome, at his personal volition;
as if his face, and even his form, had been put into his own hands to
be worked upon like Man a Machine.

Mr. Garrick, about this time, warmly urged the subject of these memoirs
to set to music an English opera called Orpheus; but while, for that
purpose, Mr. Burney was examining the drama, he was informed that it
had been put into the hands of Mr. Barthelemon, who was preparing it
for the stage.

Astonished, and very much hurt, Mr. Burney hastily returned the copy
with which he had been entrusted, to Mr. Johnstone, the prompter;
dryly, and without letter or comment, directing him to deliver it to
Mr. Garrick.

Mr. Garrick, with the utmost animation, instantly wrote to Johnstone
an apology rather than a justification; desiring that the opera should
be withdrawn from Mr. Barthelemon, and consigned wholly to the subject
of these memoirs; for whom Mr. Garrick declared himself to entertain a
friendship that nothing should dissolve.[27]

But Mr. Burney, conceiving that Barthelemon, who had offended no one,
and who bore a most amiable character, might justly resent so abrupt a
discharge, declined setting the opera: and never afterwards composed
for the theatres.

This trait, however trifling, cannot but be considered as biographical,
at least for Mr. Garrick; as it so strongly authenticates the veracity
of the two principal lines of the epitaph designed for Roscius, many
years afterwards, by that acute observer of every character—save his
own!—Dr. Goldsmith.

    “He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack,
     For he knew, when he would, he could whistle them back.”

Whether negligence, mistake, or caprice, had occasioned this double
nomination to the same office, is not clear; but Garrick, who loved Mr.
Burney with real affection, lost no time, and spared no blandishment,
to re-instate himself in the confidence which this untoward accident
had somewhat shaken. And he had full success, to the great satisfaction
of Mr. Burney, and joy of his family; who all rapturously delighted in
the talents and society of the immortal Roscius.


MR. CRISP.

While this revival of intercourse with the Garricks, and partial
return to public life and affairs, necessarily banished the outward
and obvious marks of the change of existence, and lost happiness of
Mr. Burney, they operated also, gently, but effectively, in gradually
diminishing his sufferings, by forcing him from their contemplation:
for in that dilapidated state of sorrow’s absorption, where the mind
is wholly abandoned to its secret sensations, all that innately recurs
to it can spring only from its own concentrated sources; and these,
though they may vary the evil by palliatives, offer nothing curative.
New scenes and objects alone can open to new ideas; and, happily, a
circumstance now occurred that brought on a revival of intercourse with
the only man who, at that time, could recall the mourner’s faculties to
genial feelings, and expand them to confidential sociality.

His earliest favourite, guide, philosopher, and friend, Mr. Crisp, he
now, after a separation of very many years, accidentally met at the
house of Mr. Vincent, a mutual acquaintance.

Their satisfaction at the sight of each other was truly reciprocal;
though that of Mr. Burney was tinctured with dejection, that he could
no longer present to his dearest friend the partner whom, by such
a judge, he had felt would have been instantly and reverentially
appreciated.

Mr. Crisp joined in this regret; but was not the less desirous to see
and to know all that remained of her; and he hastened the following
day to Poland-street; where, from his very first entrance amidst the
juvenile group, he became instinctively honoured as a counsellor for
his wisdom and judgment, and loved and liked as a companion for his
gaiety, his good-humour, and his delight in their rising affections;
which led him unremittingly, though never obtrusively, to mingle
instruction with their most sportive intercourse.

As Mr. Crisp was the earliest and dearest friend of the subject of
these memoirs, the reader will not, it is probable, be sorry to be
apprised of the circumstances which, since their separation, had turned
him from a brilliant man of the world to a decided recluse.

The life of Mr. Crisp had been exposed to much vicissitude. Part
of it had been spent in Italy, particularly at Rome, where he took
up his residence for some years; and where, from his passion for
music, painting, and sculpture, he amassed, for the rest of his
existence, recollections of never-dying pleasure. And not alone for
his solitary contemplations, but for the delight that the vivacity of
his delineations imparted to his friends, when he could be induced to
unfold his reminiscences; whether upon the sacred and soul-pervading
harmony of the music of the Pope’s chapel; or upon the tones,
mellifluously melting or elevating, of Sinesino, Custini, or Farinelli:
or by bringing to view through glowing images, the seraphic forms and
expressions of Raphael and Correggio; and the sculptural sublimity
of Michael Angelo. Or when, animated to the climax of his homage for
the fine arts, he flitted by all else to concentrate the whole force
of his energies, in describing that electrifying wonder, the Apollo
Belvedere.

On this he dwelt with a vivacity of language that made his hearers wish
to fasten upon every word that he uttered; so vividly he portrayed the
commanding port, the chaste symmetry, and the magic form—for which not
a tint was requisite, and colouring would have been superfluous—of
that unrivalled production, of which the peerless grace, looking
softer, though of marble, than the feathered snow; and brightly
radiant, though, like the sun, simply white, strike upon the mind
rather than the eye, as an ideal representative of ethereal beauty.[28]

And while such were his favourite topics for his gifted participators,
there was a charm for all around in his more general conversation, that
illumined with instruction, or gladdened with entertainment, even the
most current and desultory subjects of the passing hour.

Thus rarely at once endowed and cultivated, there can be little
surprise that Mr. Crisp should be distinguished, speedily and forcibly,
by what is denominated the Great World; where his striking talents,
embellished by his noble countenance and elegant manners, made him so
much the mode with the great, and the chosen with the difficult, that
time, not friends, was all he wanted for social enjoyment.

High, perhaps highest in this noble class, stood Margaret Cavendish
Harley, Duchess Dowager of Portland, _The Friend of Mrs. Delany_; by
whom that venerable and exemplary personage, who was styled by Mr.
Burke, “The pattern of a real fine lady of times that were past,” had
been herself made known to Mr. Crisp.

Mrs. Montagu, also, who then, Mr. Crisp was wont to say, was peering
at fame, and gradually rising to its temple, was of the same coterie.
But most familiarly he resided with Christopher Hamilton of Chesington
Hall, and with the Earl of Coventry.

With this last he was intimately connected, at the time of that Earl’s
marriage with the acknowledged nonpareil of female beauty, the youngest
Miss Gunning.

Mr. Crisp had already written his tragedy of Virginia; but Garrick,
though he was the author’s personal friend, thought it so little equal
to the expectations that might await it, that he postponed, season
after season, bringing it out; even though Lord Coventry, who admired
it with the warmth of partial regard, engaged the first Mr. Pitt[29]
to read it, and to pronounce in its favour. Roscius still was adverse,
and still delayed the trial; nor could he be prevailed upon to prepare
it for the stage, till Mr. Crisp had won that Venus of her day, the
exquisite Lady Coventry, through his influence with her lord, to
present a copy of the manuscript, with her own almost sculptured hand,
to the then conquered manager.

The play neither succeeded nor failed. A catastrophe of so yea and nay
a character was ill suited to the energies and hopes of its high-minded
author, who was bitterly disappointed; and thought the performers had
been negligent, Mr. Garrick unfriendly, and the public precipitate.

The zealous Lord Coventry, himself a man of letters, advised sundry
changes, and a new trial. Mr. Crisp shut himself up, and worked
indefatigably at these suggestions: but when his alterations were
finished, there was no longer a radiant Countess of Coventry to bewitch
Mr. Garrick, by “the soft serenity of her smile,” to make a further
attempt. Lady Coventry, whose brief, dazzling race, was rapidly
run, was now already fast fading in the grasping arms of withering
consumption: and Mr. Garrick, though, from unwillingness to disoblige,
he seemed wavering, was not the less inexorable.

Mr. Crisp then, disgusted with the stage, the manager, and the
theatrical public, gave up not alone that point, but every other by
which he might have emerged from private life to celebrity. He almost
wholly retired from London, and resided at Hampton; where he fitted
up a small house with paintings, prints, sculpture, and musical
instruments, arranged with the most classical elegance.

But the vicinity of the metropolis caused allurements such as these,
with such a chief to bring them into play, to accord but ill with the
small, though unincumbered fortune of their master; and the grace with
which, instinctively, he received his visitors, made his habitation so
pleasant, as soon to produce a call upon his income that shattered its
stability.

His alarm now was such as might be expected from his sense of honour,
and his love of independence. Yet the delicacy of his pride forbade any
complaint to his friends, that might seem to implicate their discretion
in his distress, or to invite their aid; though his desire to smooth,
without publishing, his difficulties, urged him to commune with those
of his connexions who were in actual power, and to confess his wishes
for some honourable place, or occupation, that might draw forth his
faculties to the amelioration of his fortune.

Kind words, and enlivening promises, now raised his hopes to a
favourable change in his affairs; and, brightly looking forward, he
continued to welcome his friends; who, enchanted by his society, poured
in upon him with a thoughtless frequency, which caused an increase of
expenditure that startled him, ere long, with a prospect, sudden and
frightful, of the road to ruin.

Shocked, wounded, dismayed, he perceived two ways only by which
he could be extricated from the labyrinth into which he had been
betrayed by premature expectation; either vigorously to urge his suit
for some appointment, and persecute, pester his friends to quicken
his advancement; or cut off approaching worldly destruction by an
immediate sacrifice of worldly luxury.

A severe fit of the gout, that now, for the first time—hastened,
probably, by chagrin—assailed him, decided his resolution. He sold his
house at Hampton, his books, prints, pictures, and instruments; with
a fixed determination of relinquishing the world, and retiring from
mankind.

Within a few miles of Hampton stood Chesington Hall, his chosen
retreat; and thither, with what little of his property he had rescued
from the auctioneer and the appraiser, he transplanted his person; and
there buried every temporal prospect.

Chesington Hall was placed upon a considerable, though not rapid
eminence, whence two tall, antique trees, growing upon an old rustic
structure called The Mount, were discernible at sixteen miles distance.
The Hall had been built upon a large, lone, and nearly desolate common;
and no regular road, or even track to the mansion from Epsom, the
nearest town, had, for many years, been spared from its encircling
ploughed fields, or fallow ground.

This old mansion had fallen into the hands of the Hamiltons from those
of the Hattons, by whom its erection had been begun in the same year
upon which Cardinal Wolsey had commenced raising, in its vicinity, the
magnificent palace of Hampton Court.

Every thing around Chesington Hall was now falling to decay; and its
hereditary owner, Christopher Hamilton, the last male of his immediate
branch of the Hamilton family, was, at this time, utterly ruined, and
sinking in person as well as property in the general desolation.

This was precisely a sojourn to meet the secluding desire of Mr.
Crisp; he adopted some pic-nic plan with Mr. Hamilton; and Chesington
Hall became his decided residence; it might almost be said, his
fugitive sanctuary. He acquainted no one with his intentions, and
communicated to no one his place of abode. Firm to resist the kindness,
he determined to escape the tediousness, of persuasion: and, however
often, in after-life, when renovated health gave him a consciousness
of renovated faculties, he might have regretted this intellectual
interment, he was immoveable never more to emerge from a tranquillity,
which now, to his sickened mind, made the pursuits of ambition seem as
oppressively troublesome in their manoeuvres, as they were morbidly
bitter in their disappointments.

His fondness, however, for the arts, was less subordinate to the
casualties of life than his love of the world. It was too much an
integral part of his composition to be annihilated in the same gulph in
which were sunk his mundane expectations. Regularly, therefore, every
spring, he came up to the metropolis, where, in keeping pace with the
times, he enjoyed every modern improvement in music and painting.

Rarely can a re-union of early associates have dispensed brighter
felicity with more solid advantages, than were produced by the
accidental re-meeting of these long separated friends. To Mr. Burney
it brought back a congeniality of feeling and intelligence, that
re-invigorated his social virtues; and to Mr. Crisp it gave not only a
friend, but a family.

It operated, however, no further. To Mr. Burney alone was confided the
clue for a safe route across the wild common to Chesington Hall; from
all others it was steadfastly withheld; and from Mr. Greville it was
studiously and peculiarly concealed.

That gentleman now was greatly altered, from the large and larger
strides which he had made, and was making, into the dangerous purlieus
of horse-racing and of play; into whose precincts, from the delusive
difference of their surface from their foundation, no incursions can be
hazarded without as perilous a shake to character and disposition, as
to fortune and conduct. And Mr. Greville, who, always honourable, was
almost necessarily a frequent loser, was evidently on the high road to
turn from a man of pleasure to a man of spleen; venting his wrath at
his failures upon the turf and at the clubs, by growing fastidious and
cavilling in general society. Mr. Crisp, therefore, bent to maintain
the dear bought quiet of his worldly sacrifices as unmingled with
the turbulent agitations of querulous debate, as with the restless
solicitudes of active life, shunned the now pertinacious disputant
almost with dread.

Yet Mr. Greville, about this period, was rescued, for a while, from
this hovering deterioration, through the exertions of his friends
in the government, by whom he was named minister plenipotentiary to
the court of Bavaria; in the hope that such an appointment, with its
probable consequences, might re-establish his affairs.

No change, however, of situation, caused any change in Mr. Greville to
his early _protegé_ and attached and attaching friend, Mr. Burney, to
whom he still shewed himself equally eager to communicate his opinions,
and reveal his proceedings. A letter from Munich, written when his
Excellency was first installed in his new dignity, will display the
pleasant openness of their correspondence; at the same time that it
depicts the humours and expenses of the official ceremonials then in
use, with a frankness that makes them both curious and entertaining.[30]

       *       *       *       *       *

A letter to the Earl of Eglinton from the celebrated David Hume,
written also about this time, gave Mr. Burney very peculiar
satisfaction, from the sincere disposition to esteem and to serve him,
which it manifested in that dangerously renowned philosopher; whose
judgment of men was as skilfully inviting, as his sophistry in theology
was fearfully repelling.

Yet upon the circumstances of this letter hung a cutting
disappointment, which, in the midst of his rising prospects, severely
pierced the hopes of Mr. Burney; and, from the sharpness of its injury,
and its future aggravating repetitions, would permanently have
festered them, had their composition been of less elastic quality.

To be Master of the King’s Band, as the highest professional honour to
be obtained, had been the earliest aim of Mr. Burney; and, through the
medium of warm friends, joined to his now well approved and obvious
merit, the promise of the then Lord Chamberlain had been procured
for the first vacancy. This arrived in 1765; but when the consequent
claim was made, how great, how confounding to Mr. Burney was the
intelligence, that the place was disposed of already.

He hastened with a relation of this grievance, as unexpected as it was
undeserved, to the celebrated historian, to whom his rights had been
well known at Paris. And Mr. Hume, whose sense of justice—one fatal
warp excepted—was as luminous as it was profound, shocked by such
a breach of its simplest and most unchangeable statutes, instantly
undertook, with the courage imbibed by his great abilities and high
moral character, to make a representation on the subject to Lord
Hertford.

Failing, however, of meeting with an immediate opportunity, and
well aware of the importance of expedition in such applications, he
addressed himself to the Countess; and from her he learnt, and with
expressions of benevolent concern, that it was the Duke of York[31] who
had demanded the nomination to the place.

It now occurred to Mr. Hume that the present applicant might possibly
be himself the object for whom his Royal Highness had interfered, as
Mr. Burney had frequently been seen, and treated with marked kindness,
by the Royal Duke at private concerts; which were then often, at the
sudden request of that prince, formed by the Earl of Eglinton; and at
which Mr. Burney, when in London, was always a principal and favoured
assistant. With this in his recollection, and naturally concluding Lord
Eglinton, who always shewed an animated partiality for Mr. Burney, to
be chief in the application to the Lord Chamberlain, Mr. Hume wrote the
following letter.

  TO THE EARL OF EGLINTON.

  “MY LORD,

  “Not finding an opportunity of speaking yesterday to Lord
  Hertford, in favour of Mr. Burney, I spoke to my lady, and
  told her the whole case. She already knows Mr. Burney, and
  has an esteem for him. She said it gave her great uneasiness,
  and was sure it would do so to my lord, that he was already
  engaged, and, she believed, to the Duke of York.

  “It occurred to me, that his Royal Highness’s application
  might, also, be in favour of Mr. Burney; in which case the
  matter is easy. If not, it is probable your Lordship may
  engage his Royal Highness to depart from his application; for
  really Mr. Burney’s case, independently of his merit, is very
  hard and cruel.

  “I have the honour to be,

  “My Lord, your Lordship’s

  “Most humble and most obedient servant,

  “DAVID HUME.”

  “P. S. If your Lordship honour me with an answer in the
  forenoon, please send it to General Conway’s, in Little Warwick
  Street; if in the afternoon, at Miss Elliot’s, Brewer Street,
  Golden Square.”

A reclamation such as this, from a man who was then almost universally
held to be at the head of British literature, could not be read
unmoved; and an opinion so positive of the justice and merits of the
case, manifested by two directions for an immediate reply, both given
for the same day, and without any apology for such precipitancy, shewed
a warmth of personal zeal and interest for the welfare of Mr. Burney,
that was equally refreshing to his spirits, and stimulating to his
hopes.

The place, however, was decidedly gone. The first word from the Duke
had fixed its fate; though, from the real amenity of the character of
the prince, joined to the previous favour he had shewn to Mr. Burney,
there cannot be a doubt that, had the history of the affair reached the
ear of his Royal Highness, he would have been foremost himself, as Mr.
Hume suggested, to have nominated Mr. Burney.

Here the matter dropped; and the expressed regret and civilities of
the Countess, with the implied ones of the Earl, somewhat softened the
infliction: but the active services, and manly appeal of David Hume,
conduced far more to awaken and to fortify the philosophy that so
unexpected a mortification required.

       *       *       *       *       *

In mingling again with the world upon its common terms of cultivating
what was good, and supporting what was evil, Mr. Burney now, no
longer bewitched by beauty, nor absorbed by social sympathies, found
literature and its pursuits without rival in his estimation; yet,
in missing those vanished delights, he deemed that he had the world
to re-begin: for though prosperity met his professional toils with
heightened reputation and reward, they were joyless, however essential,
since participation was gone!

The time had arrived, and now was passed, for the long-settled project
of Mr. Burney of conveying to Paris his second and, then, youngest
daughters, Frances and Charlotte, to replace his eldest and his third,
Esther and Susanna; now both returned thence, with every improvement
that a kind parent could reasonably desire.

The time had arrived—and was passed.—But if no man can with certainty
pronounce what at any stated period he will perform, how much less is
he gifted with fore-knowledge of what, at any stated period, he may
wish!

Six heartless, nearly desolate, years of lonely conjugal chasm, had
succeeded to double their number of nearly unparalleled conjugal
enjoyment—and the void was still fallow and hopeless!—when the yet
very handsome, though no longer in her bloom, Mrs. Stephen Allen, of
Lynn, now become a widow, decided, for promoting the education of her
eldest daughter, to make London her winter residence.

Mr. Burney was, of course, applied to for assistance in the musical
line; and not less called upon as the most capable judge and counsellor
in every other.

The loss that had been sustained by Mrs. Allen was that of a very
worthy man, whom she esteemed, but to whom she had been married by
her parents early in life, without either choice or aversion. In her
situation, therefore, and that of Mr. Burney, there was no other
affinity than that each had been widowed by the hand of death.

Highly intellectual, and fond even to passion of books, Mrs. Allen
delighted in the conversation of Mr. Burney; and the hour for his
instructions to Miss Allen was fixed to be that of tea-time; to the end
that, when he was liberated from the daughter, he might be engaged with
the mother.

The superior grief of Mr. Burney, as deep as it was acute, was not
more prominent than the feeling admiration that it inspired in Mrs.
Allen: and if moved by his sorrows, while charmed by his merit, Mrs.
Allen saw him with daily increasing interest, Mr. Burney was not less
moved by her commiseration, nor less penetrated by her sympathy; and
insensibly he became solaced, while involuntarily she grew grateful,
upon observing her rising influence over his spirits.

To the tender sentiments of the heart, the avenues are as infinite
for entrance as they are difficult for escape; but there are none so
direct, and, consequently, none so common, as those through whose
gentle mazes soft pity encounters soothing sensibility.

The task of consoling the sorrower seems, to its participator, nearly a
devout one; and the sorrower, most especially where beauty and spirit
meet in that participator, would think resistance to such benevolence
might savour of ingratitude.

Those who judge of the sincerity of pristine connubial tenderness
merely by its abhorrence of succession, take a very unenlightened,
if not false, view of human grief; unless they limit their stigma to
an eager or a facile repetition of those rites which, on their first
inauguration, had seemed inviolable and irreplaceable.

So still, in fact, they may faithfully, though silently continue, even
under a subsequent new connexion. The secret breast, alive to memory
though deprived of sympathy, may still internally adhere to its own
choice and fondness; notwithstanding the various and imperious calls
of current existence may urge a second alliance: and urge it, from
feelings and from affections as clear of inconstancy as of hypocrisy;
urge it, from the best of motives, that of accommodating ourselves to
our lot, with all its piercing privations; since our lot is dependent
upon causes we have no means to either evade or fathom; and as remote
from our direction as from our wishes.

If, by any exertion of which mortal man is capable, or any suffering
which mortal man can sustain, Mr. Burney could have called back his
vanished Esther to his ecstatic consciousness, labour, even to
decrepitude, endurance even to torture, he would have borne, would have
sought, would have blessed, for the most transient sight of her adored
form. But she was taken away from him by that decree against which
there is no appeal.

He who loses a parent, a brother, a sister, a friend, however deeply
and deservedly they may be lamented, is never branded with want of
feeling if he seek another counsellor and guide, if he accept another
companion and favourite. It is but considered to be meeting his destiny
as a man who knows he must not choose it; it is but consenting to
receive such good as is attainable, while bowing down submissively to
such evil as is unavoidable.

Succession is the law of nature; and, as far as her laws are obvious,
it is that which stands foremost.

The angel whom Mr. Burney had lost—for an angel both without and
within she had seemed to him—had the generous disinterestedness, on
the bed of death, to recommend to her miserable husband that he would
marry again; well knowing that the tenderness of female friendship
would come nearest,—however distant,—to the softness of consolation:
and, maternally weighing, no doubt, that a well chosen partner might
prove a benediction to her poor children. And this injunction, though
heard at the time with agony scarcely supportable, might probably,
and strongly, influence his future conduct, when the desperation of
hopelessness was somewhat worn away by all-subduing time, joined to
forced exertions in business.

His Esther had even named to him the lady whom she thought most capable
to suit him as a companion, and most tenderly disposed to becoming a
mother to his children,—Miss Dorothy Young, who was her most valued
friend. Mrs. Allen, Dorothy’s nearest competitor, was not then a widow.
But Mr. Burney, sacred as he held the opinions and the wishes of his
Esther, was too ardent an admirer of beauty to dispense, in totality,
with that attractive embellishment of the female frame. He honoured and
esteemed, with a brother’s affection, the excellent Dorothy Young: but
those charms which awaken softer sensations, were utterly and unhappily
denied to that estimable woman, through her peculiarly unfortunate
personal defects.

Not early, and not easily, did Mr. Burney and Mrs. Allen reveal their
mutual partiality. The wounded heart of Mr. Burney recoiled from such
anodyne as demanded new vows to a new object: and Mrs. Allen, at
that period, lived in a state of affluence that made such a marriage
require severe worldly sacrifices. Only, however transiently; for by
an unfortunate trust in an unfortunate, though honourable speculatist,
Dr. King, she completely lost all that, independently, was at her own
disposal of fortune. And the noble disinterestedness of Mr. Burney upon
this occasion, rivetted to him her affections, with the highest esteem.

Yet even when these scruples were mutually overwhelmed by increasing
force of regard, so many unlooked for obstacles stood in the way of
their union, that, wearied by delays that seemed at once captious and
interminable, Mr. Burney earnestly entreated that an immediate private
marriage might avert, at least, a final breach of their engagement:
solemnly promising, at the same time, that they should keep the
alliance secret, and still live apart, till all prudential exactions
should be satisfied.

As they were each wholly independent, save from the influence of
opinion,—which, however, is frequently more difficult to subdue than
that of authority,—Mrs. Allen saw no objection of sufficient force to
counteract her pleasure in compliance.

Their plan was confided to four persons, indispensably requisite for
its execution; Mrs., afterwards Lady Strange, Miss Young, Mr. Crisp,
and the Rev. Mr. Pugh, curate of St. James’s church.

Mr. Pugh, who was of very long standing a friend of Mr. Burney,
aided personally in promoting such measures as secured secrecy with
success; and in St. James’s church, Mr. Pugh tied that indissoluble
knot, which, however fairly promising, is inevitably rigorous, since
it can be loosened only by Crime or by Death: but which, where it
binds the destinies of those whose hearts are already knit together by
reciprocated regard, gives a charm to captivity that robs liberty of
regret.

At the porch of St. James’s church, Mrs. Strange and Mr. Pugh whispered
their congratulations to the new married couple, as they entered a
prepared post-chaise; which, in a very few hours, galloped them to the
obscure skirts of the then pathless, and nearly uninhabited, Chesington
common; where Mr. Crisp had engaged for them a rural and fragrant
retreat, at a small farm-house in a little hamlet, a mile or two from
Chesington Hall.

The secret, as usual in matrimonial concealments, was faithfully
preserved, for a certain time, by scrupulous discretion in the
parties, and watchful circumspection in the witnesses: but, as usual
also, error and accident were soon at work to develop the transaction;
and the loss of a letter, through some carelessness of conveyance,
revealed suddenly but irrevocably the state of the connexion.

This circumstance, however, though, at the time, cruelly distressing,
served ultimately but to hasten their own views; as the discovery was
necessarily followed by the personal union for which their hands had
been joined.

Mrs. Burney,—now no longer Mrs. Stephen Allen—came openly to town to
inhabit, for a while, a house in Poland-street, a few doors from that
of her husband; while alterations, paintings, and embellishments were
progressively preparing the way for her better reception at his home.

The two families, however, awaited not the completion of these
improvements for a junction. The younger branches, who already, and
from their birth, were well known to one another, were as eager as
their parents for a general union; and the very amiable Miss Allen,[32]
the most important personage in the juvenile group, conducted herself
upon the disclosure of the marriage, with a generous warmth of kindness
that quickened the new establishment. And her example would forcibly
have weighed with her deserving brother, Stephen Allen,[33] had such
example been wanting; but he entertained so true and affectionate a
respect for Mr. Burney, that he required neither duty nor influence to
reconcile him to the match.

The four daughters of Mr. Burney,—Esther, Frances, Susan, and
Charlotte,—were all earnest to contribute their small mites to the
happiness of one of the most beloved of parents, by receiving, with the
most respectful alacrity, the lady on whom he had cast his future hopes
of regaining domestic comfort.

The Paris scheme for the two daughters, who were to have followed the
route of their sisters, long remitted, from the fluctuating affairs
and feelings of Mr. Burney, was now finally abandoned. The youngest
daughter, Charlotte, was sent to a school in Norfolk. The second,
Frances, was the only one of Mr. Burney’s family who never was placed
in any seminary, and never was put under any governess or instructor
whatsoever. Merely and literally self-educated, her sole emulation for
improvement, and sole spur for exertion, were her unbounded veneration
for the character, and affection for the person, of her father; who,
nevertheless, had not, at the time, a moment to spare for giving her
any personal lessons; or even for directing her pursuits.[34]


POLAND STREET.

The friends of Mr. Burney were not slack in paying their devoirs to
his new partner, whose vivacious society, set off by far more than
remains of uncommon beauty, failed not to attract various visitors to
the house; and whose love, or rather passion, for conversation and
argument, were of that gay and brilliant sort, that offers too much
entertainment to be ever left in the lurch for want of partakers.

Fortunate was it that such was the success of her social spirit; which
success was by no means less flourishing, from her strong bent to
displaying the rites of hospitality. She must else have lived the life
of a recluse, Mr. Burney, during the whole of the day, being devoted to
his profession; with the single exception of one poor hour of repast,
to re-fit him for every other of labour.

But the affection and pleasure with which, as

  “The curfew toll’d the knell of parting day,”

he finished his toils, were so animated and so genuine, that the sun,
in the zenith of its splendour, was never more ardently hailed, than
the cool, silent, evening star, whose soft glimmering light restored
him to the bosom of his family; not there to murmur at his fatigues,
lament his troubles, nor recount his wearisome exertions; but to
return, with cheerful kindness, their tender greetings; to enliven
them with the news, the anecdotes, and the rumours of the day; to make
a spontaneous _catalogue raisonné_ of the people he had mixed with
or seen; and always to bring home any new publication, political,
poetical, or ethical, that was making any noise in the world.

Amongst those of the old friends of Mr. Burney who were the most eager
to judge his second choice, Roscius and Violetta, Mr. and Mrs. Garrick,
seem entitled to be first mentioned, from the pleasurable remembrance
of the delight bestowed upon the whole family by their presence.


THE GREVILLES.

And equally alert with the same congratulatory courtesies, were his
long and rootedly attached friends, the Grevilles. Mr. Greville,
curious to behold the successor of her whom he had never named, but
as one of the prettiest women he had ever seen, hastened to make his
marriage visit on the first morning that he heard of the bride’s
arrival in town: while of Mrs. Greville, the bridal visit was arranged
in such form, and with such attention, as she thought would shew most
consideration to its object. She came on an appointed day, that Mr.
Burney might be certainly at home, to present her to his wife; and she
stayed to spend the whole evening in Poland-street.

Her nearly peerless daughter, then in the first radiance of her
matchless bloom, who had been lately married to Mr. Crewe, of Cheshire,
with the same zeal as her parents to manifest esteem and affection for
Mr. Burney, joined the party; which consisted but of themselves, and of
Mr. Burney’s new and original young families.

Mrs. Greville, as was peculiarly in her power, took the lead, and bore
the burthen of the conversation; which chiefly turned upon Sterne’s
Sentimental Journey, at that time the reigning reading in vogue: but
when the new Mrs. Burney recited, with animated encomiums, various
passages of Sterne’s seducing sensibility, Mrs. Greville, shrugging
her shoulders, exclaimed: “A feeling heart is certainly a right heart;
nobody will contest that: but when a man chooses to walk about the
world with a cambrick handkerchief always in his hand, that he may
always be ready to weep, either with man or beast,—he only turns me
sick.”


DR. HAWKESWORTH.

With Dr. Hawkesworth Mr. Burney renewed an acquaintance that he had
begun at Wilbury House, where he who could write the Adventurer, was
not likely to have wanted the public voice to awaken his attention to
a youth of such striking merit. Long before that voice had sounded, Dr.
Hawkesworth had formed the most liberal and impartial opinion of the
young favourite of Mr. Greville. And when, upon the occasion of the
Doctor’s writing a hymn for the children of the Foundling Hospital,
Mr. Burney, through the medium of Mr. Greville, was applied to for
setting it to music, the expressions, incidentally dropt, of genius and
judgment, in a letter of thanks from Dr. Hawkesworth, would have been
in perfect accord with the attributes of the composer, had they been
bestowed after the History of Music had stamped them as his due.

No opportunity was omitted by Mr. Burney for cultivating the already
established kindness of Mr. Mason and of Dr. Armstrong.

Mr. Burney had frequent relations also, with that scientific diver into
natural history, and whatever was ingenious, quaint, and little known,
the Hon. Daines Barrington.

Arthur Young, the afterwards famous agriculturist, who had married a
younger sister of Mr. Burney, was, when in London, all but an inmate of
the Poland-street family; and the high, nay, at that time, volatile
spirits of Arthur Young, though always kept within certain bounds by
natively well-bred manners, and instinctive powers of pleasing, made
him, to the younger group especially, the most entertaining guest that
enlivened the fire side.

Amongst those whom neither literature nor science, but taste and
choice, taught to signalise Mr. Burney, foremost in the list of
youthful beauty, native talents, and animated softness, appeared Mrs.
Pleydell, daughter of Governor Holwell; so highly celebrated for the
dreadful sufferings, which he almost miraculously survived to record,
of incarceration, in what was denominated the Black Hole of Calcutta.

Mrs. Pleydell, like the first, or Mrs. Linley Sheridan, was encircled
with charms that, but for comparison with Mrs. Sheridan, might, at that
time, have been called unrivalled; charms at once so personal, yet so
mental, that they seemed entwined together by a texture so fine of
beauty and sensibility, that her first glance was attraction, and her
first speech was captivation.

Nothing could surpass the sweetness with which this lovely East Indian
attached herself to Mr. Burney; nor the delicacy of her arrangements
for appearing to receive favours in conferring them upon his
daughters; who were enamoured of her with an ardour that, happily, he
escaped; though his admiration was lively and sincere.

This lady, in taking leave of Mr. Burney, upon her return to India,
presented to him a Chinese painting on ivory, which she had inherited
from her father; and which he, Governor Holwell, estimated as a sort
of treasure. The following is the description of it, drawn up by Mr.
Burney, from the account of Mrs. Pleydell.

  “It is the representation of a music gallery over a triumphal
  arch, through which the great Mogul passed at Agra, or Delhi,
  before his fall. The procession consists of the Emperor,
  mounted on an elephant, and accompanied by his wives,
  concubines, and attendants; great officers of state, &c., all
  exquisitely painted. The heads of the females, Sir Joshua
  Reynolds and Sir Robert Strange, to whom this painting was
  shewn, thought sufficiently highly finished to be set in
  rings.”


GEORGE COLMAN, THE ELDER.

With that dramatic genius, man of wit, and elegant scholar, George
Colman the elder, Mr. Burney had frequent and pleasant meetings at the
mansion of Roscius; for who, at that time, could know Mr. Garrick, and
be a stranger to Mr. Colman?[35]


KIT SMART.

Nor amongst the early friends of Mr. Burney must ever be omitted that
learned, ingenious, most poetical, but most unfortunate son of Apollo,
Kit Smart; whom Mr. Burney always was glad to see, and active to serve;
though whatever belonged to that hapless poet seemed to go in constant
deterioration; his affairs and his senses annually and palpably
darkening together; and nothing, unhappily, flourishing in the attempts
made for his relief, save the friendship of Mr. Burney; in speaking of
which in a letter, Kit Smart touchingly says: “I bless God for your
good nature, which please to take for a receipt.”


SIR ROBERT AND LADY STRANGE.

The worthy, as well as eminent, Sir Robert Strange, the first engraver
of his day, with his extraordinary wife and agreeable family, were,
from the time of the second marriage, amongst the most familiar
visitors of the Burney house.

The term extraordinary is not here applied to Lady Strange to denote
any singularity of action, conduct, or person; it is simply limited
to her conversational powers; which, for mother wit in brilliancy
of native ideas, and readiness of associating analogies, placed her
foremost in the rank of understanding females, with whom Mr. Burney
delighted to reciprocate sportive, yet deeply reflective, discourse.
For though the education of Lady Strange had not been cultivated by
scholastic lore, she might have said, with the famous Sarah, Duchess of
Marlborough, “My books are men, and I read them very currently.” And in
that instinctive knowledge of human nature which penetration develops,
and observation turns to account, she was a profound adept.

Yet, with these high-seasoned powers of exhilaration for others, she
was palpably far from happy herself; and sometimes, when felicitated
upon her delightful gaiety, she would smile through a face of woe, and,
sorrowfully shaking her head, observe how superficial was judgment upon
the surface of things, and how wide from each other might be vivacity
and happiness! the one springing only from native animal spirits; the
other being always held in subjection by the occurrences that meet,
or that mar our feelings. And often, even in the midst of the lively
laugh that she had sent around her, there would issue quite aloud, from
the inmost recesses of her breast, a sigh so deep it might rather be
called a groan.

Very early in life, she had given away her heart and her hand without
the sanction of a father whom, while she disobeyed, she ardently loved.
And though she was always, and justly, satisfied with her choice, and
her deserving mate, she could never so far subdue her retrospective
sorrow, as to regain that inward serenity of mind, that has its source
in reflections that have never been broken by jarring interests and
regrets.


MR. CRISP.

But the social enjoyment that came closest to the bosom of Mr. Burney,
and of all his race, sprang spontaneously and unremittingly from the
delight of all their hearts, Mr. Crisp; who, from his never abating
love of music, of painting, of his early friend, and of that friend’s
progeny, never failed to make his almost secret visit once a year
to town; though still, save for those few weeks, he adhered, with
inflexible perseverance, to his retirement and his concealment.

Yet whatever disinclination to general society had been worked upon his
temper by disappointment, and fastened to his habits by ill health,
the last reproach that could be cast upon his conduct was that of
misanthropy; though upon his opinions it might deserve, perhaps, to be
the first.

He professed himself to be a complete disciple of Swift, where that
satirist, in defending his Yahoos, in Gulliver’s Travels, avows that,
dearly as he loves John, William, and Thomas, when taken individually,
mankind, taken in the lump, he abhors or despises.

Nevertheless, Mr. Crisp had so pitying a humanity for wrongs or
misfortunes that were casual, or that appeared to be incurred without
vice or crime, that, to serve a fellow-creature who called for
assistance, whether from his purse or his kindness, was so almost
involuntarily his common practice, that it was performed as a thing of
course, without emotion or commentary.

Mr. Crisp, at this time, was the chief supporter of Chesington Hall,
which had now lost the long dignity of its title, and was sunk into
plain Chesington, by the death of its last male descendant, Christopher
Hamilton; whose extravagances had exhausted, and whose negligence had
dilapidated the old and venerable domain which, for centuries, had
belonged to his family.

The mansion, and the estate, fell, by law, into the hands of Mrs. Sarah
Hamilton, a maiden sister of Christopher’s. But this helpless ancient
lady was rescued from the intricacies of so involved a succession, by
the skilful counsel of Mr. Crisp; who proposed that she should have the
capacious old house parted nearly in halves, between herself and an
honest farmer, Master Woodhatch; who hired of her, also, what little
remained of grounds, for a farm.

Yet, this done, Mrs. Sarah Hamilton was by no means in a situation
to reside in the share left to her disposal: Mr. Crisp, therefore,
suggested that she should form a competent establishment for receiving
a certain number of boarders; and, to encourage the project, entered
his own name the first upon her list; and secured to his own use a
favourite apartment, with a light and pleasant closet at the end of a
long corridor. This closet, some years afterwards, he devoted to his
friend Burney, for whom, and for his pen, while he was writing the
History of Music, it was held sacred.

And here, in this long-loved rural abode, during the very few intervals
that Mr. Burney could snatch from the toils of his profession, and
the cares of his family, he had resorted in his widowhood, with his
delighted children, to enjoy the society of this most valued and
dearly-loved friend; whose open arms, open countenance, faithful
affection, and enchanting converse, greeted the group with such
expansive glee, that here, in this long-loved rural abode, the Burneys
and happiness seemed to make a stand.


INSTALLATION ODE.

The first attempt of Mr. Burney, after his recent marriage, to vary,
though not to quit his professional occupations, was seeking to set
to music the Ode written in the year 1769, by that most delicately
perfect, perhaps, of British poets, Gray, for the installation of the
Duke of Grafton as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.

The application to the Duke for this purpose met with no opposition
from his Grace; and the earnest wish of Mr. Burney was to learn, and to
gratify, the taste of the exquisite poet whose verses he was musically
to harmonize, with regard to the mode of composition that would best
accord with the poet’s own lyrical ideas.

To this effect, he addressed himself both for counsel and assistance
to his early friend, Mr. Mason; from whom he received a trusting and
obliging, but not very comfortable answer.[36]

Not a second did Mr. Burney lose in forwarding every preparation for
obviating any disgrace to his melodious muse, Terpsichore, when the
poetry of the enchanting bard should come in contact with her lyre. He
formed upon a large scale a well chosen band, vocal and instrumental,
for the performance; and he engaged, as leader of the orchestra, the
celebrated Giardini, who was the acknowledged first violinist of Europe.

But, in the midst of these preliminary measures, he was called upon, by
an agent of the Duke, to draw up an estimate of the expense.

This he did, and delivered, with the cheerfulest confidence that his
selection fully deserved its appointed retribution, and was elegantly
appropriate to the dignity of its purpose.

Such, however, was not the opinion of the advisers of the Duke; and Mr.
Burney had the astonished chagrin of a note to inform him, that the
estimate was so extravagant that it must be reduced to at least one
half.

Cruelly disappointed, and, indeed, offended, the charge of every
performer being merely what was customary for professors of eminence,
Mr. Burney was wholly overset. His own musical fame might be
endangered, if his composition should be sung and played by such a
band as would accept of terms so disadvantageous; and his sense of his
reputation, whether professional or moral, always took place of his
interest. He could not, therefore, hesitate to resist so humiliating
a proposition; and he wrote, almost on the instant, a cold, though
respectful resignation of the office of composer of the Installation
Ode.

Not without extreme vexation did he take this decided measure; and he
was the more annoyed, as it had been his intention to make use of so
favourable an opportunity for taking his degree of Doctor of Music,
at the University of Cambridge, for which purpose he had composed an
exercise. And, when his disturbance at so unlooked for an extinction of
his original project was abated, he still resolved to fulfil that part
of his design.

He could not, however, while under the infliction of so recent a
rebuff, visit, in this secondary manner, the spot he had thought
destined for his greatest professional elevation. He repaired,
therefore, to Oxford, where his academic exercise was performed with
singular applause, and where he took his degree as Doctor in Music, in
the year 1769.

And he then formed many connexions amongst the professors and the
learned belonging to that University, that led him to revisit it with
pleasure, from new views and pursuits, in after-times.

So warmly was this academic exercise approved, that it was called for
at three successive annual choral meetings at Oxford; at the second of
which the principal soprano part was sung by the celebrated and most
lovely Miss Linley, afterwards the St. Cecilia of Sir Joshua Reynolds,
and the wife of the famous Mr. Sheridan; and sung with a sweetness and
pathos of voice and expression that, joined to the beauty of her nearly
celestial face, almost maddened with admiring enthusiasm, not only the
susceptible young students, then in the first glow of the dominion of
the passions, but even the gravest and most profound among the learned
professors of the University, in whom the “hey-day of the blood” might
be presumed, long since, to have been cooled.

From this period, in which the composer and the songstress, in
reflecting new credit, raised new plaudits for each other, there arose
between them a reciprocation of goodwill and favour, that lasted
unbroken, till the retirement of that fairest of syrens from the world.

The Oxonian new lay-dignitary, recruited in health and spirits, from
the flattering personal consideration with which his academical degree
had been taken, gaily returned to town with his new title of Doctor.

The following little paragraph is copied from a memorandum book of that
year.

  “I did not, for some time after the honour that had been
  conferred on me at Oxford, display my title by altering the
  plate on my street door; for which omission I was attacked
  by Mr. Steel, author of an essay on the melody of speech.
  ‘Burney,’ says he, ‘why don’t you tip us the Doctor upon
  your door?’ I replied, in provincial dialect, ‘I wants
  dacity!—’ ‘I’m ashaeemed!’ ‘Pho, pho,’ says he, ‘you had
  better brazen it.’”


HALLEY’S COMET.

No production had as yet transpired publicly from the pen of Dr.
Burney, his new connexion having induced him to consign every interval
of leisure to domestic and social circles, whether in London, or at the
dowry-house of Mrs. Burney, in Lynn Regis, to which the joint families
resorted in the summer.

But when, from peculiar circumstances, Mrs. Burney, and a part of the
younger set, remained for a season in Norfolk, the spirit of literary
composition resumed its sway; though not in the dignified form in
which, afterwards, it fixed its standard.

The long-predicted comet of the immortal Halley, was to make its
luminously-calculated appearance this year, 1769; and the Doctor was
ardently concurrent with the watchers and awaiters of this prediction.

In the course of this new pursuit, and the researches to which it
led, Dr. Burney, no doubt, dwelt even unusually upon the image and
the recollection of his Esther; who, with an avidity for knowledge
consonant to his own, had found time—made it, rather—in the midst of
her conjugal, her maternal, and her domestic devoirs, to translate from
the French, the celebrated Letter of Astronomical renown of Maupertuis;
not with any prospect of fame; her husband himself was not yet entered
upon its annals, nor emerged, save anonymously, from his timid
obscurity: it was simply from a love of improvement, and a delight in
its acquirement. To view with him the stars, and exchange with him her
rising associations of ideas, bounded all the ambition of her exertions.

The recurrence to this manuscript translation, at a moment when
astronomy was the nearly universal subject of discourse, was not likely
to turn the Doctor aside from this aerial direction of his thoughts;
and the little relic, of which even the hand-writing could not but
be affecting as well as dear to him, was now read and re-read, till
he considered it as too valuable to be lost; and determined, after
revising and copying it, to send it to the press.

Whether any tender notion of first, though unsuspectedly, appearing
before the public by the side of his Esther, stimulated the production
of the Essay that ensued from the revision of this letter; or whether
the stimulus of the subject itself led to the publication of the
letter, is uncertain; but that they hung upon each other is not without
interest, as they unlocked, in concert, the gates through which Doctor
Burney first passed to that literary career which, ere long, greeted
his more courageous entrance into a publicity that conducted him
to celebrity; for it was now that his first prose composition, an
Abridged History of Comets, was written; and was printed in a pamphlet
that included his Esther’s translation of the Letter of Maupertuis.

This opening enterprize cannot but seem extraordinary, the profession,
education, and indispensable business of the Doctor considered; and may
bear upon its face a character contradictory to what has been said of
his prudent resolve, to avoid any attempt that might warp, or wean him
from his own settled occupation; till it is made known that this essay
was neither then, nor ever after avowed; nor ever printed with his
works.

It was the offspring of the moment, springing from the subject of the
day; and owing its birth, there scarcely can be a doubt, to a fond,
though unacknowledged indulgence of tender recollections.

The title of the little treatise is, “An Essay towards a History of
Comets, previous to the re-appearance of the Comet whose return had
been predicted by Edmund Halley.”

In a memorandum upon this subject, by Dr. Burney, are these words:

  “The Countess of Pembroke, being reported to have studied
  astronomy, and to have accustomed herself to telescopical
  observations, I dedicated, anonymously, this essay to her
  ladyship, who was much celebrated for her love of the arts
  and sciences, and many other accomplishments. I had not the
  honour of being known to her; and I am not certain whether
  she ever heard by whom the pamphlet was written.[37]”

This Essay once composed and printed, the Doctor consigned it to its
fate, and thought of it no more.

And the public, after the re-invisibility of the meteor, and the
declension of the topic, followed the same course.

But not equally passive either with the humility of the author, or with
the indifferency of the readers, were the consequences of this little
work; which, having been written wholly in moments stolen from repose,
though requiring researches and studies that frequently kept him to his
pen till four o’clock in the morning, without exempting him from rising
at his common hour of seven; terminated in an acute rheumatic fever,
that confined him to his bed, or his chamber, during twenty days.

This sharp infliction, however, though it ill recompensed his
ethereal flights, by no means checked his literary ambition; and the
ardour which was cooled for gazing at the stars, soon seemed doubly
re-animated for the music of the spheres.

A wish, and a design, energetic, though vague, of composing some
considerable work on his own art, had long roved in his thoughts, and
flattered his fancy: and he now began seriously to concentrate his
meditations, and arrange his schemes to that single point. And the
result of these cogitations, when no longer left wild to desultory
wanderings, produced his enlightened and scientific plan for a


GENERAL HISTORY OF MUSIC.

This project was no sooner fixed than, transiently, it appeared to
him to be executed; so quick was the rush upon his imagination of
illuminating and varying ideas; and so vast, so prolific, the material
which his immense collection of notes, abridgments, and remarks,
had amassed, that it seemed as if he had merely to methodize his
manuscripts, and entrust them to a copyist, for completing his purpose.

But how wide from the rapidity of such incipient perceptions were the
views by which, progressively, they were superseded! Mightier and
mightier appeared the enterprize upon every new investigation; more
difficult, more laborious, and more precarious in all its results:
yet, also, as is usual where Genius is coupled with Application, more
inviting, more inciting, and more alluring to the hope of literary
glory. ’Tis only where the springs of Genius are clogged by “the heavy
and retarding weight” of Indolence; or where they are relaxed by the
nervous and trembling irresolutions of timidity, that difficulties and
dangers produce desertion.

Far, however, from the desired goal, as was the measured distance of
reality compared with the visionary approaches of imagination, he had
nothing to lament from time thrown away by previous labours lost: his
long, multifarious, and curious, though hitherto unpointed studies,
all, ultimately, turned to account; for he found that his chosen
subject involved, circuitously, almost every other.

Thus finally fixed to an enterprize which, in this country, at least,
was then new, he gave to it all the undivided energies of his mind;
and, urged by the spur of ambition, and glowing with the vivacity of
hope, he determined to complete his materials before he consigned them
to their ultimate appropriations, by making a scientific musical tour
through France and Italy.

A letter,[38] of which a copy in his own hand-writing remains,
containing the opening view of his plan and of his tour, addressed to
the Reverend William Mason, will shew how fully he was prepared for
what he engaged to perform, before he called for a subscription to aid
the publication of so expensive a work.

Through various of his friends amongst persons in power, he procured
recommendatory letters to the several ambassadors and ministers from
our Court, who were stationed in the countries through which he meant
to travel.

And, through the yet more useful services of persons of influence in
letters and in the arts, he obtained introductions, the most felicitous
for his enterprize, to those who, then, stood highest in learning, in
the sciences, and in literature.

None in this latter class so eminently advanced his undertaking as Mr.
Garrick; whose solicitations in his favour were written with a warmth
of friendship, and an animation of genius, that carried all before
them.


Here stops, for this period, the pen of the memorialist.

From the month of June, 1770, to that of January, 1771, the life of
Doctor Burney is narrated by himself, in his “Tour to France and Italy.”

And few who have read, or who may read that Tour, but will regret that
the same pen, while in its full fair vigour, had not drawn up what
preceded, and what will follow this epoch.

Such, however, not being the case, the memorialist must resume her pen
where that of Dr. Burney, in his narrative, drops,—namely, upon his
regaining the British shore.


QUEEN’S SQUARE.

With all the soaring feelings of the first sun-beams of hope that
irradiate from a bright, though distant glimpse of renown; untamed by
difficulties, superior to fatigue, and springing over the hydra-headed
monsters of impediment that every where jutted forth their thwarting
obstacles to his enterprize, Dr. Burney came back to his country, his
friends, his business, and his pursuits, with the vigour of the first
youth in spirits, expectations, and activity.

He was received by his longing family, enlivened by the presence of
Mr. Crisp, in a new house, purchased in his absence by Mrs. Burney, at
the upper end of Queen-Square; which was then beautifully open to a
picturesque view of Hampstead and Highgate. And no small recommendation
to an enthusiastic admirer of the British classics, was a circumstance
belonging to this property, of its having been the dwelling of Alderman
Barber, a friend of Dean Swift; who might himself, therefore, be
presumed to have occasionally made its roof resound with the convivial
hilarity, which his strong wit, and stronger humour, excited in every
hearer; and which he himself, however soberly holding back, enjoyed,
probably, in secret, with still more zest than he inspired.


CHESINGTON.

This new possession, however, Dr. Burney could as yet scarcely even
view, from his eagerness to bring out the journal of his tour. No
sooner, therefore, had he made arrangements for a prolongation of
leisure, that he hastened to Chesington and to Mr. Crisp; where
he exchanged his toils and labours for the highest delights of
friendship; and a seclusion the most absolute, from the noisy
vicissitudes, and unceasing, though often unmeaning persecution, of
trivial interruptions.


THE MUSICAL TOURS.

Here he prepared his French and Italian musical tours for the press;
omitting all that was miscellaneous of observation or of anecdote, in
deference to the opinions of the Earl of Holdernesse, Mr. Mason, and
Mr. Garrick; who conjointly believed that books of general travels were
already so numerous, and so spread, that their merits were over-looked
from their multiplicity.

If such, at that distant period, was the numerical condemnation of
this species of writing, which circumscribed the first published tour
of Dr. Burney to its own professional subject, what would be now the
doom of the endless herd of tourists of all ranks, qualifications, or
deficiencies, who, in these later times, have sent forth their divers
effusions, without sparing an idea, a recollection, or scarcely a
dream, to work their way in the world, through that general master of
the ceremonies, the press? whose portals, though guarded by two _vis à
vis_ sentinels in eternal hostility with each other, Fame and Disgrace,
open equally to publicity.

Mr. Crisp, nevertheless, saw in a totally different light the
miscellaneous part of the French and Italian tours, and reprehended
its rejection with the high and spirited energy that always marked his
zeal, whether of censure or approbation, for whatever affected the
welfare of his favourites. But Dr. Burney, having first consulted these
celebrated critics, who lived in the immediate world, was too timid to
resist their representations of the taste of the moment; though in all
that belonged not to the modesty of apprehended partiality, he had the
firmest persuasion that the judgment of Mr. Crisp was unrivalled.

The work was entitled:

  THE PRESENT STATE OF MUSIC
  IN FRANCE AND ITALY:
  OR THE JOURNAL OF A TOUR THROUGH THOSE COUNTRIES,
  UNDERTAKEN TO COLLECT MATERIALS FOR A
  GENERAL HISTORY OF MUSIC,
  BY CHARLES BURNEY, MUS. D.

  Il Canterono allor si dolcemonte
  Che la dolcerra ancor destra mi suona.

  DANTE.

The motto was thus translated, though not printed, by Dr. Burney.

    “They sung their strains in notes so sweet and clear
     The sound still vibrates on my ravished ear.”

The reception of this first acknowledged call for public attention from
Dr. Burney, was of the most encouraging description; for though no
renown had yet been fastened upon his name, his acquirements and his
character, wherever he had been known, had excited a general goodwill
that prepared the way to kindly approbation for this, and indeed for
every work that issued from his pen.

There was, in truth, something so spirited and uncommon, yet of so
antique a cast, in the travels, or pilgrimage, that he had undertaken,
in search of materials for the history of his art, that curiosity was
awakened to the subject, and expectation was earnest for its execution:
and it was no sooner published, than orders were received, by most
of the great booksellers of the day, for its purchase; and no sooner
read, than letters the most flattering, from the deepest theorists of
the science, and the best judges of the practice of the art of music,
reached the favoured author; who was of too modest a character to have
been robbed of the pleasure of praise by presumptuous anticipation;
and of too natural a one to lose any of its gratification by an
apathetic suppression of its welcome. And the effect, impulsive and
unsophisticated, of his success, was so ardent an encouragement to his
purpose, that while, mentally, it animated his faculties to a yet more
forcible pursuit of their decided object, it darted him, corporeally,
into a travelling vehicle, which rapidly wheeled him back again to
Dover; where, with new spirit and eagerness, he set sail upon a similar
musical tour in the Low Countries and in Germany, to that which he had
so lately accomplished in France and Italy.

With respect to the French and Italian tour, the restraint from all but
its professional business, was much lamented by the friends to whom the
sacrifice of the miscellaneous matter was communicated.

Upon the German tour not a comment will be offered; it is before the
public with an approvance that has been stamped by the sanction of
time. At the period of its publication, Dr. Burney, somewhat assured,
though incapable of being rendered arrogant by favour, ventured to
listen only to the voice of his first friend and monitor, who exhorted
him to mingle personal anecdotes with his musical information.

The consequence was such as his sage adviser prognosticated; for both
the applause and the sale of this second and more diffuse social diary,
greatly surpassed those of its more technical predecessor.

Nevertheless, the German tour, though thus successful for narration to
the public, terminated for himself in sickness, fatigue, exorbitant
expense, and poignant bodily suffering.

While yet far away from his country, and equally distant from
accomplishing the purpose of his travels, his solicitude not to leave
it incomplete, joined to his anxiety not to break his professional
engagements, led him to over-work and over-hurry his mental powers, at
the same time that he inflicted a similar harass upon his corporeal
strength. And while thus doubly overwhelmed, he was assaulted, during
his precipitated return, by the rudest fierceness of wintry elemental
strife; through which, with bad accommodations, and innumerable
accidents, he became a prey to the merciless pangs of the acutest
spasmodic rheumatism; which barely suffered him to reach his home, ere,
long and piteously, it confined him, a tortured prisoner, to his bed.

Such was the check that almost instantly curbed, though it could not
subdue, the rising pleasure of his hopes of entering upon a new
species of existence, that of an approved man of letters; for it was on
the bed of sickness, exchanging the light wines of France, Italy, and
Germany, for the black and loathsome potions of the Apothecaries’ Hall;
writhed by darting stitches, and burning with fiery fever; that he felt
the full force of that sublunary equipoise, that seems evermore to hang
suspended over the attainment of long-sought and uncommon felicity,
just as it is ripening to burst forth into enjoyment!

Again he retired to Chesington, to his care-healing, heart-expanding,
and head-informing Mr. Crisp: and there, under the auspices of all that
could sooth or animate him; and nursed with incessant assiduity by his
fondly-attached wife and daughters, he repaired his shattered frame; to
fit it, once again, for the exercise of those talents and faculties,
which illumine, in their expansive effects, the whole race of mankind;
long after the apparent beings whence they have issued, seem faded,
dissolved away; leaving not, visibly, a track behind.

In Dr. Burney, disease was no sooner conquered, than the vigour of
his character brought back to him pleasure and activity, through the
spirited wisdom with which he dismissed Regret for Anticipation.

There are few things in which his perfect good-humour was more
playfully demonstrated, than by the looks, arch yet reproachful, and
piteous though burlesque, with which he was wont to recount a most
provoking and painful little incident that occurred to him in his
last voyage home; but of which he was well aware that the relation
must excite irresistible risibility in even the most friendly of his
auditors.

After travelling by day and by night to expedite his return, over
mountains, through marshes, by cross-roads; on horseback, on mules, in
carriages of any and every sort that could but hurry him on, he reached
Calais in a December so dreadfully stormy, that not a vessel of any
kind could set sail for England. Repeatedly he secured his hammock,
and went on board to take possession of it; but as repeatedly was
driven back by fresh gales, during the space of nine fatiguing days and
tempestuous nights. And when, at last, the passage was effected, so
nearly annihilating had been his sufferings from sea-sickness, that it
was vainly he was told he might now, at his pleasure, arise, go forth,
and touch English ground; he had neither strength nor courage to move,
and earnestly desired to be left awhile to himself.

Exhaustion, then, with tranquillity of mind, cast him into a sound
sleep.

From this repose, when, much refreshed, he awoke, he called to the man
who was in waiting, to help him up, that he might get out of the ship.

“Get out of the ship, sir?” repeated the man. “Good lauk! you’ll be
drowned!”

“Drowned?—What’s to drown me? I want to go ashore.”

“Ashore, sir?” again repeated the man; “why you’re in the middle of the
sea! There ar’nt a bit of ground for your toe nail.”

“What do you mean?” cried the Doctor, starting up; “the sea? did you
not tell me we were safe in at Dover?”

“O lauk! that’s two good hours ago, sir! I could not get you up then,
say what I would. You fell downright asleep, like a top. And so I told
them. But that’s all one. You may go, or you may stay, as you like; but
them pilots never stops for nobody.”

Filled with alarm, the Doctor now rushed up to the deck, where he had
the dismay to discover that he was half-way back to France.

And he was forced to land again at Calais; where again, with the next
mail, and a repetition of his sea-sickness, he re-embarked for Dover.

       *       *       *       *       *

On quitting Chesington, upon his recovery, for re-entering his house
in Queen-Square, the Doctor compelled himself to abstain from his pen,
his papers, his new acquisitions in musical lore, and all that demanded
study for the subject that nearly engrossed his thoughts, in order to
consecrate the whole of his time to his family and his affairs.

He renewed, therefore, his wonted diurnal course, as if he had never
diverged from it; and attended his young pupils as if he had neither
ability nor taste for any superior occupation: and he neither rested
his body, nor liberated his ideas, till he had re-instated himself in
the professional mode of life, upon which his substantial prosperity,
and that of his house, depended.

But, this accomplished, his innate propensities sprang again into
play, urging him to snatch at every instant he could purloin, without
essential mischief from these sage regulations; with a redundance of
vivacity for new movement, new action, and elastic procedure, scarcely
conceivable to those who, balancing their projects, their wishes, and
their intentions, by the opposing weights of time, of hazard, and
of trouble, undertake only what is obviously to their advantage, or
indisputably their duty. His Fancy was his dictator; his Spirit was his
spur; and whatever the first started, the second pursued to the goal.


ENGLISH CONSERVATORIO.

But neither the pain of his illness, nor the pleasure of his recovery,
nor even the loved labours of his History, offered sufficient
occupation for the insatiate activity of his mind. No sooner did he
breathe again the breath of health, resume his daily business, and
return to his nocturnal studies, than a project occurred to him of a
new undertaking, which would have seemed to demand the whole time and
undivided attention of almost any other man.

This was nothing less than to establish in England a seminary for the
education of musical pupils of both sexes, upon a plan of which the
idea should be borrowed, though the execution should almost wholly be
new-modelled, from the Conservatorios of Naples and Vienna.

As disappointment blighted this scheme just as it seemed maturing to
fruition, it would be to little purpose to enter minutely into its
details: and yet, as it is a striking feature of the fervour of Dr.
Burney for the advancement of his art, it is not its failure, through
the secret workings of undermining prejudice, that ought to induce his
biographer to omit recounting so interesting an intention and attempt:
and the less, as a plan, in many respects similar, has recently been
put into execution, without any reference to the original projector.

The motives that suggested this undertaking to Dr. Burney, with the
reasons by which they were influenced and supported, were to this
effect.

In England, where more splendid rewards await the favourite votaries
of musical excellence than in any other spot on the globe, there was
no establishment of any sort for forming such artists as might satisfy
the real connoisseur in music; and save English talent from the
mortification, and the British purse from the depredations, of seeking
a constant annual supply of genius and merit from foreign shores.

An institution, therefore, of this character seemed wanting to
the state, for national economy; and to the people, for national
encouragement.

Such was the enlarged view which Dr. Burney, while yet in Italy, had
taken of such a plan for his own country.

The difficulty of collecting proper subjects to form its members,
caused great diversity of opinion and of proposition amongst the
advisers with whom Dr. Burney consulted.

It was peculiarly necessary, that these young disciples should be free
from every sort of contamination, mental or corporeal, upon entering
this musical asylum, that they might spread no dangerous contagion of
either sort; but be brought up to the practice of the art, with all its
delightful powers of pleasing, chastened from their abuse.

With such a perspective, to take promiscuously the children of the
poor, merely where they had an ear for music, or a voice for song,
would be running the risk of gathering together a mixed little
multitude, which, from intermingling inherent vulgarity, hereditary
diseases, or vicious propensities, with the finer qualities requisite
for admission, might render the cultivation of their youthful talents,
a danger—if not a curse—to the country.

Yet, the length of time that might be required for selecting little
subjects, of this unadulterate description, from different quarters;
with the next to impossibility of tracing, with any certainty, what
might have been their real conduct in times past; or what might be
their principles to give any basis of security for the time to come;
caused a perplexity of the most serious species: for should a single
one of the tribe go astray, the popular cry against teaching the arts
to the poor, would stamp the whole little community with a stain
indelible; and the institution itself might be branded with infamy.

What, abstractedly, was desirable, was to try this experiment upon
youthful beings to whom the world was utterly unknown; and who not only
in innocence had breathed their infantine lives, but in complete and
unsuspicious ignorance of evil.

Requisites so hard to obtain, and a dilemma so intricate to unravel,
led the Doctor to think of the Foundling Hospital; in the neighbourhood
of which, in Queen-Square, stood his present dwelling.

He communicated, therefore, his project, to Sir Charles Whitworth, the
governor of the hospital.

Sir Charles thought it proper, feasible, desirable, and patriotic.

The Doctor, thus seconded, drew up a plan for forming a Musical
Conservatorio in the metropolis of England, and in the bosom of the
Foundling Hospital.

The intention was to collect from the whole little corps all who had
musical ears, or tuneful voices, to be brought up scientifically, as
instrumental or vocal performers.

Those of the group who gave no decided promise of such qualifications,
were to go on with their ordinary education, and to abide by its
ordinary result, according to the original regulations of the charity.

A meeting of the governors and directors was convened by their chief,
Sir Charles Whitworth, for announcing this scheme.

The plan was heard with general approbation; but the discussions to
which it gave rise were discursive and perplexing.

It was objected, that music was an art of luxury, by no means requisite
to life, or accessary to morality.

These children were all meant to be educated as plain, but essential
members of the general community. They were to be trained up to useful
purposes, with a singleness that would ward off all ambition for what
was higher; and teach them to repay the benefit of their support by
cheerful labour. To stimulate them to superior views might mar the
religious object of the charity; which was to nullify rather than
extinguish, all disposition to pride, vice, or voluptuousness; such
as, probably, had demoralized their culpable parents, and thrown these
deserted outcasts upon the mercy of the Foundling Hospital.

This representation, the Doctor acknowledged, would be unanswerable,
if it were decided to be right, and if it were judged to be possible,
wholly to extirpate the art of music in the British empire: or, if the
Foundling Hospital were to be considered as a seminary; predestined
to menial servitude; and as the only institution of the country where
the members were to form a caste, from whose rules and plodden ways no
genius could ever emerge.

But such a fiat could never be issued by John Bull; nor so flat a stamp
be struck upon any portion of his countrymen. John Bull was at once
too liberal and too proud, to seek to adopt the tame ordinances of the
immutable Hindoos; with whom ages pass unmarked; generations unchanged;
the poor never richer; the simple never wiser; and with whom, family
by family, and trade by trade, begin, continue, and terminate, their
monotonous existence, by the same pre-determined course, and to the
same invariable destiny.

These children, the Doctor answered, are all orphans; they are
taken from no family, for by none are they owned; they are drawn
from no calling, for to none are they specifically bred. They are
all brought up to menial offices, though they are all instructed in
reading and writing, and the females in needle-work; but they are
all, systematically and indiscriminately, destined to be servants
or apprentices, at the age of fifteen; from which period, all their
hold upon the benevolent institution to which they are indebted for
their infantine rescue from perishing cold and starving want, with
their subsequent maintenance and tuition, is rotatorily transferred
to new-born claimants; for the Hospital, then, has fulfilled its
engagements; and the children must go forth to the world, whether to
their benefit or their disgrace.

Were it not better, then, when there are subjects who are
success-inviting, to bestow upon them professional improvement,
with virtuous education? since, as long as operas, concerts, and
theatres, are licensed by government, musical performers, vocal and
instrumental, will inevitably be wanted, employed, and remunerated. And
every state is surely best served, and the people of every country are
surely the most encouraged, when the nation suffices for itself, and no
foreign aid is necessarily called in, to share either the fame or the
emoluments of public performances.

Stop, then; prohibit, proscribe—if it be possible,—all taste for
foreign refinements, and for the exquisite finishing of foreign melody
and harmony; or establish a school on our own soil, in which, as in
Painting and in Sculpture, the foreign perfection of arts may be
taught, transplanted, and culled, till they become indigenous.

And where, if not here, may subjects be found on whom such a national
trial may be made with the least danger of injury? subjects who have
been brought up with a strictness of regular habits that has warded
them from all previous mischief; yet who are too helpless and ignorant,
as well as poor, to be able to develop whether or not Nature, in her
secret workings, has kindled within their unconscious bosoms, a spark,
a single spark of harmonic fire, that might light them, from being
hewers of wood, and brushers of spiders, to those regions of vocal and
instrumental excellence, that might propitiate the project of drawing
from our own culture a school for music, of which the students, under
proper moral and religious tutelage, might, in time, supersede the
foreign auxiliaries by whom they are now utterly extinguished.

The objectors were charged, also, to weigh well that there was no law,
or regulation, and no means whatsoever, that could prevent any of this
little association from becoming singers and players, if they had
musical powers, and such should be their wish: though, if self-thrown
into that walk, singers and players only at the lowest theatres, or at
the tea and cake public-gardens; or even in the streets, as fiddlers
of country dances, or as ballad squallers: in which degraded exercise
of their untaught endowments, not only decent life must necessarily be
abandoned, but immorality, licentiousness, and riot, must assimilate
with, or, rather, form a prominent part of their exhibitions and
performances.

Here the discussion closed. The opponents were silenced, if not
convinced, and the trial of the project was decreed.

The hardly-fought battle over, victory, waving her gay banners, that
wafted to the Doctor hopes of future renown with present benediction,
determined him, for the moment, to relinquish even his history, that he
might devote every voluntary thought to consolidating this scheme.

The primary object of his consideration, because the most
conscientious, was the preservation of the morals, and fair conduct of
the pupils. And here, the exemplary character, and the purity of the
principles of Dr. Burney, would have shone forth to national advantage,
had the expected prosperity of his design brought his meditated
regulations into practice.

Vain would it be to attempt, and useless, if not vain, to describe his
indignant consternation, when, while in the full occupation of these
arrangements, a letter arrived to him from Sir Charles Whitworth,
to make known, with great regret, that the undertaking was suddenly
overthrown. The enemies to the attempt, who had seemed quashed,
had merely lurked in ambush, to watch for an unsuspected moment to
convene a partial committee; in which they voted out the scheme, as an
innovation upon the original purpose of the institution; and pleading,
also, an old act of parliament against its adoption, they solemnly
proscribed it for ever.

Yet a repeal of that act had been fully intended before the plan,
which, hitherto, had only been agitating and negotiating, should have
been put into execution.

All of choice, however, and all of respect, that remained for Dr.
Burney, consisted in a personal offer from Sir Charles Whitworth, to
re-assemble an opposing meeting amongst those friends who, previously,
had carried the day.

But happy as the Doctor would have been to have gained, with the
honour of general approbation, a point he had elaborately studied to
clear from mystifying objections, and to render desirable, even to
patriotism; his pride was justly hurt by so abrupt a defalcation; and
he would neither with open hostility, nor under any versatile contest,
become the founder, or chief, of so important an enterprize.

He gave up, therefore, the attempt, without further struggle; simply
recommending to the mature reflections of the members of the last
committee, whether it were not more pious, as well as more rational, to
endeavour to ameliorate the character and lives of practical musical
noviciates, than to behold the nation, in its highest classes, cherish
the art, follow it, embellish it with riches, and make it fashion and
pleasure—while, to train to that art, with whatever precautions, its
appropriate votaries from the bosom of our own country, seemed to call
for opposition, and to deserve condemnation.

Thus died, in its birth, this interesting project, which, but for
this brief sketch, might never have been known to have brightened the
mind, as one of the projects, or to have mortified it, as one of the
failures, of the active and useful life of Dr. Burney.


HISTORY OF MUSIC.

With a spirit greatly hurt through a lively sense of injustice, and
a laudable ambition surreptitiously suppressed by misconception and
prejudice, all that was left for Dr. Burney in this ungracious business
was to lament loss of time, and waste of meditation.

Yet, the matter being without redress, save by struggles which he
thought beneath the fair design of the enterprise, he combatted
the intrusion of availless discontent, by calling to his aid his
well-experienced antidote to inertness and discouragement, a quickened
application to changed, or renewed pursuits.

Again, therefore, he returned to his History of Music; and now,
indeed, he went to work with all his might. The capacious table of his
small but commodious study, exhibited, in what he called his chaos,
the countless increasing stores of his materials. Multitudinous, or,
rather, innumerous blank books, were severally adapted to concentrating
some peculiar portion of the work. Theory, practice; music of the
ancients; music in parts; national music; lyric, church, theatrical,
warlike music; universal biography of composers and performers, of
patrons and of professors; and histories of musical institutions, had
all their destined blank volumes.

And he opened a widely circulating correspondence, foreign and
domestic, with various musical authors, composers, and students,
whether professors or dilettante.

And for all this mass of occupation, he neglected no business, he
omitted no devoir. The system by which he obtained time that no one
missed, yet that gave to him lengthened life, independent of longevity
from years, was through the skill with which, indefatigably, he
profited from every fragment of leisure.

Every sick or failing pupil bestowed an hour upon his pen. Every
holiday for others, was a day of double labour to his composition. Even
illness took activity only from his body, for his mind refused all
relaxation. He had constantly, when indisposed, one of his daughters by
his side, as an amanuensis; and such was the vigour of his intellect,
that even when keeping his bed from acute rheumatism, spasmodic pains,
or lurking fever, he caught at every little interval of ease to
dictate some illustrative reminiscence; to start some new ideas, or to
generalize some old ones; which never failed to while away, partially
at least, the pangs of disease, by lessening their greatest torment to
a character of such energy, irreparable loss of time.

The plan, with proposals for printing the History by subscription, was
no sooner published, than the most honourable lists of orders were sent
to his booksellers, from various elegant classic scholars, and from all
general patrons or lovers of new enterprises and new works.

But that which deserves most remark, is a letter from two eminent
merchants of the city, Messieurs Chandler and Davis, to acquaint
the Doctor that a gentleman, who wished to remain concealed, had
authorised them to desire, that Dr. Burney would not suffer any failure
in the subscription, should any occur, to induce him to drop the work;
as this gentleman solemnly undertook to be himself responsible for
every set within the five hundred of the Doctor’s stipulation, that
should remain unsubscribed for on the ensuing Christmas. And Messrs.
Davis and Chandler were invested with full powers, to give any security
that might be demanded for the fulfilment of this engagement.

Dr. Burney wrote his most grateful thanks to this munificent protector
of his project; but declined all sort of tie upon the event. And
the subscription filled so voluntarily, that this generous unknown
was never called forth. Nor did he ever present himself; nor was he
ever discovered. But the incident helped to keep warmly alive the
predilection which the Doctor had early imbibed, in favour of the noble
spirit of liberality of the city and the citizens of his native land,
for whatever seems to have any claim to public character.


MR. HUTTON.

Another letter from another stranger, equally animated by a sincere
interest in the undertaking, though producing, for the moment, a
sensation as warm of resentment, as that just mentioned had excited of
gratitude, was next received by the Doctor.

It was written with the most profuse praise of the Musical Tours; but
with a view to admonish the Tourist to revise the account drawn up
of the expenses, the bad roads, the bad living, the bad carriages,
and other various faults and deficiencies upon which the travels in
Germany had expatiated: all which this new correspondent was convinced
were related from misinformation, or misconception; as he had himself
visited the same spots without witnessing any such imperfections. He
conjured the Doctor, therefore, to set right these statements in his
next edition; which single amendment would render the journal of his
Tour in Germany the most delightful now in print: and, with wishes
sincerely fervent for all honour and all success to the business, he
signed himself, Dr. Burney’s true admirer,

  JOHN HUTTON,

  _Of Lindsey House, Chelsea_.

Dr. Burney, who felt that his veracity had that unsullied honour that,
like the virtue of the wife of Cæsar, must not be suspected, read
this letter with the amazement, and answered it with the indignation,
of offended integrity. He could not, he said, be the dupe of
misrepresentation, for he had related only what he had experienced.
His narrative was all personal, all individual; and he had documents,
through letters, bills, and witnesses in fellow-travellers, and in
friends or inhabitants of the several places described, that could
easily be produced to verify his assertions: all which he was most able
and willing to call forth; not so much, perhaps, for the satisfaction
of Mr. Hutton, who so hastily had misjudged him, as for his own; in
certifying, upon proof, how little he had deserved the mistrust of his
readers, as being capable of giving hearsay intelligence to the public.

Mr. Hutton instantly, and in a tone of mingled alarm and penitence,
wrote a humble, yet energetic apology for his letter; earnestly
entreating the Doctor’s pardon for his officious precipitancy; and
appealing to Dr. Hawkesworth, whom he called his excellent friend, to
intercede in his favour. He took shame, he added, to himself, for not
having weighed the subject more chronologically before he wrote his
strictures; as he had now made out that his hasty animadversion was
the unreflecting result of the different periods in which the Doctor
and himself had travelled; his own German visit having taken place
previously to the devastating war between the King of Prussia and the
Empress Queen, which had since laid waste the whole country in which,
unhappily, it had been waged.

Dr. Burney accepted with pleasure this conceding explanation. The good
offices of Dr. Hawkesworth were prompt to accelerate a reconciliation
and an interview; and Mr. Hutton, with even tears of eager feelings
to repair an unjust accusation, hastened to Queen-Square. Dr. Burney,
touched by his ingenuous contrition, received him with open arms. And,
from that moment, he became one of the Doctor’s most reverential and
most ardent admirers.

He made frequent visits to the house; conceived the most friendly
regard for the whole family; and abruptly, and with great singularity,
addressed a letter, that was as original in ideas as in diction, to
one of the daughters,[39] with whom he demanded permission of the
Doctor to correspond. And in a postscript, that was nearly as long
as the epistle, to obviate, probably, any ambiguous notions from his
zeal—though he was already a grey and wrinkled old man—he acquainted
his new young correspondent that he had been married four-and-thirty
years.

Mr. Hutton was one of the sect of the Moravians, or Hurnhuters, and
resided at Lindsey House, Chelsea, as secretary to the united brethren.
He was author, also, of an Essay towards giving some just ideas of the
character of Count Zinzendorf, the inventor and founder of the sect.

Mr. Hutton was a person of pleasing though eccentric manners. His
notions were uncommon; his language was impressive, though quaint:
his imagination, notwithstanding his age, was playful, nay, poetical.
He considered all mankind as his brethren, and himself, therefore, as
every one’s equal; alike in his readiness to serve them, and in the
frankness with which he demanded their services in return.

His desire to make acquaintance, and to converse with every body to
whom any species of celebrity was attached, was insatiable, and was
dauntless. He approached them without fear, and accosted them without
introduction. But the genuine kindness of his smile made way for him
wherever there was heart and observation; and with such his encounter,
however uncouth, brought on, almost invariably, a friendly intercourse.

Yet where, on the contrary, he met not with those delicate developers
and interpreters, heart and observation, to instil into those he
addressed a persuasion of the benevolence of his intentions in seeking
fair and free fraternity with all his fellow-creatures, he suffered not
his failures to dishearten him; for as he never meant, he never took
offence. And even when turned away from with rudeness or alarm, as a
man conceived to be intrusive, impertinent, or suspicious, he would
neither be angry nor affronted; but, sorrowfully shaking his head,
would hope that some happy accident would inspire them with softer
feelings, ere some bitter misfortune should retaliate their unkindness.

The immediate, it might, perhaps, be said, the instinctive cause of
any rebuff that he met with in public, namely, his extraordinary
appearance, and apparel, never seemed to occur to him; for as he
looked not at the finest garb of the wealthy or modish with the
smallest respect, he surmised not that the shabbiness of his own could
influence his reception. By him, the tailor and the mantua-maker were
regarded merely as manufacturers of decency, not of embellishment; and
he had full as much esteem for his own clumsy cobbler or second-hand
patching tailor, as the finest beau or belle of Almack’s could have for
their Parisian attirers.

Nevertheless, so coarse was the large, brown, slouching surtout, which
infolded his body; so rough and blowsy was the old mop-like wig that
wrapt up his head; that, but for the perfectly serene mildness of his
features, and the venerability of his hoary eye-brows, he might at all
times have passed for some constable, watchman, or policeman, who had
mistaken the day for the night, and was prowling into the mansions of
gentlemen, instead of public-houses, to take a survey that all was in
order.

That a man such as this, with every mark of a nature the most
unstained, and of a character the most unsophisticated, could belong
to a sect, which, by all popular report at least, was stampt, at that
time, as dark and mystic; and as being wild and strange in some of its
doctrines even to absurdity; must make every one who had witnessed
the virtuous tenor of the life of Mr. Hutton, and shared in the
inoffensive gaiety of his discourse, believe the sect to have been
basely calumniated; for not a word was ever uttered by this singular
being that breathed not good will to all mankind; and not an action
is recorded, or known of him, that is irresponsive of such universal
benevolence.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dr. Burney, now, without a single black-ball, was elected a fellow
of the Royal Society; of which honour his first notice was received
through the amiable and zealous Miss Phipps,[40] who, knowing the
day of election, had impatiently gathered the tidings of its success
from her brother, Sir Constantine Phipps:[41] and before either the
president, or the friend who had nominated the Doctor for a candidate,
could forward the news, she sportively anticipated their intelligence,
by sending to Queen-Square a letter directed in large characters, “For
Dr. Burney, F. R. S.”[42]


HISTORY OF MUSIC.

From this period, the profession of Dr. Burney, however highly he
was raised in it, seemed but of secondary consideration for him in
the world; where, now, the higher rank was assigned him of a man of
letters, from the general admiration accorded to his Tours; of which
the climax of honour was the award of Dr. Johnson, that Dr. Burney was
one of the most agreeable writers of travels of the age. And Baretti,
to whom Dr. Johnson uttered this praise, was commissioned to carry it
to Dr. Burney; who heard it with the highest gratification: though,
since his bereavement of his Esther, he had ceased to follow up the
intercourse he had so enthusiastically begun. Participation there had
been so animated, that the charm of the connexion seemed, for awhile,
dissolved by its loss.

Letters now daily arrived from persons of celebrity, with praises of
the Tours, encouragement for the History, or musical information for
its advantage. Mr. Mason, Mr. Harris of Salisbury, Dr. Warton, Dr.
Thomas Warton, Dr. Harrington, Mr. Pennant, Montagu North, Mr. Bewley,
Mr. Crisp, and Mr. Garrick, all bestowed what Dr. Burney sportively
called sweet-scented bouquets on his journals.

But amongst the many distinguished personages who volunteered their
services in honour of the History of Music, the Doctor peculiarly
valued the name of Wellesley, Earl of Mornington, father of the
preserver, not alone of England, and of France, but of Europe, at the
awful crisis of general—almost chaotic—danger.

This nobleman, the Earl of Mornington, with the most liberal love of
the arts, and most generous admiration of their high professors, upon
being addressed by his friend, Mr. Rigby, in favour of Dr. Burney’s
pursuit, came forth, with a zeal the most obliging, to aid the Doctor’s
researches concerning the antiquity of music in Ireland; and the origin
of the right of the Irish for bearing the harp in their arms.

Some of his lordship’s letters will be found in the correspondence,
replete with information and agreeability.

The Doctor held, also, a continental correspondence, enlightening and
flattering, with the Baron d’Holbach, Diderot, the Abbé Morellet, M.
Suard, M. Monnet, and Jean Jacques Rousseau himself.

Of this last-named, and certainly most rare of his epistolary
contemporaries, Jean Jacques Rousseau, the following note is copied from
the Doctor’s memorandums.

  “Five years after the representation of ‘The Cunning Man,’
  when, in 1770, I had visited Rousseau at Paris, and entered
  into correspondence with him, I sent him, in a parcel with
  other books, a copy of ‘The Cunning Man,’ as it was performed
  and printed in England to my translation of his ‘_Devin du
  Village_,’ and adjusted to his original music; and I received
  from him the following answer.

  “_A Monsieur_,
  “_Monsieur le Docteur Burney_,
  “_A Londres._

  “Je recois, Monsieur, avec bien de la reconnoissance, les
  deux pièces de musique gravée, que vous m’avez fait remettre
  par M. Guy. ‘La Passione de Jomelli,’ dont je vous suppose
  l’editeur, montre que vous savez connoître et priser le beau
  en ce genre. Cet ouvrage admirable me paroit plein d’harmonie
  et d’expression. Il merite en cela d’être mis à côté du
  Stabat Mater de Pergolese. Je le trouve seulment au dessous
  en ce qu’il a moins de simplicité.

  “Je vous dois aussi des remercimens pour avoir daigné vous
  occuper du ‘Devin du Village’; quoiqu’il m’ait paru toujours
  impossible à traduire avec succés[43] dans une autre langue.
  Je ne vous parlerai pas des changemens que vous avez jugé
  apropos d’y faire. Vous avez consulté, sans doute, le goût
  de votre nation; et il n’y a rien à dire à cela.

  “Les ouvrages, Monsieur, dont vous m’avez fait le cadeau, me
  rappelleront souvent le plaisir que j’ai eu de vous voir, et
  de vous entendre; et nourriront le regret de n’en pas jouir
  quelque fois.

  “Agreez, Monsieur, je vous supplie, mes bien humbles
  salutations.

  “J. J. ROUSSEAU.”


JOEL COLLIER.

The quick-spreading favour with which the Tours were received; the
celebrity which they threw around the name and existence of Dr.
Burney; the associations of rank, talents, literature, learning, and
fashionable coteries, to which they opened an entrance, could not fail,
ere long, to make their author become an object of envy, since they
raised him to be one of admiration.

The character, conduct, and life of Dr. Burney were now, therefore,
no doubt, critically examined, and morally sifted, by the jealous
herd of contemporary rivals, who had worked far longer, and far more
laboriously, through the mazes of science; yet, working without similar
genius, had failed of rising to similar heights.

Nevertheless, the immediate path in which Dr. Burney flourished was
so new, so untrodden, that he displaced no competitor, he usurped
no right of others; and the world, unsought and uncanvassed, was so
instinctively on his side, that, for a considerable time, his palpable
pre-eminence seemed as willingly accorded, as it was unequivocally
acknowledged.

But the viper does not part with its venom from keeping its body
in ambush; and, before the History came out, though long after the
publication of the Tours, a ludicrous parody of the latter was sent
forth into the world, under the name of Joel Collier.

The Doctor, delicately anxious not to deserve becoming an object for
satire, was much hurt, on its first appearance, by this burlesque
production. It attacked, indeed, little beyond the technical
phraseology of the Tours; the tourist himself was evidently above the
reach of such anonymous shafts.

It was generally supposed to be a _jeu d’esprit_ of some enemy, to
counteract his rapid progress in public favour; and to undermine the
promising success of his great work.

But the Doctor himself did not give way to this opinion: he had done
nothing to incur enemies; he had done much to conciliate friends; and,
believing in virtue because practising it, he knew not how to conceive
personal malice without personal offence. He imagined it, therefore,
the work of some stranger, excited solely by the desire of making money
from his own risible ideas; without caring whom they might harass, or
how they might irritate, provided, in the words of Rodrigo, he “put
money in his purse.”

The Doctor, however, as has been said, from the unimpeachable goodness
of his heart and character, had the fair feelings of mankind in his
favour. The parody, therefore, though executed with burlesque humour,
whether urged or not by malevolence, was never reprinted; and obtained
but the laugh of a moment, without making the shadow of an impression
to the disadvantage of the tourist.


MR. TWINING.

But the happiest produce to Dr. Burney of this enterprise, and the
dearest mede of his musical labours, was the cordial connexion to which
it led with Mr. Twining, afterwards called Aristotle Twining; which
opened with an impulsive reciprocation of liking, and ended in a
friendship as permanent as it was exhilarating.

Mr. Twining, urged by an early and intuitive taste, equally deep and
refined, for learning and for letters, had begun life by desiring to
make over the very high emoluments of a lucrative business, with its
affluence and its cares, to a deserving younger brother; while he
himself should be quietly settled, for the indulgence of his literary
propensities, in some retired and moderate living, at a distance from
the metropolis.

His father listened without disapprobation; and at the vicarage of
Colchester, Mr. Twining established his clerical residence.

His acquaintance with Dr. Burney commenced by a letter of singular
merit, and of nearly incomparable modesty. After revealing, in terms
that showed the most profound skill in musical science, that he had
himself not only studied and projected, but, in various rough desultory
sections, had actually written certain portions of a History of Music,
he liberally acknowledged that he had found the plan of the Doctor
so eminently superior to his own, and the means that had been taken
for its execution so far beyond his power of imitation, that he had
come to a resolution of utterly renouncing his design; of which not
a vestige would now remain that could reflect any pleasure upon his
lost time and pains, unless he might appease his abortive attempt by
presenting its fruits, with the hope that they would not be found
utterly useless, to Dr. Burney.

So generous an offering could not fail of being delightedly accepted;
and the more eagerly, as the whole style of the letter decidedly spoke
its writer to be a scholar, a wit, and a man of science.

Dr. Burney earnestly solicited to receive the manuscript from Mr.
Twining’s own hands: and Mr. Twining, though with a timidity as rare
in accompanying so much merit as the merit itself, complied with the
request.

The pleasure of this first interview was an immediate guarantee of the
mental union to which it gave rise. Every word that issued from Mr.
Twining confirmed the three high characters to which his letter had
raised expectation,—of a man of science, a scholar, and a wit. Their
taste in music, and their selection of composers and compositions, were
of the same school; _i.e._ the modern and the Italian for melody, and
the German for harmony.

Nor even here was bounded the chain by which they became linked: their
classical, literary, and poetical pursuits, nay, even their fancies,
glided so instinctively into the same channel, that not a dissonant
idea ever rippled its current: and the animal spirits of both partook
of this general coincidence, by running, playfully, whimsically, or
ludicrously, with equal concord of pleasantry, into similar inlets of
imagination.

The sense of this congeniality entertained by Dr. Burney, will be
best shewn by the insertion of some biographical lines, taken from a
chronological series of events which he committed to paper, about this
time, for the amusement of Mrs. Burney.

                      * * * after toil and fatigue — —
    To Twining I travel, in hopes of relief,
    Whose wit and good-humour soon drive away grief.
    And now, free from care, in night-gown and sandals,
    Not a thought I bestow on the Goths and the Vandals.
    Together we fiddled, we laugh’d, and we sung,
    And tried to give sound both a soul and a tongue.
    Ideas we sift, we compare, and commute,
    And, though sometimes we differ, we never dispute;
    Our minds to each other we turn inside out,
    And examine each source of belief and of doubt;
    For as musical discord in harmony ends,
    So our’s, when resolv’d, makes us still better friends.

The whole family participated in this delightful accession to the
comfort and happiness of its chief; and, Mr. Crisp alone excepted, no
one was received by the Burnean tribe with such eagerness of welcome as
Mr. Twining.

A correspondence, literary, musical, and social, took place between
this gentleman and the Doctor, when they separated, that made a
principal pleasure, almost an occupation, of their future lives.
And Dr. Burney thenceforward found in this willing and accomplished
fellow-labourer, a charm for his work that made him hasten to it after
his business and cares, as to his most grateful recreation. While Mr.
Twining, exchanging a shyness that amounted nearly to bashfulness,
for a friendly trust that gave free play to his sportive and original
colloquial powers, felt highly gratified to converse at his ease with
the man whose enterprise had filled him with an admiration to which he
had been almost bursting to give some vent; but which he had so much
wanted courage to proclaim, that, as he afterwards most humorously
related, he had no sooner sent his first letter for Dr. Burney to the
post-office, than he heartily hoped it might miscarry! and had hardly,
though by appointment, softly knocked at the door of the Doctor, than
he all but prayed that he should not find him at home!


MR. BEWLEY.

During a visit which, at this time, Dr. Burney made to his old friends
and connexions in Norfolk, he spent a week or two with his truly-loved
and warmly-admired favourite, Mr. Bewley, of Massingham; whose deep
theoretical knowledge of the science, and passion for the art of music,
made, now, a sojourn under his roof as useful to the work of the
Doctor, as, at all periods, it had been delightful to his feelings.

Of this visit, which took place immediately after one that had
been fatiguingly irksome from stately ceremony, he speaks, in his
chronological rhymes, in the following manner.

    To Bewley retiring, in peace and in quiet,
    Where our[44] welcome was hearty, and simple our diet;
    Where reason and science all jargon disdain’d,
    And humour and wit with philosophy reign’d—

    Not a muse but was ready to answer his call;
    By the virtues all cherish’d, the great and the small.
    There Clio I court, to reveal every mystery
    Of musical lore, with its practice and history.

Mr. Bewley, now, was the principal writer for scientific articles in
the Monthly Review, under the editorship of Mr. Griffith. He was, also,
in close literary connexion with Dr. Priestley, Mr. Reid, and Padre
Beccaria; with whom to correspond he had latterly dedicated some weeks
exclusively to the study of Italian, that he might answer the letters
of that celebrated man in his own language.

In company with this learned and dear friend, Dr. Burney afterwards
passed a week at Haughton Hall, with the Earl of Orford, who
invariably received him with cordial pleasure; and who had the manly
understanding, combined with the classical taste, always to welcome
with marked distinction the erudite philosopher of Massingham; though
that obscure philosopher was simply, in his profession, a poor and
hard-working country surgeon; and though, in his habits, partly from
frugal necessity, and partly from negligent indifference, he was the
man the most miserably and meanly accoutred, and withal the most
slovenly, of any who had ever found his way into high society.

Lord Orford, with almost unexampled liberality, was decidedly blind
to all these exterior imperfections; and only clear-sighted, for this
gifted man of mind, to the genius that, at times, in the arch meaning
of his smile, sparkled knowledge from his eye, with an intelligent
expression that brightened into agreeability his whole queer face.
And to call into play those rugged features, beneath which lurked the
deepest information, and the most enlightened powers of entertainment,
was the pleasure of the noble host; a distinction which saved this
unknown and humble country practitioner from the stares, or the
ridicule, of all new-arrived guests; though secretly, no doubt, they
marvelled enough who he could be; and still more how he came there.


DR. HAWKESWORTH.

At Haughton Hall these two friends found now a large assembled party,
of which the Earl of Sandwich, then first lord of the Admiralty, was at
the head. The whole conversation at the table turned upon what then
was the whole interest of the day, the first voyage round the world of
Captain Cooke, which that great circumnavigator had just accomplished.
The Earl of Sandwich mentioned that he had all the papers relating
to the voyage in his hands; with the circumnavigations preceding it
of Wallace and Byron; but that they were mere rough draughts, quite
unarranged for the public eye; and that he was looking out for a proper
person to put them into order, and to re-write the voyages.

Dr. Burney, ever eager upon any question of literature, and ever
foremost to serve a friend, ventured to recommend Dr. Hawkesworth; who
though, from his wise and mild character, contented with his lot, Dr.
Burney knew to be neither rich enough for retirement, nor employed
enough to refuse any new and honourable occupation. The _Adventurer_
was in every body’s library; but the author was less generally known:
yet the account now given of him was so satisfactory to Lord Sandwich,
that he entrusted Dr. Burney with the commission of sending Dr.
Hawkesworth to the Admiralty.

Most gladly this commission was executed. The following is the first
paragraph of Dr. Hawkesworth’s answer to its communication:

  “Many, many thanks for your obliging favour, and the subject
  of it. There is nothing about which I would so willingly be
  employed as the work you mention. I would do my best to make
  it another Anson’s Voyage.

Lord Sandwich, upon their meeting, was extremely pleased with Dr.
Hawkesworth, to whom the manuscripts were immediately made over; and
who thus expressed his satisfaction in his next letter to Dr. Burney.

  “I am now happy in telling you, that your labour of love
  is not lost; that I have all the journals of the Dolphin,
  the Swallow, and the Endeavour in my possession; that the
  government will give me the cuts, and the property of the
  work will be my own.

  “Is it impossible I should give you my hand, and the thanks
  of my heart, here? _i.e._ at Bromley.”


CAPTAIN COOKE.

Some time afterwards, Dr. Burney was invited to Hinchinbroke, the seat
of the Earl of Sandwich, to meet Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Solander, Dr.
Hawkesworth, and the celebrated circumnavigator, Captain Cooke himself.

It was the earnest request of James, the eldest son of Dr. Burney, to
be included in the approaching second expedition of this great seaman;
a request which Lord Sandwich easily, and with pleasure, accorded to
Dr. Burney; and the young naval officer was invited to Hinchinbroke,
and presented to his new commander, with a recommendation that he
should stand foremost on the list of promotion, should any occasion of
change occur during the voyage.

The following note upon Captain Cooke, is copied from a memorandum book
of Dr. Burney’s.

  “In February, I had the honour of receiving the illustrious
  Captain Cooke to dine with me in Queen-Square, previously to
  his second voyage round the world.

  “Observing upon a table Bougainville’s _Voyage autour du
  Monde_, he turned it over, and made some curious remarks
  on the illiberal conduct of that circumnavigator towards
  himself, when they met and crossed each other; which made
  me desirous to know, in examining the chart of M. de
  Bougainville, the several tracks of the two navigators; and
  exactly where they had crossed or approached each other.

  “Captain Cooke instantly took a pencil from his pocket-book,
  and said he would trace the route; which he did in so clear
  and scientific a manner, that I would not take fifty pounds
  for the book. The pencil marks having been fixed by skim
  milk, will always be visible.”

This truly great man appeared to be full of sense and thought;
well-mannered, and perfectly unpretending; but studiously wrapped up
in his own purposes and pursuits; and apparently under a pressure of
mental fatigue when called upon to speak, or stimulated to deliberate,
upon any other.

The opportunity which thus powerfully had been prepared of promotion
for the Doctor’s son, occurred early in the voyage. Mr. Shanks, the
second lieutenant of the Discovery, was taken ill at the Cape of Good
Hope, and obliged to leave the ship. “In his place,” Captain Cooke
wrote to Lord Sandwich, “I have appointed Mr. Burney, whom I have found
very deserving.”


DOCTOR GOLDSMITH.

Dr. Goldsmith, now in the meridian of his late-earned, but most
deserved prosperity, was projecting an English Dictionary of Arts
and Sciences, upon the model of the French Encyclopædia. Sir Joshua
Reynolds was to take the department of painting; Mr. Garrick, that
of acting; Dr. Johnson, that of ethics: and no other class was yet
nominated, when Dr. Burney was applied to for that of music, through
the medium of Mr. Garrick.

Justly gratified by a call to make one in so select a band, Dr. Burney
willingly assented; and immediately drew up the article “Musician;”
which he read to Mr. Garrick; from whom it received warm plaudits.

The satisfaction of Dr. Goldsmith in this acquisition to his forces,
will be seen by the ensuing letter to Mr. Garrick; by whom it was
enclosed, with the following words, to Dr. Burney.

  “_June 11, 1773._

  “My dear Doctor,

  “I have sent you a letter from Dr. Goldsmith. He is proud to
  have your name among the elect.

  “Love to all your fair ones.

  “Ever yours,

  “D. GARRICK.”

TO DAVID GARRICK, ESQ.

  “_Temple, Jan. 10, 1773._

  “Dear Sir,

  “To be thought of by you, obliges me; to be served by you,
  still more. It makes me very happy to find that Dr. Burney
  thinks my scheme of a Dictionary useful; still more that he
  will be so kind as to adorn it with any thing of his own. I
  beg you, also, will accept my gratitude for procuring me so
  valuable an acquisition.

  “I am,

  “Dear Sir,

  “Your most affectionate servant,

  “OLIVER GOLDSMITH.”

The work, however, was never accomplished, and its project sunk away
to nothing; sincerely to the regret of those who knew what might be
expected from that highly qualified writer, on a plan that would
eminently have brought forth all his various talents; and which was
conceived upon so grand a scale, and was to be supported by such able
coadjutors. And deeply was public regret heightened that it was by
the hand of Death that this noble enterprise was cut short; Death,
which seemed to have awaited the moment of the reversal of poverty and
hardship into prosperity and fame, for striking that blow which, at an
earlier period, might frequently, for Dr. Goldsmith, have taken away a
burthen rather than a blessing. But such is the mysterious construction
of Life—that mere harbinger of Death!—always obedient to the fatal
knell he tolls, though always longing to implore that he would toll it
a little—little later!


DOCTOR HAWKESWORTH.

The sincere satisfaction that Dr. Burney had experienced in having
influenced the nomination of Dr. Hawkesworth to be editor of the first
voyage of Captain Cooke round the world, together with the revisal and
arrangement of the voyages of Captain Wallace and Admiral Byron, was
soon overcast by sorrow, through circumstances as impossible to have
foreseen as not to lament.

Dr. Hawkesworth, though already in a delicate state of health, was
so highly animated by his election to this office, and with the vast
emolument which, with scarcely any labour, promised to give the dignity
of ease and comfort to the rest of his life; that he performed his
task, and finished the narratory compilation, with a rapidity of
pleasure, resulting from a promise of future independence, that filled
him with kind gratitude to Dr. Burney; and seemed to open his heart,
temper, and manners, to the most cordial feelings of happiness.

But the greatness of his recompense for the smallness of his trouble,
immediately disposed all his colleagues in the road of renown to
censure; and all his competitors in that of profit, to jealousy and
ill-will. Unfortunately, in his Introduction to the Voyages, he touched
upon some controversial points of religious persuasion, which proved
a fatal opening to malignity for the enemies of his success; and
other enemies, so upright was the man, it is probable he had none.
His reasoning here, unhappily, was seized upon with avidity by his
infuriated enviers; and the six thousand pounds which flowed into
his coffers, brought six millions of pungent stings to his peace, by
arraigning his principles.

A war so ungenial to his placid nature, and hitherto honoured life,
breaking forth, with the offensive enmity of assumed superior piety,
in calumnious assertions, that strove to blacken the purity of his
faith and doctrine; occurring at the moment when he had thought
all his worldly cares blown away, to be succeeded by soft serenity
and easy affluence; made the attack so unexpected, that its shock
was enervating; and his wealth lost its charms, from a trembling
susceptibility that detached him from every pleasure it could
procure—save that of a now baneful leisure for framing answers to his
traducers.

In his last visit, as it proved, to Queen-Square, where he dined and
spent the evening, Dr. Burney was forcibly struck with concern at
sight of the evident, though uncomplaining invalid; so changed, thin,
and livid was his appearance.

He conversed freely upon the subject of his book, and the abuse which
it had heaped upon him, with the Doctor; who strongly exhorted him to
repel such assaulters with the contempt that they deserved: adding,
“They are palpably the offsprings of envy at your success. Were you to
become a bankrupt, they would all turn to panegyrists; but now, there
is hardly a needy man in the kingdom, who has ever held a pen in his
hand for a moment, who, in pondering upon the six thousand pounds, does
not think he could have done the work better.”

Dr. Hawkesworth said that he had not yet made any answer to the torrent
of invective poured upon him, except to Dalrymple, who had attacked
him by name; for a law-suit was then impending upon Parkinson’s
publication, and he would write nothing that might seem meant to
influence justice: but when that law-suit, by whatever result, should
be decided, he would bring out a full and general reply to all the
invidious aspersions that so cruelly and wantonly had been cast upon
him, since the publication of the Voyages.

He then further, and confidentially, opened to Dr. Burney upon his past
life and situation: “Every thing that I possess,” he cried, “I have
earned by the most elaborate industry, except this last six thousand
pounds! I had no education, and no advantage but such as I sedulously
worked to obtain for myself; but I preserved my reputation and my
character as unblemished as my principles—till this last year!”

Rallying a little then, from a depression which he saw was becoming
contagious, he generously changed the subject to the History of Music;
and begged to be acquainted with its progress; and to learn something
of its method, manner, and meaning; frankly avowing an utter ignorance
of the capabilities, or materials, that such a work demanded.

Dr. Burney read to him the dissertation,—then but roughly
sketched,—on the Music of the Ancients, by which the History opens:
and Dr. Hawkesworth, confessing its subject to be wholly new to him,
warmly declared that he found its treatment extremely entertaining, as
well as instructive.

After a visit, long, and deeply interesting, he left his friend very
anxious about his health, and very impatient for his promised pamphlet:
but, while still waiting, with strong solicitude, the appearance of a
vindication that might tranquillize the author’s offended sensibility,
the melancholy tidings arrived, that a slow fever had robbed the
invalid of sleep and of appetite; and had so fastened upon his
shattered nerves, that, after lingering a week or two, he fell a prey
to incurable atrophy; and sunk to his last earthly rest exactly a month
after the visit to Dr. Burney, the account of which has been related.

Had the health of Dr. Hawkesworth been more sound, he might have turned
with cold disdain from the outrages of mortified slanderers; or have
scoffed the impotent rage of combatants whom he had had the ability to
distance:—but, who shall venture to say where begins, and where ends,
the complicate reciprocity of influence which involves the corporeal
with the intellectual part of our being? Dr. Hawkesworth foresaw not
the danger, to a constitution already, and perhaps natively, fragile,
of yielding to the agitating effects of resentful vexation. He brooded,
therefore, unresistingly, over the injustice of which he was the
victim; instead of struggling to master it by the only means through
which it is conquerable, namely, a calm and determined silence, that
would have committed his justification to personal character;—a
still, but intrepid champion, against which falsehood never ultimately
prevails.


KIT SMART.

If thus untimely fell he who, of all the literary associates of Dr.
Burney, had attained the most prosperous lot, who shall marvel that
untimely should be the fate of the most unfortunate of his Parnassian
friends, Christopher Smart? who, high in literary genius, though in
that alone, had a short time previously, through turns of fortune,
and concurrences of events, wholly different in their course from
those which had undermined the vital powers of Dr. Hawkesworth, paid
as prematurely the solemn debt relentlessly claimed by that dread
accomptant-general, Death!—of all alike the awful creditor!—and paid
it as helplessly the victim of substantial, as Dr. Hawkesworth was that
of shadowy, disappointment.

With failure at the root of every undertaking, and abortion for the
fruit of every hope, Kit Smart finished his suffering existence in
the King’s Bench prison; where he owed to a small subscription, of
which Dr. Burney was at the head, a miserable little pittance beyond
the prison allowance; and where he consumed away the blighted remnant
of his days, under the alternate pressure of partial aberration of
intellect, and bacchanalian forgetfulness of misfortune.

His learning and talents, which frequently, in his youth, had been
crowned with classical laurels at the University of Cambridge, had
seemed to prognosticate a far different result: but, through whatever
errors or irregularities such fair promises may have been set aside,
he, surely, must always call for commiseration rather than censure, who
has been exposed, though but at intervals, to the unknown disorders of
wavering senses.

Nevertheless, whenever he was master of his faculties, his piety,
though rather fanatical than rational, was truly sincere; and survived
all his calamities, whether mental or mundane.

He left behind him none to whom he was more attached than Dr. Burney,
who had been one of his first favourite companions, and who remained
his last and most generous friend.

Alike through his malady and his distresses, the goodness of his
heart, and his feeling for others, were constantly predominant. In his
latest letter to Dr. Burney, which was written from the King’s Bench
prison, he passionately pleaded for a fellow-sufferer, “whom I myself,”
he impressively says, “have already assisted according to my willing
poverty.”

Kit Smart is occasionally mentioned in Boswell’s Life of Dr. Johnson,
and with anecdotes given to Mr. Boswell by Dr. Burney.

Mrs. Le Noir, the ingenious daughter of Mr. Smart, is authoress of a
pleasing production entitled _Village Manners_, which she dedicated to
Dr. Burney.


QUEEN-SQUARE.

Dr. Burney now, in the intervals of his varied, but never-ceasing
occupations, gently, yet gaily, enjoyed their fruits. All classes of
authors offered to him their services, or opened to him their stores.
The first musical performers then in vogue, Millico, Giardini, Fischer,
Cervetto, Crosdill, Barthelemon, Dupont, Celestini, Parke, Corri, the
blind Mr. Stanley, La Baccelli, and that composer for the heart in all
its feelings, Sacchini; with various others, were always eager to
accept his invitations, whether for concerts, which occasionally he
gave to his friends and acquaintance; or to private meetings for the
regale of himself and family.


OMIAH.

But his most serious gratification of this period, was that of
receiving in safety and honour, James, his eldest son, the lieutenant
of Captain Cooke, on the return from his second voyage round the world,
of that super-eminent navigator.

The Admiralty immediately confirmed the nomination of Captain Cooke;
and further, in consideration of the character and services of the
young naval officer, promoted him to the rank of master and commander.

The voyagers were accompanied back by Omiah, a native of Ulitea, one of
the Otaheitean islands. Captain Burney, who had studied the language
of this stranger during the voyage home, and had become his particular
favourite, was anxious to introduce the young South-Sea islander to his
father and family; who were at least equally eager to behold a native
of a country so remote, and of such recent discovery.

A time was quickly fixed for his dining and spending the day in
Queen-Square; whither he was brought by Mr., afterwards Sir Joseph,
Bankes, and Dr. Solander; who presented him to Dr. Burney.

The behaviour of this young Otaheitean, whom it would be an abuse of
all the meaning annexed to the word, to call a savage, was gentle,
courteous, easy, and natural; and shewed so much desire to please, and
so much willingness to be pleased himself, that he astonished the whole
party assembled to receive him; particularly Sir Robert Strange and
Mr. Hayes; for he rather appeared capable to bestow, than requiring to
want, lessons of conduct and etiquette in civilized life.

He had a good figure, was tall and well-made; and though his complexion
was swarthy and dingy, it was by no means black; and though his
features partook far more of the African than of the European cast, his
eyes were lively and agreeable, and the general expression of his face
was good-humoured and pleasing.

He was full dressed on this day, in the English costume, having just
come from the House of Lords, whither he had been taken by Sir Joseph
Bankes, to see, rather than to hear, for he could not understand it,
the King deliver his speech from the throne. He had also been admitted
to a private audience of his Majesty, whom he had much entertained.

A bright Manchester velvet suit of clothes, lined with white satin,
in which he was attired, sat upon him with as much negligence of his
finery, as if it had been his customary dress from adolescence.

But the perfect ease with which he wore and managed a sword, which
he had had the honour to receive from the king, and which he had
that day put on for the first time, in order to go to the House of
Lords, had very much struck, Sir Joseph said, every man by whom it had
been observed; since, by almost every one, the first essay of that
accoutrement had been accompanied with an awkwardness and inconvenience
ludicrously risible; which this adroit Otaheitean had marvellously
escaped.

Captain Burney had acquired enough of the Otaheitean language to be
the ready interpreter of Omiah with others, and to keep him alive
and in spirits himself, by conversing with him in his own dialect.
Omiah understood a little English, when addressed in it slowly
and distinctly; but could speak it as yet very ill; and with the
peculiarity, whether adopted from the idiom of his own tongue, or from
the apprehension of not being clearly comprehended, of uttering first
affirmatively, and next negatively, all the little sentences that he
attempted to pronounce.

Thus, when asked how he did, he answered “Ver well; not ver ill.” Or
how he liked any thing, “Ver nice; not ver nasty.” Or what he thought
of such a one, “Ver dood; not ver bad.”

On being presented by Captain Burney to the several branches of the
family, when he came to this memorialist, who, from a bad cold, was
enveloped in muslin wrappings, he inquired into the cause of her
peculiar attire; and, upon hearing that she was indisposed, he looked
at her for a moment with concern, and then, recovering to a cheering
nod, said, “Ver well to-morrow morrow?”

There had been much variation, though no serious dissension, among
the circumnavigators during the voyage, upon the manner of naming
this stranger. Captain Burney joined those officers who called him
Omai; but Omiah was more general; and Omy was more common still. The
sailors, however, who brought him over, disdaining to scan the nicety
of these three modes of pronunciation, all, to a man, left each of them
unattempted and undiscussed, and, by universal, though ridiculous
agreement, gave him no other appellation than that of Jack.

His after visits to the house of Dr. Burney were frequent, and
evidently very agreeable to him. He was sure of a kind reception from
all the family, and he was sincerely attached to Captain Burney;
who was glad to continue with him the study of the Otaheitean
language, preparatory to accompanying Captain Cooke in his third
circumnavigation, when Omiah was to be restored to his own island and
friends.

In the currency of this intercourse, remarks were incessantly excited,
upon the powers of nature unassisted by art, compared with those of art
unassisted by nature; and of the equal necessity of some species of
innate aptness, in civilized as well as in savage life, for obtaining
success in personal acquirements.

The diserters on the instruction of youth were just then peculiarly
occupied by the letters of Lord Chesterfield; and Mr. Stanhope, their
object, was placed continually in a parallel line with Omiah: the
first, beginning his education at a great public school; taught from an
infant all attainable improvements; introduced, while yet a youth, at
foreign courts; and brought forward into high life with all the favour
that care, expense, information, and refinement could furnish; proved,
with all these benefits, a heavy, ungainly, unpleasing character:
while the second, with neither rank nor wealth, even in his own remote
island; and with no tutor but nature; changing, in full manhood, his
way of life, his dress, his country, and his friends; appeared, through
a natural facility of observation, not alone unlike a savage, but with
the air of a person who had devoted his youth to the practice of those
graces, which the most elaborately accomplished of noblemen had vainly
endeavoured to make the ornament of his son.


MR. CRISP.

Another severe illness broke into the ease, the prosperity, and the
muse of Dr. Burney, and drove him, perforce, to sojourn for some weeks
at Chesington, with his friend, Mr. Crisp; whose character, in the
biographical and chronological series of events, is thus forcibly,
though briefly, sketched.

    “To Crisp I repair’d—that best guide of my youth,
     Whose decisions all flow from the fountain of truth;

     Whose oracular counsels seem always excited
     By genius, experience, and wisdom united.
     Then his taste in the arts—happy he who can follow!
     ’Tis the breath of the muses when led by Apollo.
     His knowledge instructs, and his converse beguiles.”

To this inestimable Mentor, and to Chesington, that sanctuary of
literature and of friendship, Dr. Burney, even in his highest health,
would uncompelled have resorted, had Fortune, as kind to him in her
free gifts as Nature, left his residence to his choice.

But choice has little to do with deciding the abode of the man who
has no patrimony, yet who wishes to save his progeny from the same
hereditary dearth: the Doctor, therefore, though it was to the spot
of his preference that he was chased, could not, now, make it that of
his enjoyment: he could only, and hardly, work at the recovery of his
strength; and, that regained, tear himself away from this invaluable
friend, and loved retreat, to the stationary post of his toils, the
metropolis.


ST. MARTIN’S STREET.

His house in Queen-Square had been relinquished from difficulties
respecting its title; and Mrs. Burney, assiduously and skilfully,
purchased and prepared another, during his confinement, that was
situated in St. Martin’s-street, Leicester-fields.

If the house in Queen-Square had owed a fanciful part of its value to
the belief that, formerly, in his visits to Alderman Barber, it had
been inhabited occasionally by Dean Swift, how much higher a local
claim, was vested in imagination, for a mansion that had decidedly been
the dwelling of the immortal Sir Isaac Newton!

Dr. Burney entered it with reverence, as may be gathered from the
following lines in his doggrel chronology.

    “This house, where great Newton once deign’d to reside,
     Who of England, and all Human Nature the pride,
     Sparks of light, like Prometheus, from Heaven purloin’d,
     Which in bright emanations flash’d full on mankind.”

This change of position from Queen-Square to St. Martin’s-street,
required all that it could bestow of convenience to business, of
facilitating fashionable and literary intercourse, of approximation
to travelling foreigners of distinction, and of vicinity to the Opera
House; to somewhat counter-balance its unpleasant site, its confined
air, and its shabby immediate neighbourhood; after the beautiful
prospect which the Doctor had quitted of the hills, ever verdant
and smiling, of Hampstead and Highgate; which, at that period, in
unobstructed view, had faced his dwelling in Queen-Square.

St. Martin’s-street, though not narrow, except at its entrance from
Leicester-square, was dirty, ill built, and vulgarly peopled.

The house itself was well-constructed, sufficiently large for the
family, and, which now began to demand nearly equal accommodation, for
the books of the Doctor. The observatory of Sir Isaac Newton, which
surmounted its roof, over-looked all London and its environs. It still
remained in the same simple state in which it had been left by Sir
Isaac; namely, encompassed completely by windows of small old-fashioned
panes of glass, so crowded as to leave no exclusion of the glazier,
save what was seized for a small chimney and fire-place, and a
cupboard, probably for instruments. Another cupboard was borrowed from
the little landing-place for coals.

The first act of Dr. Burney, after taking possession of this house,
was to repair, at a considerable expense, the observatory of the
astronomical chief of nations: and he had the enthusiasm, soon
afterwards, of nearly re-constructing it a second time, in consequence
of the fearful hurricane of 1778, by which its glass sides were utterly
demolished; and its leaden roof, in a whirl of fighting winds, was
swept wholly away.

Dr. Burney, who was as elevated in spirit as he was limited in means,
for being to all the arts, and all the artists, a patron, preferred
any self-denial to suffering such a demolition. He would have thought
himself a ruthless Goth, had he permitted the _sanctum sanctorum_ of
the developer of the skies in their embodied movements, to have been
scattered to nonentity through his neglect or parsimony; and sought
for, thenceforward, in vain, by posterity.

       *       *       *       *       *

Amongst the earliest hailers of this removal, stood forth the worthy
and original Mr. Hutton, who was charmed to visit his enthusiastically
esteemed new friend in the house of the great Newton; in which he
flattered himself with retaining a faint remembrance that he had been
noticed, when a boy, by the niece of that most stupendous of human
geniuses.

In shaking hands around with the family upon this occasion, Mr. Hutton
related that he had just come from the apartment of M. de Solgas,
sub-preceptor to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales;[45] in which
he had had the high honour of being permitted to discourse with his
Majesty; whom he had found the best of men, as well as the best of
Kings; for, in talking over the letters of Lord Chesterfield, and
his Lordship’s doctrines, and subtle definitions of simulation and
dissimulation, his Majesty said, “It is very deep, and may be it is
very clever; but for me, I like more straight-forward work.”

This tribute to the honour of simple truth excited a general plaudit.
Mr. Hutton then, with a smile of benevolent pleasure, said that the
subject had been changed, by Mr. Smelt, from Lord Chesterfield’s
letters to Dr. Burney’s Tours, which had been highly commended: “And
then I,” added the good old man, “could speak my notions, and my
knowledge, too, of my excellent friend the tourist, as well as of his
writings; and so, openly and plainly, as one honest man should talk to
another, I said it outright to my sovereign lord the King—who is as
honest a man himself as any in his own three kingdoms. God bless him!”

All the party, greatly pleased, smiled concurrence; and Mrs. Burney
said that the Doctor was very happy to have had a friend to speak of
him so favourably before the King.

“Madam,” cried the good man, with warmth, “I will speak of him before
my God! And that is doing much more.”

The Stranges, who lived in the immediate neighbourhood of St.
Martin’s-street, were speedy welcomers to the new dwelling; where
heartily they were welcomed.

The Doctor’s worthy and attached old friend, Mr. Hayes, rejoiced in
this near approach to his habitation, which was in James-street,
Westminster; though the fast advancing ravages and debilities of time
and infirmities, soon bereaved him of all other advantage from the
approximation, than that which he could court to his own house.

Mr. Twining, when in town, which was only for a week or two every year,
loved not to pass even a day without bestowing a few minutes of it upon
a house at which he was always hailed with delight.

But Mr. Crisp, though unalterably he maintained that first place in the
heart of Dr. Burney, to which priority of every species entitled him,
had become subject to such frequent fits of the gout, that to London
he was almost lost: he dreaded sleeping even a night from Chesington,
which now was his nearly unbroken residence.

The learned and venerable Mr. Latrobe, and his two sons, each of them
men of genius, though of different characters, were frequent in their
visits, and amongst the Doctor’s warmest admirers; and, in the study of
the German language and literature, amongst his most useful friends.

The elegant translator of Tasso, Mr. Hoole, and his erudite and
poetical son, the Rev. Samuel Hoole,[46] to form whose characters worth
and modesty went hand in hand, were often of the social circle.

The Doctor’s two literary Italian friends, Martinelli and Baretti,
were occasional visitors; and by the rapidity of their elocution, the
exuberance of their gestures, and the distortion of their features,
upon even the most trivial contradiction, always gave to the Doctor a
divertingly national reminiscence of the Italian, or Volcanic, portion
of his tours.

Mr. Nollekens, the eminent sculptor, was one of the travelled
acquaintances of Dr. Burney, with whom he had frequently assorted while
in Italy; and with whom now, and through life, he kept up the connexion
then formed.

Nollekens was one of those who shewed, in the most distinct point of
view, the possible division of partial from general talent. He was
uncultivated and under-bred; his conversation was without mark; his
sentiments were common; and his language was even laughably vulgar; yet
his works belong to an art of transcendant sublimity, and are beautiful
with elegance and taste.


MR. BRUCE.

But more peculiarly this new residence was opened by the distinction of
a new acquaintance, who was then as much the immediate lion of the day,
as had been the last new acquaintance, Omiah, who had closed the annals
of the residence in Queen-Square.

This personage was no other than the famous Mr. Bruce, who was just
returned to England, after having been wandering, and thought to be
lost, during four years, in the deserts and sands of the hitherto
European-untrodden territory of Africa, in search of the source, or
sources, of the Nile.

The narrations, and even the sight of Mr. Bruce, were at this time
vehemently sought, not only by all London, but, as far as written
intercourse could be stretched, by all Europe.

The tales spread far and wide, first of his extraordinary disappearance
from the world, and next of his unexpected re-appearance in the heart
of Africa, were so full of variety, as well as of wonder, that they
raised equal curiosity in the most refined and the most uncultivated of
his contemporaries.

Amongst these multifarious rumours, there was one that aroused in
Dr. Burney a more eager desire to see and converse with this eminent
traveller, than was felt even by the most ardent of the inquirers who
were pressing upon him, in successive throngs, for intelligence.

The report here alluded to, asserted, that Mr. Bruce had discovered,
and personally visited, the long-famed city of Thebes; and had found it
such as Herodotus had described: and that he had entered and examined
its celebrated temple; and had made, and brought home, a drawing of
the Theban harp, as beautiful in its execution as in its form, though
copied from a model of at least three thousand years old.

Mr. Bruce had brought, also, from Egypt, a drawing of an Abyssinian
lyre in present use.

The assiduity of Dr. Burney in devising means of introduction to
whosoever could increase, or ameliorate, the materials of his history,
was not here put to any proof. Mr. Bruce had been an early friend of
Mrs. Strange, and of her brother, Mr. Lumisden; and that zealous lady
immediately arranged a meeting between the parties at her own house.

As this celebrated narrator made the opening of his career as an
author, in the History of Music of Dr. Burney; to the éclat of which,
on its first appearance, he not slightly contributed, by bestowing upon
it the two admirable original drawings above-mentioned, with a letter
historically descriptive of their authenticity; some account of him
seems naturally to belong to this place: and the Editor is persuaded,
that two or three genuine, though juvenile letters which she wrote,
at the time, to Mr. Crisp, may be more amusing to the reader, from
their natural flow of youthful spirits, in describing the manners and
conversation of this extraordinary wanderer, than any more steady
recollections that could at present be offered from the same pen.
And, led by this persuasion, she here copies a part of her early and
confidential correspondence with her father’s, her family’s, and her
own first friend.[47]

  “TO SAMUEL CRISP, ESQ.

  “_Chesington, near Kingston, Surrey._

  “_St. Martins Street, 1775._

“Well, now then, my dear Daddy,[48] I have got courage to obey your
call for more! more! more! without fear of fatiguing you, for I have
seen the great man-mountain, Mr. Bruce; and have been in his high and
mighty presence three times; as I shall proceed to tell you in due form
and order, and with all the detail you demand.


“MEETING THE FIRST

took place at the tea-table, at Mrs. Strange, to which my mother, by
appointment, had introduced her Lynn friends, Mr. and Mrs. Turner, who
were extremely curious to see Mr. Bruce. My dear father was to have
escorted us; but that provoking mar-plot, commonly called Business,
came, as usual, in the way, and he could only join us afterwards.

“The man-mountain, and Mr. and Mrs. Turner, were already arrived; and
no one else was invited, or, at least, permitted to enter.

“Mr. Bruce, as we found, when he arose—which he was too stately to
do at once—was placed on the largest easy chair; but which his vast
person covered so completely, back and arms, as well as seat, that
he seemed to have been merely placed on a stool; and one was tempted
to wonder who had ventured to accommodate him so slightly. He is the
tallest man you ever saw in your life—at least, _gratis_. However,
he has a very good figure, and is rather handsome; so that there is
nothing alarming, or uncomely, or, I was going to say, ungenial—but I
don’t think that is the word I mean—in his immense and authoritative
form.

“My mother was introduced to him, and placed by his side; but, having
made her a cold, though civilish bow, he took no further notice even
of her being in the room. I, as usual, glided out of the way, and got
next to Miss Strange, who is agreeable and sensible: and who, seeing
me, I suppose, very curious upon the subject, gave me a good deal of
information about Man-Mountain.

“As he is warmly attached to Mrs. Strange and her family, he spends all
his disengaged evenings at their house, where, when they are alone, he
is not only chatty and easy, but full of comic and dry humour; though,
if any company enters, he sternly, or gloatingly, Miss Strange says,
shuts up his mouth, and utters not a word—except, perhaps, to her
parrot; which, I believe, is a present from himself. Certainly he does
not appear more elevated above the common race in his size, than in his
ideas of his own consequence. Indeed, I strongly surmise, that he is
not always without some idea how easy it would be to him—and perhaps
how pleasant—in case any one should dare to offend him, to toss a
whole company of such pigmies as the rest of mankind must seem to him,
pell-mell down stairs,—if not out of the window.

“There is some excuse, nevertheless, for this proud shyness, because
he is persuaded that nobody comes near him but either to stare at him
as a curiosity, or to pick his brains for their own purposes: for,
when he has deigned to behave to people as if he considered himself as
their fellow-creature, every word that has been drawn from him has been
printed in some newspaper or magazine; which, as he intends to publish
his travels himself, is abominably provoking; and seems to have made
him suspicious of some dark design, or some invidious trick, when any
body says to him ‘How do you do, Sir?’ or, ‘Pray, Sir, what’s o’clock?’

“And, after all, if his nature in itself is as imperious as his person
and air are domineering, it is hardly fair to expect that having lived
so long among savages should have softened his manners.

“Well, when all the placements, and so forth, were over, we went to
tea. There’s an event for you, my dear Sir!

“There was, however, no conversation. Mr. Bruce’s grand air, gigantic
height, and forbidding brow, awed every body into silence, except Mrs.
Strange; who, with all her wit and powers, found it heavy work to talk
without reply.

“But Mr. Turner suffered the most. He is, you know, a very jocular
man, and cannot bear to lose his laugh and his _bon mot_. Yet he durst
not venture at either; though he is so accustomed to indulge in both,
and very successfully, in the country, that he seemed in blank dismay
at finding himself kept in such complete subordination by the fearful
magnitude of Mr. Bruce, joined to the terror of his looks.

“Mrs. Turner, still less at her ease, because still less used to the
company of strangers, attempted not to obtain any sort of notice. Yet,
being gay in her nature, she, too, did not much like being placed
so totally in the back ground. But she was so much impressed by the
stateliness of this renowned traveller, that I really believe she sat
saying her prayers half the evening, that she might get away from the
apartment without some affront.

“Pray have you happened to read a paragraph in the newspapers,
importing that Mr. Bruce was dying, or dead? My father, who had seen
him alive and well the day before it appeared, cut it out, and wafered
it upon a sheet of paper, and sent it to him without comment.

“My mother now inquired of Mr. Bruce whether he had seen it?

“‘Yes,’ answered he, coolly; ‘but they are welcome to say what
they please of me. I read my death with great composure.’ Then,
condescending to turn to me,—though only, I doubt not, to turn away
from my elders,—he added: ‘Were you not sorry, Miss Burney, to hear
that I was dead?’

“Finding him thus address himself, and rather courteously, for he
really smiled, to so small a personage as your very obedient servant,
Mr. Turner, reviving, gathered courage to open his mouth, and, with
a put-on air of easy jocularity, ventured to exclaim, with a laugh,
‘Well, sir, as times go, I think, when they killed you, it is very well
they said no harm of you.’

“‘I know of no reason they had!’ replied Mr. Bruce, in so loud a tone,
and with an air of such infinite haughtiness, that poor Mr. Turner,
thus repulsed in his first attempt, never dared to again open his lips.

“Soon afterwards, a servant came into the room, with General Melville’s
compliments, and he begged to know of Mrs. Strange whether it was true
that Mr. Bruce was so dangerously ill.

“‘Yes!’ cried he, bluffly; ‘tell the General I am dead.’

“‘Ay, poor soul! poor mon!’ cried Mrs. Strange, ‘I dare say he has been
vexed enough to hear such a thing! Poor honest mon! I dare be sworn he
never wronged or deceived a human being in all his life.’

“‘Will you, faith?’ cried Mr. Bruce: ‘Will you be sworn to that? It’s
more than I would dare to be for any man alive! Do you really think he
has risen to the rank of General, with so little trouble?’

“‘Troth, yes,’ she answered; ‘you men, you know, never deceive men! you
have too much honour for that. And as to us women,—ah, troth! the best
among you canno’ deceive me! for whenever you say pretty things to me,
I make it a rule to believe them all to be true: so the prettier the
better!’

“Miss Bell Strange, the youngest daughter, a very sensible little girl,
about ten years old, now brought him his tea. He took it, in chucking
her under the chin; which was evidently very annoying to her, as a
little womanly consciousness is just stealing upon her childhood: but,
not heeding that, he again turned to me, and said, ‘Do you know, Miss
Burney, that I intend to run away with Bell? We are going to Scotland
together. She won’t let me rest till I take her to Gretna Green.’

“‘La! how can you say so, sir,?’ cried Bell, colouring, and much
fidgetted. ‘Pray, Ma’am, don’t believe it!’

“‘Why, how now, Bell?—What! won’t you go?’

“‘No, sir, I won’t!’ answered Bell, very demurely.

“‘Well,’ cried he, with a scoffing smile, and rising, ‘this is the
first lady that ever refused me.’

“He then inquired of Mrs. Strange whether she had heard any thing
lately of Lord R., of whom they joined in drawing a most odious
character; especially for his avarice. And when they had finished the
portrait, Mr. Bruce, advancing his great figure towards me, exclaimed,
‘And yet this man is my rival!’

“‘Really?’ cried I, hardly knowing what he expected I should say, but
afraid to affront him by a second total silence.

“‘O, it’s true!’ returned he, in a tone that implied _though not
credible_; ‘Is it not true, Mrs. Strange, that he is my rival?’

“‘Troth, they say so,’ answered she, calmly.

“‘I wonder he should dare!’ cried my mother. ‘I wonder he should not
apprehend that the long residence in Egypt of Mr. Bruce, had made him
so well acquainted with magic, that’—

“‘O,’ interrupted Mr. Bruce, coolly, ‘I shall not poison him. But I
may bribe his servant to tie a rope across his staircase, on some dark
night, and then, as I dare say the miserly wretch never allows himself
a candle to go up and down stairs, he may get a tumble, and break his
neck.’

“This idea set him into a fit of laughter quite merry to behold; and
as I caught, from surprise, a little of its infection, he was again
pleased to address himself to me, and to make inquiry whether I was
musical; expressing his hopes that he should hear me play, when Mrs.
Strange fulfilled her engagement of bringing him to our house; adding,
that he had a passionate love of music.

“‘I was once,’ said Mrs. Strange, ‘with a young lady, a friend of mine,
when she was at a concert for the first time she ever heard any music,
except nursery lullabys, or street holla-balloos, or perhaps a tune
on a fiddle by some poor blind urchin. And the music was very pretty,
and quite tender; and she liked it so well, it almost made her swoon;
and she could no’ draw her breath; and she thrilled all over; and sat
sighing and groaning, and groaning and sighing, with over-much delight,
till, at last, she burst into a fit of tears, and sobbed out, ‘I can’t
help it!’

“‘There’s a woman,’ said Mr. Bruce, with some emotion, ‘who could never
make a man unhappy! Her soul must be all harmony.’

“My dear father now arrived; and he and Mr. Bruce talked apart for the
rest of the evening, upon the harp and the letter.

“But when the carriage was announced, imagine my surprise to see this
majestic personage take it into his fancy to address something to me
almost in a whisper! bending down, with no small difficulty, his head
to a level with mine. What it was I could not hear. Though perhaps
’twas some Abyssinian compliment that I could not understand! It’s
flattery, however, could not have done me much mischief, after Miss
Strange’s information, that, when he is not disposed to be social with
the company at large, he always singles out for notice the youngest
female present—except, indeed, a dog, a bird, a cat, or a squirrel, be
happily at hand.

“As I had no ‘retort courteous’ ready, he grandly re-erected himself to
the fullest extent of his commanding height; setting me down, I doubt
not, in his black book, for a tasteless imbecile. Every body, however,
as all his motions engage all attention, looked so curious, that my
only gratitude for his condescension, was heartily wishing him at one
of the mouths of his own famous Nile.

“Will you not wish me there too, my dearest Mr. Crisp, for this long
detail, without one word of said Nile, and its endless sources? or of
Thebes and its hundred gates? or of the two harps of harps that are to
decorate the History of Music? But nothing of all this occurred; except
it might be in his private confab. with my father.

“You demanded, however, an account of his manner, his air, and his
discourse; and what sort of mode, or fashion, he had brought over from
Ethiopia.

“And here, so please you, all that is at your feet.

“I have only to add, that his smile, though rare, is really graceful
and engaging. But his laugh, when his dignity is off its guard, and
some sportive or active mischief comes across his ideas—such as the
image of his miserly rival, Lord R., dangling from a treacherous rope
on his own staircase; or tumbling headlong down,—is a chuckle of
delight that shines his face of a bright scarlet, and shakes his whole
vast frame with a boyish ecstacy.

“But I forgot to mention, that while Mr. Bruce was philandering with
little Miss Bell Strange, who, with comic childish dignity, resented
his assumed success, he said he believed he had discovered the reason
of her shyness; ‘Somebody has told you, I suppose, Bell, that when I
am taken with a hungry fit in my rambles, I make nothing of seizing
on a young bullock, and tying him by the horns to a tree, while I cut
myself off a raw beef-steak, and regale myself upon it with its own
cold gravy? according to my custom in Abyssinia? Perhaps, Bell, you may
think a young heifer might do as well? and are afraid you might serve
my turn, when my appetite is rather keen, yourself? Eh, Bell?’

       *       *       *       *       *

“You have accepted Meeting the First with so much indulgence, my dear
Mr. Crisp, that I am all alertness for presenting you with


MEETING THE SECOND,

which took place not long after the First, already recorded in these my
elaborate annals.

“My father invited Mr. Twining, the great Grecian, to said meeting.
What a contrast did he form with Mr. Bruce, the great Ethiopian! I have
already described Mr. Twining to you, though very inadequately; for he
is so full of merits, it is not easy to find proper phrases for him.
There is only our dear Mr. Crisp whom we like and love half as well.

“Mr. Twining, with all his excellencies,—and he is reckoned one of the
first scholars living; and is now engaged in translating Aristotle,—is
as modest and unassuming as Mr. Bruce is high and pompous. He came very
early, frankly owning, with a sort of piteous shrug, that he really
had not bronze to present himself when the party should be assembled,
before so eminent, but tremendous a man, as report painted Mr. Bruce;
though he was extremely gratified to nestle himself into a corner, as a
private spectator.

“Mrs. Strange, with her daughter, arrived next; and told us that his
Abyssinian Majesty, as she calls Mr. Bruce, had dined at General
Melville’s, but would get away as quickly as possible.

“We waited tea, in our old-fashioned manner, a full hour; but no Mr.
Bruce. So then we—or rather I—made it. And we all united to drink it.
There, Sir; there’s another event for you!

“Mr. Twining entreated that we might no longer postpone the concert,
and was leading the way to the library, where it was to be held; but
just then, a thundering rap at the door raised our expectations, and
stopt our steps;—and Mr. Bruce was announced.

“He entered the room with the state and dignity of a tragedy giant.

“We soon found that something had displeased him, and that he was
very much out of humour: and when Mrs. Strange inquired after General
Melville, he answered her, with a face all made up of formidable
frowns, that the General had invited a most stupid set of people to
meet him. He had evidently left the party with disgust. Perhaps they
had asked him whether there were any real men and women in Abyssinia,
or only bullocks and heifers.

“He took his tea in stern silence, without deigning to again open his
lips, till it was to demand a private conference with my father. They
then went together to the study,—erst Sir Isaac Newton’s—which is
within the library.

“In passing through the latter, they encountered Mr. Twining, who
would hastily have shrunk back; but my father immediately, and with
distinction to Mr. Twining, performed the ceremony of introduction.
Mr. Bruce gravely bowed, and went on; and he was then shut up with my
father at least an hour, in full discussion upon the Theban harp, and
the letter for the history.

“Mr. Twining returned, softly and on tiptoe, to the drawing room; and
advancing to Mrs. Strange and my mother, with uplifted hands and eyes,
exclaimed, ‘This is the most awful man I ever saw!—I never felt so
little in all my life!’

“‘Well, troth,’ said Mrs. Strange, ‘never mind! If you were six feet
high he would overlook you; and he can do no more now.’

“Mr. Twining then, to recover breath he said, sat down, but declared
he was in fear of his life; ‘for if Mr. Bruce,’ he cried, ‘should come
in hastily, and, not perceiving such a pitiful Lilliputian, should
take the chair to be empty—it will soon be over with me! I shall be
jammed in a moment—while he will think he is only dropping down upon a
cushion!’

“As the study confab. seemed to menace duration, Mr. Twining petitioned
Mr. Burney to go to the piano-forte; where he fired away in a voluntary
with all the astonishing powers of his execution, and all the vigour of
his genius.

“He might well be animated by such an auditor as Mr. Twining, who
cannot be a deeper Grecian than he is a refined musician. How happy
is my dear father that the three best, and dearest, and wisest, of
his friends, should be three of the most scientific judges of his own
art,—Mr. Twining, Mr. Bewley, and Mr. Crisp.

“Dear me! how came that last name into my head? I beg your pardon a
thousand times. It was quite by accident. A mere slip of the pen.

“Mr. Twining, astonished, delighted, uttered the warmest praises, with
all his heart; but that fervent effusion over, dropped his voice into
its lowest key, to add, with a look full of arch pleasantry, ‘Now, is
not this better than being tall?’

“My poor sister, Burney, was not quite well, and had a hurt on one of
her fingers. But though she could not exert herself to play a solo, she
consented to take her part in the noble duet for the piano-forte of
Müthel; and she was no sooner seated, than Mr. Bruce re-appeared in our
horizon.

“You well know that enchanting composition, which never has been more
perfectly executed.

“Mr. Twining was enraptured; Mrs. Strange listened in silent wonder and
pleasure; and Mr. Bruce himself was drawn into a charmed attention.
His air lost its fierceness; his features relaxed into smiles; and
good humour and complacency turned pride, sternness, and displeasure,
out of his phiz.

“I begin now to think I have perhaps been too criticising upon poor
man-mountain; and that, when he is not in the way of provocation to
his vanity, he may be an amiable, as well as an agreeable man. But
I suppose his giant-form, which makes every thing around him seem
diminutive, has given him a notion that he was born to lord it over
the rest of mankind; which, peradventure, seems to him a mere huddle
of Lilliputians, as unfit to cope with him, mentally, in discourse, as
corporeally in a wrestling match.

“Mr. Twining had been invited to supper; and as it now grew very late,
my mother made the invitation general; which, to our great surprise,
Mr. Bruce was the first to accept. Who, then, could start any objection?

“So softened had he been by the music, that he was become all courtesy.
Nobody else was listened to, or looked at; and as he scarcely ever
deigns to look at any body himself, he is a primary object for peering
at.

“The conversation turned upon disorders of the senses; for Mrs. Strange
has a female friend who is seized with them, from time to time, as
other people might be seized with an ague. She had been on a visit
at the house of Mrs. Strange, the day before, where she had met Mr.
Bruce. When it was perceived that a fit of the disorder was coming on,
Miss Strange took her home; for which extraordinary courage Mr. Bruce
greatly blamed her.

“‘How,’ said he, ‘could you be sure of your life for a single moment?
Suppose she had thought proper to run a pair of scissors into your
eyes? Or had taken a fancy to cutting off one of your ears?’

“Miss Strange replied, that she never feared, for she always knew how
to manage her.

“Mr. Bruce then inquired what had been the first symptom she had shewn
of the return of her malady?

“Mrs. Strange answered, that the beginning of her wandering that
evening, had been by abruptly coming up to her, and asking her whether
she could make faces?

“‘I wish,’ said Mr. Bruce, ‘she had asked me! I believe I could have
satisfied her pretty well that way!’

“‘O, she had a great desire to speak to you, sir,’ said Miss Strange,
‘she told me she had a great deal to say to you.’

“‘If,’ said Mr. Bruce, ‘she had come up to me, without any preface, and
made faces at me,—I confess I should have been rather surprised!’

“‘Troth,’ said Mrs. Strange, ‘if we are not upon our guard, we are all
of us mad when we are contradicted! for we are all of us so witty, in
our own ideas, that we think every mon out of his head that does not
see with our eyes. But when I tried to hold her, poor little soul, from
running into the street, while we were waiting for the coach, she gave
me such a violent scratch on the arm, that I piteously called out for
help. See! here’s the mark.’

“‘Did she fetch blood,’ cried Mr. Bruce, in a tone of alarm; ‘if she
did, you will surely go out of your own senses before a fortnight will
be over! You may depend upon that! If you are bit by a wild cat, you
will undoubtedly become crazy; and how much more if you are scratched
by a crack-brained woman? I would advise you to go forthwith to the
sea, and be well dipped. I assure you fairly I would not be in your
situation.’

“I thought this so shocking, that I felt a serious impulse to
expostulate with his giantship upon it myself, and _almost_ the
courage; but, whether perceiving my horror, or only imagining it, I
cannot tell; he deigned to turn his magnificent countenance full upon
me, to display that he was laughing. And he afterwards added, that he
knew there was nothing in this case that was any way dangerous; though
how he obtained the knowledge he kept to himself.

“My mother then expressed her hopes that the poor lady might not,
meanwhile, be removed to a private asylum; as in these repositories,
the patients were said to be goaded on to become worse, every time a
friend or a physician was expected to visit them; purposely to lengthen
the poor sufferer’s detention.

“‘Indeed!’ cried Mr. Bruce, knitting his brows, ‘why this is very bad
encouragement to going out of one’s senses!’

“The rest of the conversation was wholly upon this subject; and so,
as I know you hate the horrors, I must bid good night to Meeting the
Second with his Abyssinian Majesty.

“The _tête à tête_ in the study had been entirely upon the two
drawings; and in settling the points upon which Mr. Bruce had best
expatiate in his descriptive and historical epistle.

“My father has great satisfaction in being the first to bring forth
the drawings and the writings of this far-famed traveller before the
public. The only bad thing was, that it kept him away from us all
supper-time, to put down the communications he had received, and the
hints he wished to give for more.

“Mr. Twining, too, wrapt himself up in his own observations, and would
not speak—except by his eyes, which had a comic look, extremely
diverting, of pretended fearful insignificance.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Well, now, my dear Sir, to


MEETING THE THIRD.

“It was produced by a visit from Mrs. Strange, with a petition from his
Majesty of Abyssinia for another musical evening; as he had spoken with
so much rapture of the last to Mr. Nesbit, a great _amateur_, ‘that
the poor honest lad,’ Mrs. Strange said, ‘could no’ sleep o’ nights
from impatience to be inoculated with the same harmony, to prevent the
infection Mr. Bruce carried about with him from doing him a mischief.’

“Well, the time was fixed, and the evening proved so agreeable, that
we heartily and continually wished our dear Mr. Crisp amongst us. Mr.
Twining, too, was gone. All one likes best go quickest.

“The first who arrived was Mr. Solly. He, also, is a great traveller,
though not a renowned one; for nothing less than the Nile, and no place
short of Abyssinia, will do, at present, for the taste of the public.
My father had met with Mr. Solly at four several cities in Italy, and
all accidentally; namely, Bologna, Florence, Rome, and Naples. Since
that time, Mr. Solly has been wandering to many more remote places; and
at Alexandria, and at Grand Cairo, he had met with Mr. Bruce. He is a
chatty, lively man; and not at all wanting in marks of his foreign
excursions, _i.e._ shrugs, jerks, and gestures. John Bull, you know, my
dear Mr. Crisp, when left to himself, is so torpid a sort of figure,
with his arms slung so lank to his sides, that, at a little distance,
one might fancy him without any such limb. While the Italians and
French make such a flourishing display of its powers, that I verily
believe it quickens circulation, and helps to render them so much more
vivacious than philosopher Johnny.

“Yet I love Johnny best, for all that; as well as honour him the most;
only I often wish he was a little more entertaining.

“Mr. Solly and my father ‘fought all their battles o’er again’ through
Italy; and kept fighting them on till the arrival of Dr. Russel, a
learned, and likewise a travelled physician, who seems droll and
clever; but who is so very short-sighted, that even my father and I see
further a-field. He loses nothing, however, through this infirmity,
that trouble can supply; for he peers in every body’s face at least
a minute, to discover whether or not he knows them; and, after that,
he peers a minute or two more, to discover, I suppose, whether or not
he likes them. Yet, without boldness. ’Tis merely a look of earnest
investigation, which he bestowed, in turn, upon every one present, as
they came in his way; never fastening his eyes, even for an instant,
upon the ground, the fire, the wainscot, or any thing inanimate, but
always upon the ‘human face divine.’

“He, also, is another travelled friend of Mr. Bruce, whom he knew at
Aleppo, where Dr. Russel resided some years.[49]

“Then came Mrs. and Miss Strange, and his Abyssinian majesty, with
his companion, Mr. Nesbit, who is a young Scotchman of distinction,
infinitely _fade_, conceited, and coxcombical. He spoke very little,
except to Mr. Bruce, and that, very politely, in a whisper. I cannot at
all imagine what could provoke this African monarch to introduce such a
fop here. We heartily wished him back in his own quarters; or at least
at ‘the Orkneys,’ or at ‘the Lord knows where.’

“Mr. Bruce himself was in the most perfect good-humour; all civility
and pleasantry; and his smiles seemed to give liberty for general ease.

“Having paid his compliments to my mother, he addressed himself to
my sister Burney, inquiring courteously after her finger, which Miss
Strange had told him she had hurt.

“‘Mrs. Burney’s fingers,’ cried Dr. Russel, snatching at the
opportunity for a good gaze, not upon her finger, but her phiz, ‘ought
to be exempt from all evil.’

“Your Hettina smiled, and assured them it was almost well.

“‘O, I prayed to Apollo,’ cried Mr. Bruce, ‘for its recovery, and he
has heard my prayer.’

“‘I have no doubt, sir,’ said Hetty, ‘of your influence with Apollo.’

“‘I ought to have some, Madam,’ answered he grandly, ‘for I have been a
slave to him all my life!’”

“He then came to hope that I should open the concert; speaking to me
with just such an encouraging sort of smile as if I had been about
eleven years old; and strongly admonishing me not to delay coming
forward at once, as he was prepared for no common pleasure in listening
to me.

“Next he advanced to Susanna, begging her to exhibit her talent; and
telling her he had had a dream, that if she refused to play, some
great misfortune would befall him.

“When he had gone through this little circle of gallantry, to his own
apparent satisfaction, he suffered Mr. Nesbit to seize upon him for
another whispering dialogue; in which, as Mrs. Strange has since told
my mother, that pretty swain lamented that he must soon run away, a
certain lady of quality having taken such an unaccountable fancy to him
at the opera of the preceding night, that she had appointed him to be
with her this evening _tête à tête_!

“Mr. Bruce gave so little credit to this _bonne fortune_, that he
laughed aloud in relating it to Mrs. Strange.

“Mr. Bruce then called upon Dr. Russel to take a violin, saying he was
a very fine performer; but adding, ‘We used to disgrace his talents,
I own, at Aleppo; for, having no blind fiddler at hand, we kept him
playing country dances by the hour.’

“Dr. Russel mentioned some town _in those parts_, Asia or Africa, where
a concert, upon occasion of a marriage, lasted three days.

“‘Three days?’ repeated Mr. Bruce; ‘why marriage is a more formidable
thing there than even here!’

“Then came music, and the incomparable duet; which, as they could not
forbear encoring, filled up all the rest of the evening, till the
company at large departed; for there were several persons present whom
I have not mentioned, being of no zest for your notice.

“Mr. Bruce, however, with the Stranges, again consented to stay supper;
which, you know, with us, is nothing but a permission to sit over a
table for chat, and roast potatoes, or apples.

“But now, to perfect your acquaintance with this towering Ethiopian,
where do you think he will take you during supper?

“To the source, or sources, you cry, of the Nile? to Thebes? to its
temple? to an arietta on the Theban Harp? or, perhaps, to banquetting
on hot raw beef in Abyssinia?

“No such thing, my dear Mr. Crisp, no such thing. Travellers who mean
to write their travels, are fit for nothing but to represent the gap at
your whist table at Chesington, when you have only three players; for
they are mere dummies.

“Mr. Bruce left all his exploits, his wanderings, his vanishings,
his re-appearances, his harps so celestial, and his bullocks so
terrestrial, to plant all our entertainment within a hundred yards of
our own coterie; namely, at the masquerades at the Haymarket.

“Thus it was. He inquired of Mrs. Strange where he could find Mrs.
Twoldham, a lady of his acquaintance; a very fine woman, but remarkably
dissipated, whom he wished to see.

“‘Troth,’ Mrs. Strange answered, ‘she did not know; but if he would
take a turn to a masquerade or two, he would be sure to light upon her,
as she never missed one.’

“‘What,’ cried he, laughing, ‘has she not had enough yet of
masquerades? Brava, Mrs. Twoldham! I honour your spirit.’

“He then laughed so cordially, that we were tempted, by such
extraordinary good-humour, to beg him, almost in a body, to permit us
to partake of his mirth.

“He complied very gaily. ‘A friend of mine,’ he cried, ‘before I went
abroad, had so often been teazed to esquire her to some of these
medleys, that he thought to give the poor woman a surfeit of them to
free himself from her future importunity. Yet she was a very handsome
woman, very handsome indeed. But just as they were going into the
great room, he had got one of her visiting cards ready, and contrived,
as they passed through a crowded passage, to pin to the back of her
robe, Mrs. Twoldham, Wimpole Street. And not three steps had she tript
forward, before some one called out: “Hah! Mrs. Twoldham! how do you
do, Mrs. Twoldham?”—“Oho, Mrs. Twoldham, are you here?” cried another;
“Well, Ma’am, and how do all friends in Wimpole Street do?” till the
poor woman was half out of her wits, to know how so many people had
discovered her. So she thought that perhaps her forehead was in sight,
and she perked up her mask; but she did not less hear, “Ah! it’s
you, Mrs. Twoldham, is it?” Then she supposed she had left a peep at
her chin, and down again was tugged the poor mask; but still, “Mrs.
Twoldham!” and, “how do you do, my dear Mrs. Twoldham?” was rung in
her ears at every step; till at last, she took it into her head that
some one, who, by chance, had detected her, had sent her name round
the room; so she hurried off like lightning to the upper suite of
apartments. But ’twas all the same. “Well, I declare, if here is not
Mrs. Twoldham!” cries the first person that passed her. “So she is, I
protest,” cried another; “I am very glad to see you, my dear Ma’am!
what say you to giving me a little breakfast to-morrow morning? you
know where, Mrs. Twoldham; at our old haunt in Wimpole Street.” But, at
last, the corner of an unlucky table rubbed off the visiting card; and
a waiter, who picked it up, grinned from ear to ear, and asked whether
it was hers. And the poor woman fell into such a trance of passion,
that my friend was afraid for his eyes; and all the more, because, do
what he would, he could not refrain from laughing in her face.’

“You can scarcely conceive how heartily he laughed himself; he quite
chuckled, with all the enjoyment in mischief of a holiday school boy.

“And he harped upon the subject with such facetious pleasure, that no
other could be started.

“‘I once knew,’ he cried, ‘a man, his name was Robert Chambers, and a
good-natured little fellow he was, who was served this very trick the
first masquerade he went to in London, upon fresh coming from Scotland.
A gentleman who went to it with him, wrote upon his black domino, with
chalk, “this is little Bob Chambers, fresh come from Edinburgh;” and
immediately some one called out, in passing him, “What Bob? little
Bob Chambers? how do, my boy?” “Faith,” says Bob, to his friend,
“the people of this fine London are pretty impudent! I don’t know that
I know a soul in the whole town, and the first person I meet makes
free to call me plain Bob?” But when he went on, and found that every
creature in every room did the same, he grew quite outrageous at being
treated with so little ceremony; and he stamped with his foot at one,
and clenched his fist at another, and asked how they dared call him
Bob? “What! a’n’t you Bob, then?” replies one; “O yes, you are! you’re
Bob, my Bob, as sure as a gun! Bob Chambers! little Bob Chambers. And
I hope you have left all well at Edinburgh, my Bob?” In vain he rubbed
by them, and tried to get on, for they called to him quite from a
distance; “Bob!—Bob! come hither, I say!—come hither, my Bobby! my
Bob of all Bobs! you’re welcome from Edinburgh, my Bob!” Well, then,
he said, ’twas clear the devil owed him a spite, and had told his name
from top to bottom of every room. Poor Bob! he made a wry face at the
very sound of a masquerade to the end of his days.’

“To have looked at Mr. Bruce in his glee at this buffoonery, you must
really have been amused; though methinks I see, supposing you had been
with us, the picturesque rising of your brow, and all the dignity of
your Roman nose, while you would have stared at such familiar delight
in an active joke, as to transport into so merry an _espiegle_, the
seven-footed loftiness of the haughty and imperious tourist from the
sands of Ethiopia, and the waters of Abyssinia; whom, nevertheless,
I have now the honour to portray in his _robe de chambre_, i.e. in
private society, to my dear Chesington Daddy.

“What says he to the portrait?”

With fresh pleasure and alacrity, Dr. Burney now went on with his work.
So unlooked for a re-inforcement of his means could not have arrived
more seasonably. Every discovery, or development, relative to early
times, was not only of essential service to the Dissertation on the
Music of the Ancients, upon which, now, he was elaborately engaged, but
excited general curiosity in all lovers of antiquity.


SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

Amongst other new friends that this new neighbourhood procured, or
confirmed, to Dr. Burney, there was one of so congenial, so Samaritan,
a sort, that neighbour he must have been to the Doctor from the time of
their first acquaintance, had his residence been in Dorset-square, or
at Botolph’s Wharf; instead of Leicester-square, and scarcely twenty
yards from the Doctor’s own short street.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, this good Samaritan, was, like Dr. Burney, though
well-read and deeply studious, as easy and natural in discourse as if
he had been merely a man of the world; and though his own art was
his passion, he was open to the warmest admiration of every other:
and again, like the Doctor, he was gay though contemplative, and flew
from indolence, though he courted enjoyment. There was a striking
resemblance in the general amenity of their intercourse, that not only
made them, at all times, and with all persons, free from any approach
to envy, peevishness, or sarcasm themselves, but seemed to spread
around them a suavity that dissolved those angry passions in others.

In his chronological doggrels, Dr. Burney records that he now began his
intimacy with the great English Raphael; of whom he adds,

    “’Twere vain throughout Europe to look for his peer
     Who by converse and pencil alike can endear.”


MRS. REYNOLDS.

Sir Joshua had a maiden sister, Mrs. Frances Reynolds; a woman of worth
and understanding, but of a singular character; who, unfortunately for
herself, made, throughout life, the great mistake of nourishing that
singularity which was her bane, as if it had been her blessing.

She lived with Sir Joshua at this time, and stood high in the regard
of his firm and most honoured friend, Dr. Johnson; who saw and pitied
her foible, but tried to cure it in vain. It was that of living in an
habitual perplexity of mind, and irresolution of conduct, which to
herself was restlessly tormenting, and to all around her was teazingly
wearisome.

Whatever she suggested, or planned, one day, was reversed the next;
though resorted to on the third, as if merely to be again rejected on
the fourth; and so on, almost endlessly; for she rang not the changes
in her opinions and designs in order to bring them into harmony and
practice; but waveringly to stir up new combinations and difficulties;
till she found herself in the midst of such chaotic obstructions as
could chime in with no given purpose; but must needs be left to ring
their own peal, and to begin again just where they began at first.

This lady was a no unfrequent visitor in St. Martin’s-street; where,
for her many excellent qualities, she was much esteemed.

The Miss Palmers,[50] also, two nieces of Sir Joshua, lived with
him then occasionally; and one of them, afterwards, habitually; and
added to the grace of his table, and of his evening circles, by the
pleasingness of their manners, and the beauty of their persons.

Mrs. Frances Reynolds desired to paint Dr. Burney’s portrait, that she
might place it among certain other worthies of her choice, already
ornamenting her dressing-room. The Doctor had little time to spare;
but had too natively the spirit of the old school, to suffer No! and a
lady, to pair off together.

During his sittings, one trait of her tenacious humour occurred, that
he was always amused in relating. While she was painting his hair,
which was remarkably thick, she asked him, very gravely, whether he
could let her have his wig some day to work at, without troubling him
to sit.

“My wig?” repeated he, much surprised.

“Yes;” she answered; “have not you more than one? can’t you spare it?”

“Spare it?—Why what makes you think it a wig? It’s my own hair.”

“O then, I suppose,” said she, with a smile, “I must not call it a
wig?”

“Not call it a wig?—why what for, my clear Madam, should you call it a
wig?”

“Nay, Sir,” replied she, composedly, “if you do not like it, I am sure
I won’t.”

And he protested, that though he offered her every proof of twisting,
twitching, and twirling that she pleased, she calmly continued
painting, without heeding his appeal for the hairy honours of his head;
and only coolly repeating, “I suppose, then, I must not call it a wig?”


MRS. BROOKES.

Mrs. Brookes, authoress of “Lady Julia Mandeville,” &c., having
become a joint proprietor of the Opera House with Mr. and Mrs. Yates,
earnestly coveted the acquaintance of Dr. Burney; in which, of course,
was included the benefit of his musical opinions, his skill, and his
counsel.

Mrs. Brookes had much to combat in order to receive the justice due to
her from the world; for nature had not been more kind in her mental,
than hard in her corporeal gifts. She was short, broad, crooked,
ill-featured, and ill-favoured; and she had a cast of the eye that
made it seem looking every way rather than that which she meant
for its direction. Nevertheless, she always ultimately obtained the
consideration that she merited. She was free from pretension, and
extremely good-natured. All of assumption, by which she might have
claimed literary rank, from the higher and graver part of her works,
was wholly set aside in conversation; where, however different in grace
and appearance, she was as flowing, as cheerful, and as natural in
dialogue, as her own popular and pleasing “Rosina.”[51]


MISS REID.

Miss Reid, the Rosalba of Britain, who, in crayons, had a grace and a
softness of colouring rarely surpassed, was a visitor likewise at the
house, whose works and whose person were almost divertingly, as was
remarked by Mr. Twining, at variance with one another; for while the
works were all loveliness, their author was saturnine, cold, taciturn;
absent to an extreme; awkward and full of mischances in every motion;
ill-accoutred, even beyond negligence, in her dress; and plain enough
to produce, grotesquely, an effect that was almost picturesque.

Yet, with all this outward lack of allurement, her heart was kind, her
temper was humane, and her friendships were zealous. But she had met
with some misfortunes in early life that had embittered her existence,
and kept it always wavering, in a miserable balance, between heartless
apathy, and pining discontent.


MRS. ORD.

An acquaintance was now, also, begun, with one of the most valued,
valuable, and lasting friends of Dr. Burney and his family, Mrs. Ord; a
lady of great mental merit, strict principles, and dignified manners.

Without belonging to what was called the Blues, or _Bas Bleu_ Society,
except as a receiver or a visitor, she selected parties from that set
to mix with those of other, or of no denomination, that were sometimes
peculiarly well assorted, and were always generally agreeable.

Mrs. Ord’s was the first coterie into which the Doctor, after his
abode in St. Martin’s-Street, initiated his family; Mrs. Burney as
a participator, his daughters as appendages, of what might justly be
called a _conversatione_.

The good sense, serene demeanour, and cheerful politeness of the lady
of the house, made the first meeting so pleasingly animating to every
one present, that another and another followed, from time to time, for
a long series of years. What Dr. Burney observed upon taking leave of
this first little assemblage, may be quoted as applicable to every
other.

“I rejoice, Madam,” he said, “to find that there are still two or three
houses, even in these dissipated times, where, through judgment and
taste in their selection, people may be called together, not with the
aid of cards, to kill time, but with that of conversation, to give it
life.”

“And I rejoice the more in the success of Mrs. Ord,” cried Mr.
Pepys,[52] “because I have known many meetings utterly fail, where
equal pleasure has been proposed and expected; but where, though the
ingredients, also, have been equally good—the pudding has proved very
bad in the eating!”

“The best ingredients,” said Dr. Burney, “however excellent they
may be separately, always prove inefficient if they are not well
blended; for if any one of them is a little too sour, or a little too
bitter—nay, or a little too sweet, they counteract each other. But
Mrs. Ord is an excellent cook, and employs all the refinements of her
art in taking care not to put clashing materials into the same mess.”


HON. MR. BRUDENEL.

His Honour, Brudenel,[53] loved and sought Dr. Burney with the most
faithful admiration from a very early period; and, to the latest in
his power, he manifested the same partiality. Though by no means a man
of talents, he made his way to the grateful and lasting regard of Dr.
Burney, by constancy of personal attachment, and a fervour of devotion
to the art through which the distinction of the Doctor had had its
origin.

Dr. Ogle, Dean of Winchester,[54] a man of facetious pleasantry, yet
of real sagacity; though mingled with eccentricities, perversities,
and decidedly republican principles, became a warm admirer of the
character and conversation of the Doctor; while the exemplary Mrs.
Ogle and her sprightly daughters united to enliven his reception, in
Berkeley-square, as an honoured instructor, and a cordial friend.

But with far more political congeniality the President of the Royal
Society, Sir Joseph Banks, was included in this new amical committee.

In a loose manuscript of recurrence to the year 1776, stand these words
upon the first Dr. Warren.

  “In January of this year, an acquaintance which I had already
  begun with that most agreeable of men, Dr. Warren, grew
  into intimacy. His conversation was the most pleasant, and,
  nearly, the most enlightened, without pedantry or dogmatism,
  that I had ever known.”

Amongst the distinguished persons appertaining to this numerous list of
connexions upon the opening of the St. Martin’s-street residence during
the last century, one, at least, still remains to ornament, both by his
writings and his conversation, the present, Dr. Gillies; whose urbanity
of mind and manners, joined to his literary merits, made him, at his
own pleasure, one of the most estimable and honourable contributors to
the Doctor’s social circle.


MR. CUTLER.

But the most prominent in eagerness to claim the Doctor’s regard, and
to fasten upon his time, with wit, humour, learning, and eccentric
genius, that often made him pleasant, and always saved him from
becoming insignificant; though with an officious zeal, and an obtrusive
kindness that frequently caused him to be irksome, must be ranked Mr.
Cutler, a gentleman of no common parts, and certainly of no common
conduct; who loved Dr. Burney with an ardour the most sincere, but
which he had not attraction to make reciprocal; who wrote him letters
of a length interminable, yet with a frequency of repetition that would
have rendered even little billets wearisome; and who, satisfied of the
truth of his feelings, investigated not their worth, and never doubted
their welcome.

The Doctor had a heart too grateful and too gentle to roughly awaken
such friendship from its error; he endured, therefore, its annoyance,
till the intrusion upon his limited leisure became a serious
persecution. He then, almost perforce, sought to render him more
considerate by neglect, in wholly omitting to answer his letters.

But Mr. Cutler, though hurt and chagrined, was not quieted. Letter
still followed letter, detailing at full length his own ideas upon
every subject he could start; with kind assurances of his determined
patient expectance of future replies.

The Doctor then was reduced to frankly offer a remonstrance upon the
difference of their position with respect to time,—and its claims.

This, though done with softness and delicacy, opened all at once the
eyes of this pertinacious friend to his unreflecting insufficiency;
but, of course, rather with a feeling of injury, than to a sense of
justice; and he withdrew abruptly from all correspondence; powerfully
piqued, yet in silent, uncomplaining dismay.

To give an idea of his singular style, some few extracts, of the most
uncommon sort, will be selected for the correspondence, from the vast
volume of letters that will be consigned to the flames.[55]


MR. BARRY.

The most striking, however, though by no means the most reasonable
converser amongst those who generally volunteered their colloquial
services in St. Martin’s-street, was that eminent painter, and
entertaining character, Mr. Barry; who, with a really innocent belief
that he was the most modest and moderate of men, nourished the most
insatiable avidity of applause; who, with a loudly laughing defiance of
the ills of life, was internally and substantially sinking under their
annoyance; and who, with a professed and sardonic contempt of rival
prosperity or superiority, disguised, even to himself, the bitterness
with which he pined at the success which he could not share, but to
which he flattered himself that he was indifferent, or above; because
so to be, behoved the character of his believed adoption, that of a
genuine votary to philanthropy and philosophy.

His ideas and his views of his art he held, and justly, to be sublime;
but his glaring execution of the most chaste designs left his practice
in the lurch, even where his theory was most perfect.

He disdained to catch any hints from the works, much less from the
counsel, of Sir Joshua Reynolds; from whose personal kindness and
commanding abilities he had unfortunately been cut off by early
disagreement; for nearly as they approached each other in their ideas,
and their knowledge of their art, their process, in cultivating their
several talents, had as little accord, as their method of organizing
their intellectual attributes and characters. And, indeed, the
inveterate dissension of Barry with Sir Joshua Reynolds, must always
be in his own disfavour, though his harder fate must mingle pity with
censure—little thankfully as his high spirit would have accepted
such a species of mitigation. It is not, however, probable, that the
fiery Mr. Barry should have received from the serene and candid Sir
Joshua, the opening provocation; Sir Joshua, besides his unrivalled
professional merits,[56] had a negative title to general approbation,
that included many an affirmative one; “Sir Joshua Reynolds,” said Dr.
Johnson,[57] “possesses the largest share of inoffensiveness of any man
that I know.”

Yet Mr. Barry had many admirable as well as uncommon qualities. His
moral sentiments were liberal, nay, noble; he was full fraught, almost
bursting with vigorous genius; and his eccentricities, both in manner
and notions, made his company generally enlightening, and always
original and entertaining.


GARRICK.

The regret that stood next, or, rather, that stood alone with Dr.
Burney, to that of losing the pure air and bright view of Hampstead
and Highgate, by this change to St. Martin’s-street, was missing the
frequency of the visits of Mr. Garrick; to whom the Queen-Square of
that day was so nearly out of town, that to arrive at it on foot had
almost the refreshment of a country walk.

St. Martin’s-street, on the contrary, was situated in the populous
closeness of the midst of things; and not a step could Garrick take in
its vicinity, without being recognised and stared at, if not pursued
and hailed, by all the common herd of his gallery admirers; those gods
to whom so often he made his fond appeal; and who formed, in fact, a
principal portion of his fame, and, consequently, of his happiness, by
the honest tribute of their vociferous plaudits.

Nevertheless, these jovial gods, though vivifying to him from their
high abode, and in a mass, at the theatre, must, in partial groups,
from the exertions he could never refrain from making to keep alive
with almost whatever was living, his gay popularity, be seriously
fatiguing, by crowding about him in narrow streets, dirty crossings,
and awkward nooks and corners, such as then abounded in that part of
the town; though still his buoyant spirits, glowing and unequalled,
retained their elastic pleasure in universal admiration.

An instance of this preponderating propensity greatly diverted Dr.
Burney, upon the first visit of Mr. Garrick to St. Martin’s-street.

This visit was very matinal; and a new housemaid, who was washing the
steps of the door, and did not know him, offered some resistance to
letting him enter the house unannounced: but, grotesquely breaking
through her attempted obstructions, he forcibly ascended the stairs,
and rushed into the Doctor’s study; where his voice, in some mock
heroics to the damsel, alone preceded him.

Here he found the Doctor immersed in papers, manuscripts, and books,
though under the hands of his hair-dresser; while one of his daughters
was reading a newspaper to him;[58] another was making his tea,[59]
and another was arranging his books.[60]

The Doctor, beginning a laughing apology for the literary and littered
state of his apartment, endeavoured to put things a little to rights,
that he might present his ever welcome guest with a vacated chair. But
Mr. Garrick, throwing himself plumply into one that was well-cushioned
with pamphlets and memorials, called out: “Ay, do now, Doctor, be in a
little confusion! whisk your matters all out of their places; and don’t
know where to find a thing that you want for the rest of the day;—and
that will make us all comfortable!”

The Doctor now, laughingly leaving his disorder to take care of itself,
resumed his place on the stool; that the furniture of his head might go
through its proper repairs.

Mr. Garrick then, assuming a solemn gravity, with a profound air of
attention, fastened his eyes upon the hair-dresser; as if wonder-struck
at his amazing skill in decorating the Doctor’s _tête_.

The man, highly gratified by such notice from the celebrated Garrick,
briskly worked on, frizzing, curling, powdering, and pasting, according
to the mode of the day, with assiduous, though flurried importance, and
with marked self-complacency.

Mr. Garrick himself had on what he called his scratch wig; which was so
uncommonly ill-arranged and frightful, that the whole family agreed no
one else could have appeared in such a plight in the public streets,
without a risk of being hooted at by the mob.

He dropt now all parley whatsoever with the Doctor, not even answering
what he said; and seemed wholly absorbed in admiring watchfulness of
the progress of the hair-dresser; putting on, by degrees, with a power
like transformation, a little mean face of envy and sadness, such as he
wore in representing Abel Drugger; which so indescribably altered his
countenance, as to make his young admirers almost mingle incredulity
of his individuality with their surprise and amusement; for, with his
mouth hanging stupidly open, he fixed his features in so vacant an
absence of all expression, that he less resembled himself than some
daubed wooden block in a barber’s shop window.

The Doctor, perceiving the metamorphosis, smiled in silent observance.
But the friseur, who at first had smirkingly felt flattered at seeing
his operations thus curiously remarked, became utterly discountenanced
by so incomprehensible a change, and so unremitting a stare; and hardly
knew what he was about. The more, however, he pomatumed and powdered,
and twisted the Doctor’s curls, the more palpable were the signs that
Mr. Garrick manifested of

  “Wonder with a foolish face of praise;”

till, little by little, a species of consternation began to mingle with
the embarrassment of the hair-manufacturer. Mr. Garrick then, suddenly
starting up, gawkily perked his altered physiognomy, with the look of a
gaping idiot, full in the man’s face.

Scared and confounded, the perruquier now turned away his eyes, and
hastily rolled up two curls, with all the speed in his power, to make
his retreat. But before he was suffered to escape, Mr. Garrick, lifting
his own miserable scratch from his head, and perching it high up in the
air upon his finger and thumb, dolorously, in a whining voice, squeaked
out, “Pray now, Sir, do you think, Sir, you could touch me up this here
old bob a little bit, Sir?”

The man now, with open eyes, and a broad grin, scampered pell-mell
out of the room; hardly able to shut the door, ere an uncontrollable
horse-laugh proclaimed his relieved perception of Mr. Garrick’s
mystification.

Mr. Garrick then, looking smilingly around him at the group, which,
enlarged by his first favourite young Charles, most smilingly met his
arch glances, sportively said, “And so, Doctor, you, with your tag rag
and bobtail there—”

Here he pointed to some loaded shelves of shabby unbound old books
and pamphlets, which he started up to recognise, in suddenly assuming
the air of a smart, conceited, underling auctioneer; and rapping with
his cane upon all that were most worn and defaced, he sputtered out:
“A penny a-piece! a penny a-piece! a-going! a-going! a-going! a penny
a-piece! each worth a pound!—not to say a hundred! a rare bargain,
gemmen and ladies! a rare bargain! down with your copper!”

Then, quietly re-seating himself, “And so, Doctor,” he continued,
“you, and tag-rag and bobtail, there, shut yourself up in this snug
little book-stall, with all your blithe elves around you, to rest your
understanding?”

Outcries now of “Oh fie!” “Oh abominable!” “Rest his understanding?
how shocking!” were echoed in his ears with mock indignancy from the
mock-offended set, accompanied by hearty laughter from the Doctor.

Up rose Mr. Garrick, with a look of pretended perturbation,
incoherently exclaiming, “You mistake—you quite misconceive—you do,
indeed! pray be persuaded of it!—I only meant—I merely intended—be
sure of that!—be very sure of that!—I only purposed; that is, I
designed—I give you my word—’pon honour, I do!—I give you my word
of that!—I only had in view—in short, and to cut the matter short, I
only aimed at paying you—pray now take me right!—at paying you the
very finest compliment in nature!”

“Bravo, bravo! Mr. Bayes!” cried the Doctor, clapping his hands:
“nothing can be clearer!—”

Mr. Garrick had lent the Doctor several books of reference; and he
now inquired the titles and number of what were at present in his
possession.

“I have ten volumes,” answered the Doctor, “of Memoirs of the French
Academy.”

“And what others?”

“I don’t know—do you, Fanny?”—turning to his librarian.

“What! I suppose, then,” said Mr. Garrick, with an ironical cast of
the eye, “you don’t choose to know that point yourself?—Eh?—O, very
well, Sir, very well!” rising, and scraping round the room with sundry
grotesque bows, obsequiously low and formal; “quite well, Sir! Pray
make free with me! Pray keep them, if you choose it! Pray stand upon no
ceremony with me, Sir!”

Dr. Burney then hunted for the list; and when he had found it, and they
had looked it over, and talked it over, Mr. Garrick exclaimed, “But
when, Doctor, when shall we have out the History of Histories? Do let
me know in time, that I may prepare to blow the trumpet of fame.”

He then put his cane to his mouth, and, in the voice of a raree
showman, squalled out, shrilly and loudly: “This is your only true
History, gemmen! Please to buy! please to buy! come and buy! ’Gad, Sir,
I’ll blow it in the ear of every scurvy pretender to rivalship. So,
buy! gemmen, buy! The only true History! No counterfeit, but all alive!”

Dr. Burney invited him to the parlour, to breakfast; but he said he was
engaged at home, to Messrs. Twiss and Boswell; whom immediately, most
gaily and ludicrously, he took off to the life.

Elated by the mirth with which he enlivened his audience, he now could
not refrain from imitating, in the same manner, even Dr. Johnson: but
not maliciously, though very laughably. He sincerely honoured, nay,
loved Dr. Johnson; but Dr. Johnson, he said, had peculiarities of such
unequalled eccentricity, that even to his most attached, nay, to his
most reverential admirers, they were irresistibly provoking to mimicry.

Mr. Garrick, therefore, after this apology, casting off his little,
mean, snivelling Abel Drugger appearance, began displaying, and, by
some inconceivable arrangement of his habiliments, most astonishingly
enlarging his person, so as to make it seem many inches above its
native size; not only in breadth, but, strange yet true to tell, in
height, whilst exhibiting sundry extraordinary and uncouth attitudes
and gestures.

Pompously, then, assuming an authoritative port and demeanour, and
giving a thundering stamp with his foot on some mark on the carpet that
struck his eye—not with passion or displeasure, but merely as if from
absence and singularity; he took off the voice, sonorous, impressive,
and oratorical, of Dr. Johnson, in a short dialogue with himself that
had passed the preceding week.

“David!—will you lend me your Petrarca?”

“Y-e-s, Sir!—”

“David! you sigh?”

“Sir—you shall have it, certainly.”

“Accordingly,” Mr. Garrick continued, “the book—stupendously bound—I
sent to him that very evening. But—scarcely had he taken the noble
quarto in his hands, when—as Boswell tells me, he poured forth a Greek
ejaculation, and a couplet or two from Horace; and then, in one of
those fits of enthusiasm which always seem to require that he should
spread his arms aloft in the air, his haste was so great to debarrass
them for that purpose, that he suddenly pounces my poor Petrarca over
his head upon the floor! Russia leather, gold border, and all! And
then, standing for several minutes erect, lost in abstraction, he
forgot, probably, that he had ever seen it; and left my poor dislocated
Beauty to the mercy of the housemaid’s morning mop!”

Phill, the favourite little spaniel, was no more; but a young greyhound
successor followed Mr. Garrick about the study, incessantly courting
his notice, and licking his hands. “Ah, poor Phill!” cried he, looking
at the greyhound contemptuously, “_You_ will never take his place,
Slabber-chops! though you try for it hard and soft. Soft enough, poor
whelp! like all your race; tenderness without ideas.”

After he had said adieu, and left the room, he hastily came back,
whimsically laughing, and said, “Here’s one of your maids down stairs
that I love prodigiously to speak to, because she is so cross! She was
washing, and rubbing and scrubbing, and whitening and brightening your
steps this morning, and would hardly let me pass. Egad, Sir, she did
not know the great Roscius! But I frightened her a little, just now:
‘Child,’ says I, ‘you don’t guess whom you have the happiness to see!
Do you know I am one of the first geniuses of the age? You would faint
away upon the spot if you could only imagine who I am!’”

       *       *       *       *       *

Another time, an appointment having been arranged by Dr. Burney for
presenting his friend Mr. Twining to Mr. Garrick, the two former,
in happy conference, were enjoying the society of each other, while
awaiting the promised junction with Mr. Garrick, when a violent rapping
at the street door, which prepared them for his welcome arrival, was
followed by a demand, through the footman, whether the Doctor could
receive Sir Jeremy Hillsborough; a baronet who was as peculiarly
distasteful to both the gentlemen, as Mr. Garrick was the reverse.

“For heaven’s sake, no!” cried Mr. Twining; and the Doctor echoing
“No! No! No!” was with eagerness sending off a hasty excuse, when the
footman whispered, “Sir, he’s at my heels! he’s close to the door!
he would not stop!” And, strenuously flinging open the library door
himself in a slouching hat, an old-fashioned blue rocolo, over a
great-coat of which the collar was turned up above his ears, and a
silk handkerchief, held, as if from the tooth-ache, to his mouth, the
forbidden guest entered; slowly, lowly, and solemnly bowing his head
as he advanced; though, quaker-like, never touching his hat, and not
uttering a word.

The Doctor, whom Sir Jeremy had never before visited, and to whom
he was hardly known, save by open dissimilarity upon some literary
subjects; and Mr. Twining, to whom he was only less a stranger to be
yet more obnoxious, from having been at variance with his family;
equally concluded, from their knowledge of his irascible character,
that the visit had no other view than that of demanding satisfaction
for some offence supposed to have been offered to his high
self-importance. And, in the awkwardness of such a surmise, they could
not but feel disconcerted, nay abashed, at having proclaimed their
averseness to his sight in such unqualified terms, and immediately
within his hearing.

For a minute or two, with a silence like his own, they awaited an
explanation of his purpose; when, after some hesitation, ostentatiously
waving one hand, while the other still held his handkerchief to his
mouth, the unwelcome intruder, to their utter astonishment, came
forward; and composedly seated himself in an arm-chair near the fire;
filling it broadly, with an air of domineering authority.

The gentlemen now looked at each other, in some doubt whether
their visitor had not found his way to them from the vicinity of
Moorfields.[61]

The pause that ensued was embarrassing, and not quite free from alarm;
when the intruder, after an extraordinary nod or two, of a palpably
threatening nature, suddenly started up, threw off his slouched hat
and old rocolo, flung his red silk handkerchief into the ashes, and
displayed to view, lustrous with vivacity, the gay features, the
sparkling eyes, and laughing countenance of Garrick,—the inimitable
imitator, David Garrick.

Dr. Burney, delighted at this development, clapped his hands, as
if the scene had been represented at a theatre: and all his family
present joined rapturously in the plaudit: while Mr. Twining, with the
happy surprise of a sudden exchange from expected disgust to accorded
pleasure, eagerly approached the arm-chair, for a presentation which he
had longed for nearly throughout his life.

Mr. Garrick then, with many hearty reciprocations of laughter,
expounded the motive to the feat which he had enacted.

He had awaked, he said, that morning, under the formidable impression
of an introduction to a profound Greek scholar, that was almost
awful; and that had set him to pondering upon the egregious loss of
time and pleasurability that hung upon all formalities in making new
acquaintances; and he then set his wits to work at devising means for
skipping at once, by some sleight of hand, into abrupt cordiality.
And none occurred that seemed so promising of spontaneous success, as
presenting himself under the aspect of a person whom he knew to be so
desperately unpleasant to the scholiast, that, at the very sound of
his name, he would inwardly ejaculate,

  “Take any form but that!”

Here, in a moment, Mr. Garrick was in the centre of the apartment, in
the attitude of Hamlet at sight of the ghost.

This burlesque frolic over, which gave a playful vent that seemed
almost necessary to the superabundant animal spirits of Mr. Garrick,
who, as Dr. Johnson has said of Shakespeare, “was always struggling for
an occasion to be comic,” he cast away farce and mimicry; and became,
for the rest of the visit, a judicious, intelligent, and well informed,
though ever lively and entertaining converser and man of letters: and
Mr. Twining had not been more amused by his buffoonery, than he grew
charmed by his rationality.

In the course of the conversation, the intended Encyclopedia of Dr.
Goldsmith being mentioned, and the Doctor’s death warmly regretted, a
description of the character as well as works of that charming author
was brought forward; and Mr. Garrick named, what no one else in his
presence could have hinted at, the poem of Retaliation.

Mr. Garrick had too much knowledge of mankind to treat with lightness
so forcible an attack upon the stability of his friendships, however
it might be softened off by the praise of his talents.[62] But he had
brought it, he said, upon himself, by an unlucky lampoon, to which he
had irresistibly been led by the absurd blunders, and the inconceivable
inferiority between the discourse and the pen of this singular man;
who, one evening at the club, had been so outrageously laughable,
that Mr. Garrick had been betrayed into asserting, that no man could
possibly draw the character of Oliver Goldsmith, till poor Oliver was
under ground; for what any one would say after an hour’s reading him,
would indubitably be reversed, after an hour’s chat. “And then,” Mr.
Garrick continued, “one risible folly bringing on another, I voted him
to be dead at that time, that I might give his real character in his
epitaph. And this,” he added, “produced this distich.”

    “Attend, passer by, for here lies old Noll;
     Who wrote like an angel—but talked like poor Poll!”

Goldsmith, immeasurably piqued, vowed he would retaliate; but, never
ready with his tongue in public, though always ready with his pen in
private, he hurried off in a pet; and, some time after, produced that
best, if not only, satirical poem, that he ever wrote, “Retaliation.”

This was Dr. Goldsmith’s final work, and did not come out till after
his death. And it was still unfinished; the last line, which was upon
Sir Joshua Reynolds, being left half written;

  “By flattery unspoil’d—”[63]

To a very general regret, Dr. Johnson had not yet been named. Probably,
he was meant to form the climax of the piece.

His character, drawn by a man of such acute discrimination, who had
prospered from his friendship, yet smarted from his wit; who feared,
dreaded, and envied; yet honoured, admired, and loved him; would
doubtless have been sketched with as fine a pencil of splendid praise,
and pointed satire, as has marked the characteristic distiches upon Mr.
Burke and Mr. Garrick.

  FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 1: The year of Dr. Burney’s decease.]

[Footnote 2: Afterwards Mrs. Phillips.]

[Footnote 3: Afterwards Dame d’Atour to the celebrated sister of
Frederick the Great.]

[Footnote 4: Upon its revival; not upon its first coming-out.]

[Footnote 5: Even to Thomson, young Burney had appeared but as a
delegate from that nominal society.]

[Footnote 6: His late Majesty, George the Fourth, when Prince of Wales.]

[Footnote 7: Now the mansion of the Marquis of Londonderry.]

[Footnote 8: Troilus and Cressida.]

[Footnote 9: The bride’s sisters, the Misses Macartney, were privately
present at this clandestine ceremony.]

[Footnote 10: The rich citizens, at present, generally migrate
to the west; leaving their eastern dwelling, with its current
business-control, to their partners or dependents.]

[Footnote 11: This resistless filial tribute to such extraordinary
_independent_ and _individual_ merit, must now be offenceless; as the
family of its honoured object has for very many years, in its every
Male branch, been, in this world, utterly extinct.—And, for another
world,—of what avail were disguise?]

[Footnote 12: The word _almost_ must here stand to acknowledge the
several exceptions that may be offered to this paragraph; but which,
nevertheless, seem to make, not annul, a general rule.]

[Footnote 13: Miss Young’s were the kind arms that first welcomed to
this nether sphere the writer of these memoirs.]

[Footnote 14: The whole of this finest gallery of pictures that,
then, had been formed in England, was sold, during some pecuniary
difficulties, by its owner, George, Earl of Orford, for £40,000, to
Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia.]

[Footnote 15: This name alludes to that which young Burney had acquired
from imitating Garrick in Abel Drugger, during the theatricals at
Wilbury House.]

[Footnote 16: It is written with a flow of tender but harassed
sensations, so natural, so unstrained, that it seems to have been
penned merely because felt; though clearly to have been incited by
acute disappointment to heart-dear expectations.

    I ask no kind return in love;
      No melting power to please;
    Far from the heart such gifts remove
      That sighs for peace and ease!
    Nor peace nor ease the heart can know
      That, like the needle true,
    Turns at the touch of joy and woe—
      But, turning—trembles too!]

[Footnote 17: And subsequently, through this partial regard, the
writer of these memoirs had the honour of being a god-daughter of Mrs.
Greville.]

[Footnote 18: Afterwards Mrs. Charles Burney, of Bath.]

[Footnote 19: See correspondence.]

[Footnote 20: The letters of Dr. Johnson were made over to Mr. Boswell
by Dr. Burney, and have already been published; but the modesty which
withheld his own, will not, it is hoped, be thought here to be violated
by printing them in his memoirs; as they not only shew his early and
generous enthusiasm for genius, but carry with them a striking proof of
the genuine urbanity with which Dr. Johnson was open to every act of
kindness that was offered to him unaffectedly, even from persons the
most obscure and unknown.]

[Footnote 21: The eldest daughter.]

[Footnote 22: Charlotte.]

[Footnote 23: Afterwards Rear-Admiral James Burney.]

[Footnote 24: Afterwards the celebrated Greek scholar.]

[Footnote 25: In his letters.]

[Footnote 26: Dryden.]

[Footnote 27: See Correspondence.]

[Footnote 28: And such it appeared to this memorialist when it was
exhibited at the Louvre in 1812.]

[Footnote 29: The first Earl of Chatham.]

[Footnote 30: See correspondence.]

[Footnote 31: Edward, brother to his Majesty George III.]

[Footnote 32: Afterwards Mrs. Rishton.]

[Footnote 33: Now Rector of Lynn Regis.]

[Footnote 34: No truth can be more simply exact than that which is
conveyed in four lines of the stanzas which she addressed to him in the
secret dedication of her first work, Evelina, viz.

      If in my heart the love of virtue glows
    ’Twas kindled there by an unerring rule;
      From thy _example_ the pure flame arose,
    Thy _life_ my precept; thy _good works_ my school.]

[Footnote 35: His son, George Colman the younger, still happily lives
and flourishes.]

[Footnote 36: See Correspondence.]

[Footnote 37: Forty-three years after the date of this publication,
the Countess Dowager of Pembroke acquainted this memorialist, that she
had never known by whom this Essay was dedicated, nor by whom it was
written.]

[Footnote 38: See Correspondence.]

[Footnote 39: This Editor.]

[Footnote 40: Daughter of Lord Mulgrave.]

[Footnote 41: More known by the title of the Hon. Polar Captain.
Afterwards Lord Mulgrave.]

[Footnote 42: Mr. Seward, author of Biographiana, was wont to say, that
those three initial letters stood for a Fellow Remarkably Stupid.]

[Footnote 43: There seems here to be some word, or words, omitted.—ED.]

[Footnote 44: Mrs. Doctor Burney accompanied the Doctor in this visit
to Mr. and Mrs. Bewley.]

[Footnote 45: Afterwards George IV.]

[Footnote 46: Now rector of Abinger, mentioned several times in
Boswell’s Life of Dr. Johnson.]

[Footnote 47: These little narrations, selected and transcribed from a
large packet of letters, written by the Editor, at a very early period
of life, to Mr. Crisp, were by him bequeathed to his sister, Mrs. Gast;
at whose death they became the property of Mrs. Frodsham, their nearest
of kin; who, unsolicited, most generously and delicately restored the
whole collection to its writer. She is gone hence before this little
tribute of gratitude could be offered to her; but she has left two
amiable daughters, who will not read it with indifference.]

[Footnote 48: This familiar, but affectionate, appellation, had been
given by Dr. Burney, during his own youth, to Mr. Crisp; and was now,
by prescription, adopted by the whole of the Doctor’s family.]

[Footnote 49: Dr. Russel, after this meeting, procured for Dr. Burney
some curious information from Aleppo, of the modern state of music in
Arabia.]

[Footnote 50: The eldest was afterwards Marchioness of Thomond; the
second is now Mrs. Gwatken.]

[Footnote 51: An afterpiece of Mrs. Brookes’s composition.]

[Footnote 52: Afterwards Sir William Weller Pepys.]

[Footnote 53: Afterwards Earl of Cardigan.]

[Footnote 54: Father of the second Mrs. Sheridan.]

[Footnote 55: See Correspondence.]

[Footnote 56: His brilliant successor in deserved renown, Sir Thomas
Lawrence, was then scarcely in being.]

[Footnote 57: To this Editor.]

[Footnote 58: Susanna.]

[Footnote 59: Charlotte.]

[Footnote 60: Frances.]

[Footnote 61: Where then stood the Bethlem Hospital.]

[Footnote 62:

    “He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack,
     For he knew when he would he could whistle them back.”]

[Footnote 63: This last circumstance was communicated to the Editor by
Sir Joshua himself.]


END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.


BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, BOUVERIE STREET.

       *       *       *       *       *

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

1. Silently corrected simple spelling, grammar, and typographical
     errors.
2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
3. Page 144 last paragraph. Confusing set of dashes. Left as close
     to original as decipherable.
4. Table of Contents created by the Transcriber.








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