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MEMOIRS
OF
DOCTOR BURNEY.

CONTENTS

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 tonto 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 [Pg 89] 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 uncommon, 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 [Pg 120] 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 [Pg 124] 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, [Pg 125] 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, [Pg 129] 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 [Pg 130] 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 [Pg 141] 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 [Pg 142] 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, [Pg 143] 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; [Pg 144] 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 [Pg 145] 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 [Pg 146] 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; [Pg 148]

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.

[Pg 149]

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!

[Pg 150]

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 manœuvres, 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 [Pg 187] 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.