MEMOIRS OF DOCTOR BURNEY. (continued 3)

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—

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.

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 sure it would do so to my lord, that he was already engaged, and, she believed, to the Duke of York.

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

“I have the honour to be,

“My Lord, your Lordship’s

“Most humble and most obedient servant,

“David Hume.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

POLAND STREET.

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

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

But the affection and pleasure with which, as

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

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

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

THE GREVILLES.

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

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

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

DR. HAWKESWORTH.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GEORGE COLMAN, THE ELDER.

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

KIT SMART.

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

SIR ROBERT AND LADY STRANGE.

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

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

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

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

MR. CRISP.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

INSTALLATION ODE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HALLEY’S COMET.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GENERAL HISTORY OF MUSIC.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

QUEEN’S SQUARE.

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

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

CHESINGTON.

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

THE MUSICAL TOURS.

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

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

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

The work was entitled:

THE PRESENT STATE OF MUSIC

IN FRANCE AND ITALY:

OR THE JOURNAL OF A TOUR THROUGH THOSE COUNTRIES,

UNDERTAKEN TO COLLECT MATERIALS FOR A

GENERAL HISTORY OF MUSIC,

BY CHARLES BURNEY, MUS. D.

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

Dante.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ENGLISH CONSERVATORIO.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HISTORY OF MUSIC.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MR. HUTTON.

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

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

John Hutton,

Of Lindsey House, Chelsea.

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