Chapter VI: Part 6

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

GENERAL HISTORY OF MUSIC.

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

But how wide from the rapidity of such incipient perceptions were the views by which, progressively, they were superseded!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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

QUEEN’S SQUARE.

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

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

CHESINGTON.

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

THE MUSICAL TOURS.

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

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

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

The work was entitled:

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

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

DANTE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

ENGLISH CONSERVATORIO.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HISTORY OF MUSIC.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MR. HUTTON.

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

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

JOHN HUTTON,

_Of Lindsey House, Chelsea_.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

HISTORY OF MUSIC.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“J. J. ROUSSEAU.”

JOEL COLLIER.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MR. TWINING.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MR. BEWLEY.

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

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

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

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

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