Chapter XI: Part 11

A tablet was soon afterwards erected to his memory, in WESTMINSTER ABBEY, by a part of his family; the inscription for which was drawn up by his present inadequate, but faithful Biographer.

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When a narratory account is concluded, to delineate the character of him whom it has brought to view, with its FAILINGS as well as its EXCELLENCIES, is the proper, and therefore the common task for the finishing pencil of the Biographer. Impartiality demands this contrast; and the mind will not accompany a narrative of real life of which Truth, frank and unequivocal, is not the dictator.

And here, to give that contrast, Truth is not wanting, but, strange to say, vice and frailty! The Editor, however, trusts that she shall find pardon from all lovers of veracity, if she seek not to bestow piquancy upon her portrait through artificial light and shade.

The events and circumstances, with their commentary, that are there presented to the reader, are conscientiously derived from sources of indisputable authenticity; aided by a well-stored memory of the minutest points of the character, conduct, disposition, and opinions of Dr. Burney. And in the picture, which is here endeavoured to be portrayed, the virtues are so simple, that they cannot excite disgust from their exaggeration; though no conflicting qualities give relief to their panegyric.

But with regard to the monumental lines, unmixed praise, there, is universally practised, and calls for no apology. Its object is withdrawn, alike from friends and from foes, from partiality and from envy; and mankind at large, through all nations and all times, seems instinctively agreed, that the funereal record of departed virtue is most stimulating to posterity, when unencumbered by the levelling weight of human defects.—Not from any belief so impossible as that he who had been mortal could have been perfect; but from the consciousness that no accusation can darken the marble of death, ere He whom it consigns to the tomb, is not already condemned—or acquitted.

The Biographer, therefore, ventures to close these Memoirs with the following Sepulchral Character:

Sacred to the Memory

OF

CHARLES BURNEY, MUS. D.

WHO, FULL OF DAYS, AND FULL OF VIRTUES;

THE PRIDE OF HIS FAMILY; THE DELIGHT OF SOCIETY;

THE UNRIVALLED CHIEF AND SCIENTIFIC

HISTORIAN

OF HIS TUNEFUL ART,

BELOVED, REVERED, REGRETTED,

IN HIS 87th YEAR, APRIL 12th, 1814,

BREATHED, IN CHELSEA COLLEGE, HIS LAST SIGH;

LEAVING TO POSTERITY A FAME UNBLEMISHED,

BUILT ON THE NOBLE FABRIC OF SELF-ACQUIRED ACCOMPLISHMENTS,

HIGH PRINCIPLES, AND PURE BENEVOLENCE;

GOODNESS WITH TALENTS; GAIETY WITH TASTE,

WERE OF HIS GIFTED MIND THE BLENDED ATTRIBUTES:

WHILE THE GENIAL HILARITY OF HIS AIRY SPIRITS,

FLOWING FROM A CONSCIENCE WITHOUT REPROACH,

PREPARED, THROUGH THE WHOLE TENOR OF HIS EARTHLY LIFE,

WITH THE MEDIATION OF OUR BLESSED SAVIOUR,

HIS SOUL FOR HEAVEN.—AMEN!

FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 1: Mrs. Davis is mentioned more than once by Mr. Boswell.]

[Footnote 2: Edward Burney, Esq., of Clipstone Street.]

[Footnote 3: Since Marquis.]

[Footnote 4: His late Majesty, George the Fourth.]

[Footnote 5: Afterwards Earl Mansfield.]

[Footnote 6: Afterwards Marchioness of Thomond.]

[Footnote 7: Afterwards Lady Edward Fitzgerald.]

[Footnote 8: Since Countess of Liverpool.]

[Footnote 9: When, many years after, the reparations of Windsor Castle were completed, so as to fit it for the residence of the King, George the Third, and the Royal Family, this Lodge, and the Lower, were pulled down.]

[Footnote 10: Miss Port: now Mrs. Waddington, of Llanover House.]

[Footnote 11: In this equitable judgment of Dr. Burney, other of the managers were included, and Mr. Windham was identified.]

[Footnote 12: Afterwards Earl of Orford.]

[Footnote 13: Afterwards edited by Miss Berry.]

[Footnote 14: Miss Port; now Mrs. Waddington, of Llanover.]

[Footnote 15: Mrs. Cheveley.]

[Footnote 16: Barrington—afterwards Bishop of Durham]

[Footnote 17: Afterwards Sir William.]

[Footnote 18: To this highly-favoured latest friend she bequeathed two medallions of the King and Queen; one of the mosaic flowers from her botanical work; her own elegant copy of Waller’s lovely Saccharissa, from Vandyke, the original of which is still in the Waller Family, at Beaconsfield; and, finally, she closed her benign offerings by a verbal commission to her nephew, Mr. Barnard Dewes, to make over to the same person her noble edition of Theobald’s Shakespeare, in eight volumes quarto; kindly desiring him to say, that it was a tribute to the pleasure with which she had listened to that immortal Bard through the reading of the legatee.

Mr. Barnard Dewes sent the Saccharissa, preceded by the following invaluable words.

_Copy from the Will of Mrs. Delany._

“I take this liberty that my much-esteemed friend may sometimes recollect a person, who was so sensible to her friendship, and who delighted so much in her conversation and works.”]

[Footnote 19: The Memorialist has since been informed that the King himself had deigned to say, “It is but her due. She has given up five years of her pen.”]

[Footnote 20: This has reference to the situation, and to that only, in Chelsea College.]

[Footnote 21: The eels, now, _are so used to being skinned_, that these matters, both for the inflictors and the endurers, are become more easy.]

[Footnote 22: See Mr. Moore’s Life of Sheridan.]

[Footnote 23: George III.]

[Footnote 24: The Editor cannot here refuse herself the satisfaction of inserting a remarkable speech, that was made to her by a professionally experienced physiognomist, the Rev. Thomas Willis, upon observing Mr. Burke, after he had spoken to her one day in Westminster Hall: “Give me leave to ask—who was that you were conversing with just now?” “Mr. Burke!” “Is that possible!—Can a man who seeks by EVERY means, not only the obvious and the fair, but the most obscure and irrelevant, to prosecute to infamy and persecute to death—have a countenance of such marked honesty? Every line of his face denotes honour and probity!”]

[Footnote 25: Now Baron Crewe.]

[Footnote 26: Now the Hon. Mrs. Cunliffe Offley.]

[Footnote 27: Afterwards the Hon. Mrs. Beauclerk.]

[Footnote 28: Mrs. Locke of Norbury Park.]

[Footnote 29: Mr. Burke, in one of his unpublished Letters, says, “Coalition is the condition of Mankind!”]

[Footnote 30: Afterwards Lord Chancellor.]

[Footnote 31: Miss French, a niece of Mr. Burke’s.]

[Footnote 32: See Correspondence.]

[Footnote 33: Since Duchess.]

[Footnote 34: Mrs. Phillips.]

[Footnote 35: Afterwards Lord Chancellor.]

[Footnote 36: Afterwards Queen.]

[Footnote 37: Twice only this lady and the Memorialist had yet met, since the Italian marriage; once at a large assembly at Mrs. Locke’s; and afterwards at Windsor, on the way to St. George’s chapel; but neither of these meetings, from circumstantial obstacles, led to any further intercourse; though each of them offered indications to both parties of always subsisting kindness.]

[Footnote 38: Beaconsfield.]

[Footnote 39: Mr. Richard Burke, sen., and Mr. Burke, jun.]

[Footnote 40: Beaconsfield.]

[Footnote 41: A £20 Bank Note.]

[Footnote 42: The translations of Mr. Hoole were not yet in circulation.]

[Footnote 43: He made the same speech of melancholy, but partial regret, to Dr. Charles Burney, who visited him also at Bath.]

[Footnote 44: Mrs. General Hales, of Chelsea College.]

[Footnote 45: The Doctor’s Sons.]

[Footnote 46: The Burkes.]

[Footnote 47: At this date, 1797, the King, George III. was perfectly restored.]

[Footnote 48: Now the Hon. Mrs. Cunliffe Offley.]

[Footnote 49: Mr. Burney, the barrister, son of the late Rear-Admiral Burney.]

[Footnote 50: The present celebrated mathematician and author.]

[Footnote 51: George III.]

[Footnote 52: To the Editor he once avowed, that to pass twenty-four hours without one piercing pang of pain would be new to him.]

[Footnote 53: Generally, from the name of the author, attributed, but erroneously, to Anna Seward, of Litchfield.]

[Footnote 54: Now Mrs. Garnier.]

[Footnote 55: Now Viscountess Canning.]

[Footnote 56: Now Lady Elizabeth Whitbread.]

[Footnote 57: Now Viscount Palmerston.]

[Footnote 58: Mr. Twining.]

[Footnote 59: The Doctor’s grand-daughter, now Mrs. Raper.]

[Footnote 60: Afterwards Earl of Liverpool.]

[Footnote 61: First husband of Buonaparte’s sister, Paulina, afterwards La Princesse Borghese.]

[Footnote 62: The Culpability, or the Rights of the insurgents, could make no part of the business of the soldier; whose services, when once he is enlisted, as unequivocally demand personal subordination as personal bravery.]

[Footnote 63: Louis the Sixteenth.]

[Footnote 64: Of this singular and hazardous letter, M. d’Arblay, who wrote it on a sudden impulse, neither gave nor shewed one copy in England, except to M. Otto.]

[Footnote 65: General de La Fayette; who then, with his virtuous wife and family, resided at his old Chateau of La Grange; exclusively occupied by useful agricultural experiments, and exemplary domestic duties.]

[Footnote 66: Afterwards Earl of Chichester.]

[Footnote 67: His Sleep.]

[Footnote 68: As the wife of a French officer of distinction, living with him in his own country, she would have held any species of clandestine manoeuvre to its disadvantage as treachery, and, indeed, ingratitude; for, during ten unbroken years of sojourn in France, she met with a never abating warmth of friendship, and confidence in her honour, from the singularly amiable personages to whom she had the happiness of being presented by her husband; the charm of whose social intercourse is indelibly engraven on her remembrance. And she cannot here resist the indulgence of gratefully selecting from a list too numerous for this brief record, the names of the amiable Prince and Princesse de Beauvau, and their delightful family; and of the noble-minded General and Madame Victor de la Tour Maubourg, with the whole of that upright and estimable race; including most peculiarly MADAME DE MAISONENNE, the faithful, chosen, and tender friend of this Editor.]

[Footnote 69: Now Lady (George) Martin.]

[Footnote 70: This Editor had a letter from him, after a lapse of correspondence of thirty years, that was written within a few weeks of his decease, by an amanuensis, but signed by himself; and dictated with all the still unimpaired imagination of his fertile mind and poetical country; and with the fervent fancy, and expressive feelings of his grateful recollections of the nation in which he declares himself to have passed the happiest days of his life.]

[Footnote 71: Now Lord Stowell.]

[Footnote 72: George IV.]

[Footnote 73: Now wife of le Chevalier de Pougens.]

[Footnote 74: The present Hon. Mrs. Singleton and the Hon. Miss Upton.]

[Footnote 75: The Hon. Col. Greville Howard.]

[Footnote 76: Now Governor General of Bengal.]

[Footnote 77: The Duke of York.]

[Footnote 78: A mark of genuine liberality this in Mr. Fox, who, like Mr. Burke, in the affair of Chelsea College, clearly held that men of science and letters should, in all great states, be publicly encouraged, without wounding their feelings by shackling their opinions.]

[Footnote 79: Barrington.]

[Footnote 80: North.]

[Footnote 81: Howley, now Archbishop of Canterbury.]

[Footnote 82: Relative to the pension.]

[Footnote 83: At Bath, also, many years afterwards, an intercourse, both personal and epistolary, between Mrs. Piozzi and this Memorialist was renewed; and was gliding on to returning feelings of the early cordiality, that, gaily and delightfully, had been endearing to both—when calamitous circumstances caused a new separation, that soon afterwards became final by the death of Mrs. Piozzi.]

[Footnote 84: General La Fayette, who was then still living in his agricultural retirement, surrounded by a branching family, almost constituting a tribe; and, at that time, utterly a stranger to all politics or public life.]

[Footnote 85: Afterwards the first Marquis of Lansdowne.]

[Footnote 86: Mrs. Solvyns.]

[Footnote 87: The Count Louis de Narbonne.]

[Footnote 88: The Baron de Larrey.]

[Footnote 89: Chiefly the loyal and admirable family De la Tour Maubourg.]

[Footnote 90: Lady Lucy Foley.]

[Footnote 91: Admiral Sir Richard Foley.]

[Footnote 92: While she was very young, the Doctor had accustomed himself to say: “Poor Fanny’s face tells what she thinks, whether she will or no.”]

[Footnote 93: Every one of which the Doctor kindly remembered in his will.]

[Footnote 94: A Tancred Scholarship at Cambridge.]

[Footnote 95: The Editor resided at Paris during the astonishing period of all these events.]

[Footnote 96: Omitting, of course, all extraneous circumstances.]

[Footnote 97: The dream of human existence, from which death would awaken him to immortal life!]

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

1. Silently corrected simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors.

2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.