John Burney

“ Burney's very poor opinion of his powers as a violinist was probably not far wrong, although allowance must be made for Burney's well-known antipathy to English musicians. Festing seems to have become the fashion, and must have had very little time for study. From about 1730, too, he was more or less constantly engaged in composition. ”

“ I shall write to our dear father, and Etty, and James, and send to Norbury Park - but I shall wait till to-morrow, not to infect them with what I am infected.. . .
O my Susan! that I could come to you! But all must depend on Mr. Keirnan's decision. If you can come to us with perfect safety, however slowly, I shall not dare add to your embarrassment of persons and package. Else Charles's carriage—O, what a temptation to air it for you all the way! Take no more large paper, that you may write with less fatigue, and, if possible, oftener;—to any one will suffice for all. ”

“ Johnson made me read it, ma'am.”
“Sir, he did it much honour.”
“Made you, sir?” said the doctor, “you give an ill account of your own taste or understanding, if you wanted any making to read such a book as 'Cecilia.'”
“Oh, sir, I don't mean that; for I am sure I left every thing in the world to go on with it.”
A shilling was now wanted for some purpose or other, and none of them happened to have one; I begged that I might lend one.
“Ay, do,” said the doctor, “I will borrow of you; authors are like privateers, always fair game for one another.” ”

“ She carries on the business, with the help of her daughter, a girl about fifteen.
I inquired of her if she had seen the royal family when they visited Devonshire? “Yes, sure, ma’am!” she cried; “there was ne’er a soul left in all this place for going out to see ‘em. My daughter and I rode a double horse, and we went to Sir George Young’s, and got into the park, for we knew the housekeeper, and she gave my daughter a bit to taste of the king’s dinner when they had all done, and she said she might talk on it when she was a old woman.” ”

“ I am really, therefore, sorry for you, my dear Alex.
Your determination to give way to no sudden impulse in future is quite right. Nothing is so pleasant as giving way to impulse; nothing so hazardous.
But this history must double your value for Messrs. Jones Musgrave, Jacobs, Ebden, Theobald, and Whewell. "Cling to those who cling to you!" said the immortal Johnson to your mother, when she uttered something that seemed fastidious relative to a person whose partiality she did not prize.
Your padre was prevailed upon to go to the play. ”

“ He darted from her with the same rapidity, though wide from the same ferocity, as that with which he had at first approached her: vain was every soft appeal, lost was every gentle blandishment; in an instant he was out of sight, out of hearing,—she scarcely saw him go ere he was gone. Faithful creature! she cried, 'tis surely his master who calls! A new tie may excite his benevolence; none can shake his fidelity, nor slacken his services.
Alone and unaided, she had now to pierce a passage through the thicket, uncertain whither it might lead, and filled with apprehensions. ”

“ Dr. Johnson came in: we told him what we were about.
“Ah, madam,” cried he, “Goldsmith was not scrupulous but he would have been a great man had he known the real value of his own internal resources.”
“Miss Burney,” said Mrs. Thrale, “is fond of his 'Vicar of Wakefield.' and so am I;—don't you like it, sir?”
“No, madam, it is very faulty; there is nothing of real life in it, and very little of nature. It is a mere fanciful performance.”
He then seated himself upon a sofa, and calling to me, said “Come,—Evelina,—come and sit by me.” ”

“ Jan. 10.—When we were summoned to the tea-room I met Miss de Luc coming out. I asked if she did not stay tea? “O How can I,” cried she, in a voice of distress, “when already, as there is company here without me, Mrs. Schwellenberg has asked me what I came for?” I was quite shocked for her, and could only shrug in dismay and let her pass. When there is no one else she is courted to stay!
Mr. and Mrs. Fisher came soon after; and the Princesses Augusta and Amelia fetched away Mrs. Delany.
Soon after Colonel Wellbred came, ushering in Mr. Fairly and his young son, who is at Eton school. ”

“ We returned home just in time to be hastily dressed before192 the royals came back. I was a little, however, distressed on being told, as I descended to dinner, that Mr. Richard Burney288 was in my parlour. The strict discipline observed here, in receiving no visits, made this a very awkward circumstance, for I as much feared hurting him by such a hint, as concurring in an impropriety by detaining him. Miss Planta suffers not a soul to approach her to this house ”

“ Delap and you strut at each side of me, one with a dagger, and the other with a mask, as tragedy and comedy.”
“I think, Miss Burney,” said the doctor, “you and I seem to stand in the same predicament. What shall we do for the poor man? suppose we burn a play apiece?”
“Depend upon it,” said Mrs. Thrale, “he has heard, in town, that you are both to bring one out this season, and perhaps one of his own may be deferred on that account.”
On the announcement of the carriage, we went into the next room for our cloaks, where Mrs. Thrale and Mr. Cumberland were in deep conversation. ”

“ Saturday, July 26.—The royal party were to be Out the whole day, and I had her majesty’s permission to go to the play at night with Miss Port and her friends, and to introduce MISS Planta to them for the same purpose. The breakfast was at seven o’clock; we were all up at half after five. How sorry was I to see Colonel Gwynn enter alone, and to hear that Mr. Fairly was again ill.
Soon after the king came into the room and said, “So, no Mr. Fairly again?”
“No, sir; he’s very bad this morning.”
“What’s the matter? His face?”
“No, sir; he has got the gout. ”

“ I was in an agitation that half killed me, that shook all nerves, and made me unable to sleep at nights, from the suspense I was in! but I could not cry, for excess of eagerness.”
“I only wish,” said the duchess, “Miss Burney could have been in some corner, amusing herself with listening to us, when Lord Weymouth, and the Bishop of Exeter, and Mr. Lightfoot, and Mrs. Delany, and I, were all discussing the point—of the name. So earnest we were, she must have been diverted with us. Nothing, the nearest our own hearts and interests, could have been debated more warmly. ”

“ Listen, Oh Belmont, to their dictates! reprobate not your child, though you have reprobated its mother. The evils that are past, perhaps, when too late, you may wish to recal; the young creature you have persecuted, perhaps, when too late, you may regret that you have destroyed;-you may think with horror of the deceptions you have practised, and the pangs of remorse may follow me to the tomb:-Oh, Belmont, all my resentment softens into pity at the thought! ”

“ He is just made under-secretary at the Treasury. He is a tall and handsome man, and seems to have much dry drollery; but we saw no more of him.
After our return to the house, and while Sir Joshua and I were tete-a-tete, Lord Cork and my father being still walking, and Miss Palmer having, I suppose, some orders to give about the dinner, the “knight of Plympton” was desiring my opinion of the prospect from his window, and comparing it with Mr. Burke's, as he told me after I had spoken it,—when the Bishop of St. Asaph and his daughter, Miss Georgiana Shipley, were announced. ”

“ At Magdalene college, Frances was left for a moment in a parlour, where she sank down on a chair. A good-natured equerry saw that she was exhausted, and shared with her some apricots and bread which he had wisely put into his pockets. At that moment the door opened; the queen entered; the wearied attendants sprang up; the bread and fruit were hastily concealed. “I found,” says poor Miss Burney, “that our appetites were to be supposed annihilated at the same moment that our strength was to be invincible.” ”

“ Perhaps when I am no more, when the measure of my woes is completed, and the still, silent, unreproaching dust has received my sad remains,-then, perhaps, when accusation is no longer to be feared, nor detection to be dreaded, the voice of equity and the cry of nature may be heard. ”

“ Was it to be expected that George III. and Queen Charlotte should understand the interest of Frances Burney better, or promote it with more zeal, than herself and her father? No deception was practised. The conditions of the house of bondage were set forth with all simplicity. The hook was presented without a bait; the net was spread in sight of the bird, and the naked hook was greedily swallowed, and the silly bird made haste to entangle herself in the net.
It is not strange indeed that an invitation to Court should have caused a fluttering in the bosom of an inexperienced woman. ”

“ Burney not been a great musician and shown by the publication of the first volume of the greatest History of Music the world had yet received, that he was worthy of being placed in the foremost ranks of scientific musicians, he would have run a chance of being placed only a little higher than the musical Cornelys of Soho Square, who gave their concerts, and entertained their friends, and made quite a reputation for some years before bankruptcy overtook them and the precincts of the Fleet became their headquarters. ”

“ The prince regent accepted from him his father's bust, and remarked that ‘it was curious for the father to be the best judge of music and the son the best Greek critic in the kingdom’ (Mme. d'Arblay, Memoirs of Dr. Burney) . He died of apoplexy at Deptford, on 28 Dec. 1817.
Burney commenced his career as a classical critic about 1783, by writing articles in the ‘Monthly Review,’ which had been founded by Rose in conjunction with Cleveland. Burney's connection with this periodical lasted for about three years. His most important contribution was an attack on the ‘Monostrophica’ of Huntingford. ”

“ I shall soon, however,—nay, I am already at your disposal, if you have any commands for me."
"I have always," answered he, "commands for the rich, for I have always compassion for the poor."
"Come to me, then, at Mr Monckton's in Soho-Square," cried she, and hastened into her chair, impatient to end a conference which she saw excited the wonder of the servants, and which also now drew out from the parlour Mr Hobson and Mrs Belfield. She then kissed her hand to Henrietta, and ordered the chairmen to carry her home. ”

“ As we travelled on towards Staines, I could scarcely divest myself of the idea that I was but making again my usual journey to Windsor; and I could with difficulty forbear calling Mrs. Ord Miss Planta during the whole of that well-known road. I did not, indeed, take her maid, who was our third in the coach, for Mr. de Luc, or Mr. Turbulent; but the place she occupied made me think much more of those I so long had had for my vis-a-vis than of herself.
We went on no farther than to Bagshot: thirty miles was the extremity of our powers ”

“ They talked a good deal of his late lady; none of them knew her but very slightly, as she was remarkably reserved. “More than reserved,” cried General Budé, “she was quite cold. Yet she loved London and public life, and Fairly never had any taste for them; in that they were very mal assortis, but in all other things very happy.”
“Yes,” cried Colonel Goldsworthy, “and how shall we give praise enough to a man that would be happy himself, and make214 his wife so too, for all that difference of opinion? ”

“ I am rude in the arts of palaces, and can ill bear comparison with those whose calling from their youth up has been to flatter and to sue. Have I, then, two lives, that, after I have wasted one in the service of others, there may yet remain to me a second, which I may live unto myself?”
Now and then, indeed, events occurred which disturbed the wretched monotony of Francis Burney's life. The Court moved from Kew to Windsor, and from Windsor back to Kew. One dull colonel went out of waiting, and another dull colonel came into waiting. ”

“ His professional merit obtained for him the degree of Doctor of Music from the University of Oxford; [4] and his works on subjects connected with art gained for him a place, respectable, though certainly not eminent, among men of letters.
The progress of the mind of Frances Burney, from her ninth to her twenty-fifth year, well deserves to be recorded, When her education had proceeded no further than the hornbook, she lost her mother, and thenceforward she educated herself. Her father appears to have been as bad a father as a very honest, affectionate and sweet-tempered man can well be. ”

“ Should'st thou, in the features of this deserted innocent, trace the resemblance of the wretched Caroline,-should its face bear the marks of its birth, and revive in thy memory the image of its mother, wilt thou not, Belmont, wilt thou not therefore renounce it?-Oh, babe of my fondest affection! for whom already I experience all the tenderness of maternal pity! look not like thy unfortunate mother,-lest the parent, whom the hand of death may spare, shall be snatched from thee by the more cruel means of unnatural antipathy! ”

“ The king, at the instance of Sir George Baker, had consented to sleep in the next apartment, as the queen was ill. For himself, he would listen to nothing. Accordingly, a bed was put up for him, by his own order, in the queen’s second dressing-room, immediately adjoining to the bed-room. He would not be further removed. Miss Goldsworthy was to sit up with her, by the king’s direction.
I would fain have remained in the little dressing-room, on the other side the bed-room, but she would not permit it. She ordered Sandys, her wardrobe-woman, in the place of Mrs. Thielky, to sit up there. ”