“‘Miss such a one—lies buried here,So early wise, and lasting fair,That none, unless her years you told,Thought her a child—or thought her old.’
“‘Miss such a one—lies buried here,So early wise, and lasting fair,That none, unless her years you told,Thought her a child—or thought her old.’
“‘Miss such a one—lies buried here,So early wise, and lasting fair,That none, unless her years you told,Thought her a child—or thought her old.’
“‘Miss such a one—lies buried here,
So early wise, and lasting fair,
That none, unless her years you told,
Thought her a child—or thought her old.’
My father then mentioned Mr. Garrick’s epilogue to Bonduca, which Dr. Johnson called a miserable performance; and which every body agreed to be the worst that Mr. Garrick had ever written.
‘And yet,’ said Mr. Seward, ‘it has been very much admired. But it is in praise of English valour, and so, I suppose, the subject made it popular.’
‘I do not know, Sir,’ said Dr. Johnson, ‘any thing about the subject, for I could not read till I came to any. I got through about half a dozen lines; but for subject, I could observe no other than perpetual dullness. I do not know what is the matter with David. I am afraid he is becoming superannuated; for his prologues and epilogues used to be incomparable.’
“Nothing is so fatiguing,” said Mrs. Thrale, “as the life of a wit. Garrick and Wilkes are the oldest men of their age that I know; for they have both worn themselves out prematurely by being eternally on the rack to entertain others.”
“David, Madam,” said the Doctor, “looks much older than he is, because his face has had double the business of any other man’s. It is never at rest! When he speaks one minute, he has quite a different countenance to that which he assumes the next. I do not believe he ever kept the same look for half an hour together in the whole course of his life. And such a perpetual play of the muscles must certainly wear a man’s face out before his time.”
While I was cordially laughing at this idea, the Doctor, who had probably observed in me some little uneasy trepidation, and now, I suppose, concluded me restored to my usual state, suddenly, though very ceremoniously, as if to begin some acquaintance with me, requested that I would help him to some broccoli. This I did; but when he took it, he put on a face of humorous discontent, and said, ‘Onlythis, Madam?—You would not have helped Mr. Macartney so parsimoniously!’
He affected to utter this in a whisper; but tosee him directly address me, caught the attention of all the table, and every one smiled, though in silence; while I felt so surprised and so foolish! so pleased and so ashamed, that I hardly knew whether he meantmyMr. Macartney, or spoke at random of some other. This, however, he soon put beyond all doubt, by very composedly adding, while contemptuously regarding my imputed parsimony on his plate: “Mr. Macartney, it is true, might have most claim to liberality, poor fellow!—for how, as Tom Brangton shrewdly remarks, should he ever have known what a good dinner was, if he had never come to England?”
Perceiving, I suppose—for it could not be very difficult to discern—the commotion into which this explication put me; and the stifled disposition to a contagious laugh, which was suppressed, not to add to my embarrassment; he quickly, but quietly, went on to a general discourse upon Scotland, descriptive and political; but without point or satire—though I cannot, my dear Mr. Crisp, give you one word of it: not because I have forgotten it—for there is no remembering what we have never heard; but because I could only generally gather the subject. I could not listen to it. I was so confused and perturbedbetween pleasure and vexation—pleasure, indeed, in the approvance of Dr. Johnson! but vexation, and great vexation to find, by the conscious smirks of all around, that I was betrayed to the whole party! while I had only consented to confiding in Mrs. Thrale; all, no doubt, from a mistaken notion that I had merely meant to feel the pulse of the public, and to avow, or to conceal myself, according to its beatings: when heaven knows—and you, my dear Mr. Crisp, know, that I had not the most distant purpose of braving publicity, under success, any more than under failure.
From Scotland, the talk fell, but I cannot tell how, upon some friend of Dr. Johnson’s, of whom I did not catch the name; so I will call him Mr. Three Stars, * * *; of whom Mr. Seward related some burlesque anecdotes, from which Mr. * * * was warmly vindicated by the Doctor.
“Better say no more, Mr. Seward,” cried Mrs. Thrale, “for Mr. * * * is one of the persons that Mr. Johnson will suffer no one to abuse but himself! Garrick is another: for if any creature but himself says a word against Garrick—Mr. Johnson will brow-beat him in a moment.”
“Why, Madam, as to David,” answered theDoctor, very calmly, ‘it is only because they do not know when to abuse and when to praise him; and I will allow no man to speak any ill of David, that he does not deserve. As to * * *,—why really I believe him to be an honest man, too, at the bottom. But, to be sure, he is rather penurious; and he is somewhat mean; and it must be owned he has some degree of brutality; and is not without a tendency to savageness, that cannot well be defended.’
We all laughed, as he could not help doing himself, at such a curious mode of taking up his friend’s justification. And he then related a trait of another friend who had belonged to some club[27]that the Doctor frequented, who, after the first or second night of his admission, desired, as he eat no supper, to be excused paying his share for the collation.
“And was he excused, Sir?” cried my father.
“Yes, Sir; and very readily. No man is angry with another for being inferior to himself. We all admitted his plea publicly—for the gratification of scorning him privately! For my own part, I wasfool enough to constantly pay my share for the wine, which I never tasted. But my poor friend Sir John, it cannot well be denied, was but an unclubbable man.”
How delighted was I to hear this master of languages, this awful, this dreaded lexiphanes, thus sportively and gaily coin burlesque words in social comicality!
I don’t know whether he deigned to watch me, but I caught a glance of his eye that seemed to shew pleasure in perceiving my surprise and diversion, for with increased glee of manner he proceeded.—
“This reminds me of a gentleman and lady with whom I once travelled. I suppose I must call them gentleman and lady, according to form, because they travelled in their own coach and four horses. But, at the first inn where we stopped to water the cattle, the lady called to a waiter for—a pint of ale! And, when it came, she would not taste it, till she had wrangled with the man for not bringing her fuller measure! Now—Madame Duval could not have done a grosser thing!”
A sympathetic simper now ran from mouth to mouth, save to mine, and to that of Dr. Johnson; who gravely pretended to pass off what he hadsaid as if it were a merely accidental reminiscence of some vulgar old acquaintance of his own. And this, as undoubtedly, and most kindly, he projected, prevented any sort of answer that might have made the book a subject of general discourse. And presently afterwards, he started some other topic, which he addressed chiefly to Mr. Thrale. But if you expect me to tell you what it was, you think far more grandly of my powers of attention without, when all within is in a whirl, than I deserve!
Be it, however, what it might, the next time there was a pause, we all observed a sudden play of the muscles in the countenance of the Doctor, that shewed him to be secretly enjoying some ludicrous idea: and accordingly, a minute or two after, he pursed up his mouth, and, in an assumed pert, yet feminine accent, while he tossed up his head to express wonder, he affectedly minced out, “La, Polly!—only think! Miss has danced with a Lord!”
This was resistless to the whole set, and a general, though a gentle laugh, became now infectious; in which, I must needs own to you, I could not, with all my embarrassment, and all my shame, and all my unwillingness to demonstrate my consciousness, helpbeing caught—so indescribably ludicrous and unexpected was a mimicry of Miss Biddy Brangton from Dr. Johnson!
The Doctor, however, with a refinement of delicacy of which I have the deepest sense, never once cast his eyes my way during these comic traits; though those of every body else in the company had scarcely for a moment any other direction.
But imagine my relief and my pleasure, in playfulness such as this from the great literary Leviathan, whom I had dreaded almost as much as I had honoured! How far was I from dreaming of such sportive condescension! He clearly wished to draw the little snail from her cell, and, when once she was out, not to frighten her back. He seems to understand myqueeralities—as some one has called my not liking to be set up for a sign-post—with more leniency than any body else.”
This long article of Evelina, will be closed by copying a brief one upon the same subject, written from memory, by Dr. Burney, so late in his life as the year 1808.
Copied from a Memorandum-book of Dr. Burney’s, writtenin the year 1808, at Bath.
“The literary history of my second daughter, Fanny, now Madame d’Arblay, is singular. She was wholly unnoticed in the nursery for any talents, or quickness of study: indeed, at eight years old she did not know her letters; and her brother, the tar, who in his boyhood had a natural genius for hoaxing, used to pretend to teach her to read; and gave her a book topsy-turvy, which he said she never found out! She had, however, a great deal of invention and humour in her childish sports; and used, after having seen a play in Mrs. Garrick’s box, to take the actors off, and compose speeches for their characters; for she could not read them. But in company, or before strangers, she was silent, backward, and timid, even to sheepishness: and, from her shyness, had such profound gravity and composure of features, that those of my friends who came often to my house, and entered into the different humours of the children, never called Fanny by any other name, from the time she had reached her eleventh year, than The Old Lady.Her first work, Evelina, was written by stealth,in a closet up two pair of stairs, that was appropriated to the younger children as a play room. No one was let into the secret but my third daughter, afterwards Mrs. Phillips; though even to her it was never read till printed, from want of private opportunity. To me, nevertheless, she confidentially owned that she was going, through her brother Charles, to print a little work, but she besought me never to ask to see it. I laughed at her plan, but promised silent acquiescence; and the book had been six months published before I even heard its name; which I learnt at last without her knowledge. But great, indeed, was then my surprise, to find that it was in general reading, and commended in no common manner in the several Reviews of the times. Of this she was unacquainted herself, as she was then ill, and in the country. When I knew its title, I commissioned one of her sisters to procure it for me privately. I opened the first volume with fear and trembling; not having the least idea that, without the use of the press, or any practical knowledge of the world, she could write a book worth reading. The dedication to myself, however, brought tears into my eyes; and before I had read half the first volume I was much surprised, and, I confess,delighted; and most especially with the letters of Mr. Villars. She had always had a great affection for me; had an excellent heart, and a natural simplicity and probity about her that wanted no teaching. In her plays with her sisters, and some neighbour’s children, this straightforward morality operated to an uncommon degree in one so young. There lived next door to me, at that time, in Poland street, and in a private house, a capital hair merchant, who furnished peruques to the judges, and gentlemen of the law. The merchant’s female children and mine, used to play together in the little garden behind the house; and, unfortunately, one day, the door of the wig magazine being left open, they each of them put on one of those dignified ornaments of the head, and danced and jumped about in a thousand antics, laughing till they screamed at their own ridiculous figures. Unfortunately, in their vagaries, one of the flaxen wigs, said by the proprietor to be worth upwards of ten guineas—in those days a price enormous—fell into a tub of water, placed for the shrubs in the little garden, and lost all its gorgon buckle, and was declared by the owner to be totally spoilt. He was extremely angry, and chid very severely his own children;when my little daughter, the old lady, then ten years of age, advancing to him, as I was informed, with great gravity and composure, sedately says; “What signifies talking so much about an accident? The wig is wet, to be sure; and the wig was a good wig, to be sure; but its of no use to speak of it any more; because what’s done can’t be undone.”“Whether these stoical sentiments appeased the enraged peruquier, I know not, but the younkers were stript of their honours, and my little monkies were obliged to retreat without beat of drum, or colours flying.”
“The literary history of my second daughter, Fanny, now Madame d’Arblay, is singular. She was wholly unnoticed in the nursery for any talents, or quickness of study: indeed, at eight years old she did not know her letters; and her brother, the tar, who in his boyhood had a natural genius for hoaxing, used to pretend to teach her to read; and gave her a book topsy-turvy, which he said she never found out! She had, however, a great deal of invention and humour in her childish sports; and used, after having seen a play in Mrs. Garrick’s box, to take the actors off, and compose speeches for their characters; for she could not read them. But in company, or before strangers, she was silent, backward, and timid, even to sheepishness: and, from her shyness, had such profound gravity and composure of features, that those of my friends who came often to my house, and entered into the different humours of the children, never called Fanny by any other name, from the time she had reached her eleventh year, than The Old Lady.
Her first work, Evelina, was written by stealth,in a closet up two pair of stairs, that was appropriated to the younger children as a play room. No one was let into the secret but my third daughter, afterwards Mrs. Phillips; though even to her it was never read till printed, from want of private opportunity. To me, nevertheless, she confidentially owned that she was going, through her brother Charles, to print a little work, but she besought me never to ask to see it. I laughed at her plan, but promised silent acquiescence; and the book had been six months published before I even heard its name; which I learnt at last without her knowledge. But great, indeed, was then my surprise, to find that it was in general reading, and commended in no common manner in the several Reviews of the times. Of this she was unacquainted herself, as she was then ill, and in the country. When I knew its title, I commissioned one of her sisters to procure it for me privately. I opened the first volume with fear and trembling; not having the least idea that, without the use of the press, or any practical knowledge of the world, she could write a book worth reading. The dedication to myself, however, brought tears into my eyes; and before I had read half the first volume I was much surprised, and, I confess,delighted; and most especially with the letters of Mr. Villars. She had always had a great affection for me; had an excellent heart, and a natural simplicity and probity about her that wanted no teaching. In her plays with her sisters, and some neighbour’s children, this straightforward morality operated to an uncommon degree in one so young. There lived next door to me, at that time, in Poland street, and in a private house, a capital hair merchant, who furnished peruques to the judges, and gentlemen of the law. The merchant’s female children and mine, used to play together in the little garden behind the house; and, unfortunately, one day, the door of the wig magazine being left open, they each of them put on one of those dignified ornaments of the head, and danced and jumped about in a thousand antics, laughing till they screamed at their own ridiculous figures. Unfortunately, in their vagaries, one of the flaxen wigs, said by the proprietor to be worth upwards of ten guineas—in those days a price enormous—fell into a tub of water, placed for the shrubs in the little garden, and lost all its gorgon buckle, and was declared by the owner to be totally spoilt. He was extremely angry, and chid very severely his own children;when my little daughter, the old lady, then ten years of age, advancing to him, as I was informed, with great gravity and composure, sedately says; “What signifies talking so much about an accident? The wig is wet, to be sure; and the wig was a good wig, to be sure; but its of no use to speak of it any more; because what’s done can’t be undone.”
“Whether these stoical sentiments appeased the enraged peruquier, I know not, but the younkers were stript of their honours, and my little monkies were obliged to retreat without beat of drum, or colours flying.”
From the very day of this happy inauguration of his daughter at Streatham, the Doctor had the parental gratification of seeing her as flatteringly greeted there as himself. So vivacious, indeed, was the partiality towards her of its inhabitants, that they pressed him to make over to them all the time he could spare her from her home; and appropriated an apartment as sacredly for her use, when she could occupy it, as another, far more deservedly, though not more cordially, had, many years previously, been held sacred for Dr. Johnson.
The social kindness for both father and daughter, of Mrs. Thrale, was of the most endearing nature; trusting, confidential, affectionate. She had a sweetness of manner, and an activity of service for those she loved, that could ill be appreciated by others; for though copiously flattering in her ordinary address to strangers, because always desirous of universal suffrage, she spoke of individuals in general with sarcasm; and of the world at large with sovereign contempt.
Flighty, however, not malignant, was her sarcasm; and ludicrous more frequently than scornful, her contempt. She wished no one ill. She would have done any one good; but she could put no restraint upon wit that led to a brilliant point, or that was productive of laughing admiration: though her epigram once pronounced, she thought neither of that nor of its object any more; and was just as willing to be friends with a person whom she had held up to ridicule, as with one whom she had laboured to elevate by panegyric.
Her spirits, in fact, rather ruled than exhilarated her; and were rather her guides than her support. Not that she was a child of nature. She knew the world, and gaily boasted that she had studied mankindin what she called its most prominent school-electioneering. She was rather, therefore, from her scoff of all consequences, a child of witty irreflection.
The first name on the list of the Streatham coterie at this time, was that which, after Dr. Johnson’s, was the first, also, in the nation, Edmund Burke. But his visits now, from whatever cause, were so rare, that Dr. Burney never saw him in the Streatham constellation, save as making one amongst the worthies whom the pencil of Sir Joshua Reynolds had caught from all mundane meanderings, to place there as a fixed star.
Next ranked Sir Joshua Reynolds himself, and Mr. Garrick.
Dr. Goldsmith, who had been a peculiar favourite in the set, as much, perhaps, for his absurdities as for his genius, was already gone; though still, and it may be from this double motive, continually missed and regretted: for what, in a chosen coterie, could be more amusing,—many as are the things that might be more edifying,—than gathering knowledge and original ideas in one moment, from the man who the next, by the simplicity of his egotism, expanded every mouth by the merriment of ridicule?
Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Boscowen, Mrs. Crewe, Lord Loughborough, Mr. Dunning,[28]Lord Mulgrave, Lord Westcote, Sir Lucas and Mr. Pepys[29]Major Holroyd,[30]Mrs. Hinchcliffe, Mrs. Porteus, Miss Streatfield, Miss Gregory,[31]Dr. Lort, the Bishops of London and Peterborough (Porteus and Hinchcliffe), with a longet cæteraof visitors less marked, filled up the brilliant catalogue of the spirited associates of Streatham.
But the most intimate in the house, amongst the Wits, from being the personal favourite of Mr. Thrale, was Mr. Murphy; who, for gaiety of spirits, powers of dramatic effect, stories of strong humour and resistless risibility, was nearly unequalled: and they were coupled with politeness of address, gentleness of speech, and well bred, almost courtly, demeanour.
He was a man of great erudition,[32]without one particle of pedantry;and a stranger not only to spleen and malevolence, but the happiest promoter of convivial hilarity.
With what pleasure, and what pride, does the editor copy, from an ancient diary, the following words that passed between Dr. Johnson and Mr. Murphy, relative to Dr. Burney, upon the first meeting of the editor with Mr. Murphy at Streatham!
Mrs. Thrale was lamenting the sudden disappearance of Dr. Burney, who was just gone to townsans adieu; declaring that he was the most complete male-coquet she knew, for he only gave just enough of his company to make more desired.
“Dr. Burney,” said Mr. Murphy, “is, indeed, a most extraordinary man. I think I do not know such another. He is at home upon all subjects; and upon all is so highly agreeable! I look upon him as a wonderful man.”
“I love Burney!” cried Dr. Johnson, emphatically: “my heart, as I told him—goes out to meet Burney!”
“He is not ungrateful, Sir,” cried the Doctor’s bairne, “for heartily indeed does he love you!”
“Does he, Madam?” said the Doctor, looking at her earnestly: “I am surprised at that!”
“And why, Sir?—Why should you have doubted it?”
“Because, Madam,” answered he, gravely, “Dr. Burney is a man for every body to love. It is but natural to lovehim!”
He paused, as if with an idea of a self-conceived contrast not gaifying; but he soon cheerfully added, “I question if there be in the world such another man, altogether, for mind, intelligence, and manners, as Dr. Burney.”
Dr. Johnson, at this time, was engaged in writing his Lives of the Poets; a work, to him, so light and easy, that it never robbed his friends of one moment of the time that he would, otherwise, have spared to their society. Lives, however, strictly speaking, they are not; he merely employed in them such materials, with respect to biography, as he had already at hand, without giving himself any trouble in researches for what might be new, or unknown; though he gladly accepted any that were offered to him, if well authenticated, The critical investigations alone he considered as his business. He himself never named them but as prefaces. No man held in nobler scorn, a promise that out-went performance.
The ease and good-humour with which he fulfilled this engagement, made the present a moment peculiarly propitious for the opening acquaintance with him of the new, and by no means very hardened author; for whose terrors of public notice he had a mercy the most indulgent. He quickly saw that—whether wise or not—they were true; and soothed them without raillery or reprehension; though in this he stood nearly alone! Her fears of him, therefore, were soon softened off by his kindness; or dispelled by her admiration.
The friendship with which so early he had honoured the father, was gently and at once, with almost unparalleled partiality, extended to the daughter: and, in truth, the whole current of his intercourse with both was as unruffled by storm as it was enlightened by wisdom.
While this charming work was in its progress, when only the Thrale family and its nearly adopted guests, the two Burneys, were assembled, Dr. Johnson would frequently produce one of its proof sheets to embellish the breakfast table, which was always in the library; and was, certainly, the most sprightly and agreeable meeting of the day; for then, as no strangers were present to stimulate exertion, orprovoke rivalry, argument was not urged on by the mere spirit of victory; it was instigated only by such truisms as could best bring forth that conflict ofprosandconswhich elucidates opposing opinions. Wit was not flashed with the keen sting of satire; yet it elicited not less gaiety from sparkling with an unwounding brilliancy, which brightened without inflaming, every eye, and charmed without tingling, every ear.
These proof sheets Mrs. Thrale was permitted to read aloud; and the discussions to which they led were in the highest degree entertaining. Dr. Burney wistfully desired to possess one of them; but left to his daughter the risk of the petition. A hint, however, proved sufficient, and was understood not alone with compliance, but vivacity. Boswell, Dr. Johnson said, had engaged Frank Barber, his negro servant, to collect and preserve all the proof sheets; but though it had not been without the knowledge, it was without the order or the interference of their author: to the present solicitor, therefore, willingly and without scruple, he now offered an entire life; adding, with a benignant smile, “Choose your poet!”
Without scruple, also, was the acceptance; and,without hesitation, the choice was Pope. And that not merely because, next to Shakespeare himself, Pope draws human characters the most veridically, perhaps, of any poetic delineator; but for yet another reason. Dr. Johnson composed with so ready an accuracy, that he sent his copy to the press unread; reserving all his corrections for the proof sheets:[33]and, consequently, as not even Dr. Johnson could read twice without ameliorating some passages, his proof sheets were at times liberally marked with changes; and, as the Museum copy of Pope’s Translation of the Iliad, from which Dr. Johnson has given many examples, contains abundant emendations by Pope, the Memorialist secured at once, on the same page, the marginal alterations and second thoughts of that great author, and of his great biographer.
When the book was published, Dr. Johnson brought to Streatham a complete set, handsomely bound, of the Works of the Poets, as well as his own Prefaces, to present to Mr. and Mrs. Thrale. And then, telling this Memorialist that to the King, and to the chiefs of Streatham alone he could offer
so large a tribute, he most kindly placed before her a bound copy of his own part of the work; in the title page of which he gratified her earnest request by writing her name, and “From the Author.”
After which, at her particular solicitation, he gave her a small engraving of his portrait from the picture of Sir Joshua Reynolds. And while, some time afterwards, she was examining it at a distant table, Dr. Johnson, in passing across the room, stopt to discover by what she was occupied; which he no sooner discerned, than he began see-sawing for a moment or two in silence; and then, with a ludicrous half laugh, peeping over her shoulder, he called out: “Ah ha!—Sam Johnson!—I see thee!—and an ugly dog thou art!”
He even extended his kindness to a remembrance of Mr. Bewley, the receiver and preserver of the wisp of a Bolt Court hearth-broom, as a relic of the Author of the Rambler; which anecdote Dr. Burney had ventured to confess: and Dr. Johnson now, with his compliments, sent a set of the Prefaces to St. Martin’s-street, directed,
“For the Broom Gentleman:”
which Mr. Bewley received with rapturous gratitude.
Dr. Johnson wrote nothing that was so immediatelypopular as his Lives of the Poets. Such a subject was of universal attraction, and he treated it with a simplicity that made it of universal comprehension. In all that belonged to classical criticism, he had a facility so complete, that to speak or to write produced immediately the same clear and sagacious effect. His pen was as luminous as his tongue, and his tongue was as correct as his pen.
Yet those—and there are many—who estimate these Prefaces as the best of his works, must surely so judge them from a species of mental indolence, that prefers what is easiest of perusal to what is most illuminating: for rich as are these Prefaces in ideas and information, their subjects have so long been familiar to every English reader, that they require no stretch of intellect, or exercise of reflection, to lead him, without effort, to accompany the writer in his annotations and criticisms. The Rambler, on the contrary, embodies a course equally new of Thought and of Expression; the development of which cannot always be foreseen, even by the deepest reasoner and the keenest talents, because emanating from original genius. To make acquaintance, therefore, with the Rambler, the general perusermust pause, occasionally, to think as well as to read; and to clear away sundry mists of prejudice, or ignorance, ere he can keep pace with the sublime author, when the workings of his mind, his imagination, and his knowledge, are thrown upon mankind.
The warm and venerating attachment of Dr. Burney to Mr. Crisp, which occasional discourse and allusions had frequently brought forward, impressed the whole Thrale family with a high opinion of the character and endowments of that excelling man. And when they found, also, that Mr. Crisp had as animated a votary in so much younger a person as their new guest; and that this enthusiasm was general throughout the Doctor’s house, they earnestly desired to view and to know a man of such eminent attraction; and gave to Dr. Burney a commission to bring on the acquaintance.
It was given, however, in vain. Mr. Crisp had no longer either health or spirit of enterprize for so formidable, however flattering, a new connexion; and inexorably resisted every overture for a meeting.
But Mrs. Thrale, all alive for whatever was piquantand promising, grew so bewitched by the delight with which her new young ally, to whom she became daily more attached and more attaching, dilated on the rare perfections ofDaddy Crisp; and the native and innocent pleasures of Liberty Hall, Chesington, that she started the plan of a little excursion for taking the premises by surprise. And Dr. Burney, certain that two such singularly accomplished persons could not meet but to their mutual gratification; sanctioned the scheme; Mr. Thrale desired to form his own judgment of so uncommon a Recluse; and the Doctor’s pupil felt a juvenile curiosity to make one in the group.
The party took place; but its pleasure was nearly marred by the failure of the chief spring which would have put into motion, and set to harmony, the various persons who composed its drama.
Dr. Burney, from multiplicity of avocations, was forced, when the day arrived, to relinquish his share in the little invasion; which cast a damp upon the gaiety of the project, both to the besieged and the besiegers. Yet Mr. Crisp and Mrs. Thrale met with mutual sentiments of high esteem, though the genius of their talents was dissimilar; Mrs. Thrale delighted in bursting forth with sudden flashes of wit,which, carelessly, she left to their own consequences; while Mr. Crisp, though awake to her talents, and sensible of their rarity and their splendour, thought with Dr. Fordyce, that in woman the retiring graces are the most attractive.[34]
Nevertheless, in understanding, acuteness, and parts, there was so much in common between them, that sincere admiration grew out of the interview; though with too little native congeniality to mellow into confidence, or ripen into intimacy.
Praise, too, that dangerous herald of expectation, is often a friend more perilous than any enemy; and both had involuntarily looked for a something indefinable which neither of them found; yet both had too much justness of comprehension to conclude that such a something did not exist, because no opportunity for its development had offered in the course of a few hours.
What most, in this visit, surprised Mrs. Thrale with pleasure, was the elegance of Mr. Crisp in language and manners; because that, from the Hermit of Chesington, she had not expected.
And what most to Mr. Crisp caused a similarpleasure, was the courteous readiness, and unassuming good-humour, with which Mrs. Thrale received the inartificial civilities of Kitty Cooke, and the old-fashioned but cordial hospitality of Mrs. Hamilton; for these, from a celebrated wit, moving in the sphere of high life, he also in his turn had not expected.
The Thrales, however, were all much entertained by the place itself, which they prowled over with gay curiosity. Not a nook or corner; nor a dark passage “leading to nothing;” nor a hanging tapestry of prim demoiselles, and grim cavaliers; nor a tall canopied bed tied up to the ceiling; nor japan cabinets of two or three hundred drawers of different dimensions; nor an oaken corner cupboard, carved with heads, thrown in every direction, save such as might let them fall on men’s shoulders; nor a window stuck in some angle close to the ceiling of a lofty slip of a room; nor a quarter of a staircase, leading to some quaint unfrequented apartment; nor a wooden chimney-piece, cut in diamonds, squares, and round nobs, surmounting another of blue and white tiles, representing,vis à vis, a dog and a cat, as symbols of married life and harmony—missed their scrutinizing eyes.
They even visited the attics, where they were much diverted by the shapes as well as by the quantity of rooms, which, being of all sorts of forms that could increase their count, were far too heterogeneous of outline to enable the minutest mathematician to give them any technical denomination.
They peeped, also, through little window casements, of which the panes of glass were hardly so wide as their clumsy frames, to survey long ridges of lead that entwined the motley spiral roofs of the multitude of separate cells, rather than chambers, that composed the top of the mansion; and afforded from it a view, sixteen miles in circumference, of the adjacent country.
Mr. Crisp judged it fitting to return the received civility of a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, whatever might be the inconvenience to his health; or whatever his disinclination to such an exertion. From habitual politeness he was of the old school in the forms of good breeding; though perfectly equal to even the present march of intellect in the new one, if to the present day he had lived,—and had deemed it a march of improvement. He was the last man not to be aware that nothing stands still. All naturein its living mass, all art in its concentrated aggregate, advances or retrogrades.
He took the earliest day that one of his few gout intervals put at his own disposal, to make his appearance at Streatham; having first written a most earnest injunction to Dr. Burney to give him there the meeting. The Memorialist was then at Chesington, and had the happiness to accompany Mr. Crisp; by whom she was to be left at her new third home.
Dr. Johnson, in compliment to his friend Dr. Burney, and by no means incurious himself to see the hermit of Chesington, immediately descended to meet Mr. Crisp; and to aid Mrs. Thrale, who gave him a vivacious reception, to do the honours of Streatham.
The meeting, nevertheless, to the great chagrin of Dr. Burney, produced neither interest nor pleasure: for Dr. Johnson, though courteous in demeanour and looks, with evident solicitude to shew respect to Mr. Crisp, was grave and silent; and whenever Dr. Johnson did not make the charm of conversation, he only marred it by his presence; from the general fear he incited, that if he spoke not, he might listen; and that if he listened—he might reprove.
Ease, therefore, was wanting; without which nothing in society can be flowing or pleasing. The Chesingtonian conceived, that he had lived too long away from the world to start any subject that might not, to the Streathamites, be trite and out of date; and the Streathamites believed that they had lived in it so much longer, that the current talk of the day might, to the Chesingtonian, seem unintelligible jargon: while each hoped that the sprightly Dr. Burney would find the golden mean by which both parties might be brought into play.
But Dr. Burney, who saw in the kind looks and complacency of Dr. Johnson intentional goodwill to the meeting, flattered himself that the great philologist was but waiting for an accidental excitement, to fasten upon some topic of general use or importance, and then to describe or discuss it, with the full powers of his great mind.
Dr. Johnson, however, either in health or in spirits was, unfortunately, oppressed; and, for once, was more desirous to hear than to be heard.
Mr. Crisp, therefore, lost, by so unexpected a taciturnity, this fair and promising opportunity for developing and enjoying the celebrated and extraordinary colloquial abilities of Dr. Johnson; andfinished the visit with much disappointment; lowered also, and always, in his spirits by parting from his tenderly attached young companion.
Dr. Burney had afterwards, however, the consolation to find that Mr. Crisp had impressed even Dr. Johnson with a strong admiration of his knowledge and capacity; for in speaking of him in the evening to Mr. Thrale, who had been absent, the Doctor emphatically said, “Sir, it is a very singular thing to see a man with all his powers so much alive, when he has so long shut himself up from the world. Such readiness of conception, quickness of recollection, facility of following discourse started by others, in a man who has long had only the past to feed upon, are rarely to be met with. Now, for my part,” added he, laughing, “thatIshould be ready, or even universal, is no wonder; for my dear little mistress here,” turning to Mrs. Thrale, “keeps all my faculties in constant play.”
Mrs. Thrale then said that nothing, to her, was so striking, as that a man who so long had retired from the world, should so delicately have preserved its forms and courtesies, as to appear equally well bred with any elegant member of society who had not quitted it for a week.
Inexpressibly gratifying to Dr. Burney was the award of such justice, from such judges, to his best and dearest loved friend.
From this time forward, Dr. Burney could scarcely recover his daughter from Streatham, even for a few days, without a friendly battle. A sportively comic exaggeration of Dr. Johnson’s upon this flattering hostility was current at Streatham, made in answer to Dr. Burney’s saying, upon a resistance to her departure for St. Martin’s-street in which Dr. Johnson had strongly joined, “I must really take her away, Sir, I must indeed; she has been from home so long.”
“Long? no, Sir! I do not think it long,” cried the Doctor, see-sawing, and seizing both her hands, as if purporting to detain her: “Sir! I would have her Always come ... and Never go!—”
When next, after this adjuration, Dr. Burney took the Memorialist back to Streatham, he found there, recently arrived from Scotland, Mr. Boswell; whose sprightly Corsican tour, and heroic, almostQuixotic pursuit of General Paoli, joined to the tour to the Hebrides with Dr. Johnson, made him an object himself of considerable attention.
He spoke the Scotch accent strongly, though by no means so as to affect, even slightly, his intelligibility to an English ear. He had an odd mock solemnity of tone and manner, that he had acquired imperceptibly from constantly thinking of and imitating Dr. Johnson; whose own solemnity, nevertheless, far from mock, was the result of pensive rumination. There was, also, something slouching in the gait and dress of Mr. Boswell, that wore an air, ridiculously enough, of purporting to personify the same model. His clothes were always too large for him; his hair, or wig, was constantly in a state of negligence; and he never for a moment sat still or upright upon a chair. Every look and movement displayed either intentional or involuntary imitation. Yet certainly it was not meant as caricature; for his heart, almost even to idolatory, was in his reverence of Dr. Johnson.
Dr. Burney was often surprised that this kind of farcical similitude escaped the notice of the Doctor; but attributed his missing it to a high superiority over any such suspicion, as much as to his near-sightedness;for fully was Dr. Burney persuaded, that had any detection of such imitation taken place, Dr. Johnson, who generally treated Mr. Boswell as a school boy, whom, without the smallest ceremony, he pardoned or rebuked, alternately, would so indignantly have been provoked, as to have instantaneously inflicted upon him some mark of his displeasure. And equally he was persuaded that Mr. Boswell, however shocked and even inflamed in receiving it, would soon, from his deep veneration, have thought it justly incurred; and, after a day or two of pouting and sullenness, would have compromised the matter by one of his customary simple apologies, of “Pray, Sir, forgive me!”
Dr. Johnson, though often irritated by the officious importunity of Mr. Boswell, was really touched by his attachment. It was indeed surprising, and even affecting, to remark the pleasure with which this great man accepted personal kindness, even from the simplest of mankind; and the grave formality with which he acknowledged it even to the meanest. Possibly it was what he most prized, because what he could least command; for personal partiality hangs upon lighter and slighter qualities than those which earn solid approbation; but of this, if he hadleast command, he had also least want: his towering superiority of intellect elevating him above all competitors, and regularly establishing him, wherever he appeared, as the first Being of the society.
As Mr. Boswell was at Streatham only upon a morning visit, a collation was ordered, to which all were assembled. Mr. Boswell was preparing to take a seat that he seemed, by prescription, to consider as his own, next to Dr. Johnson; but Mr. Seward, who was present, waived his hand for Mr. Boswell to move further on, saying, with a smile, “Mr. Boswell, that seat is Miss Burney’s.”
He stared, amazed: the asserted claimant was new and unknown to him, and he appeared by no means pleased to resign his prior rights. But, after looking round for a minute or two, with an important air of demanding the meaning of this innovation, and receiving no satisfaction, he reluctantly, almost resentfully, got another chair; and placed it at the back of the shoulder of Dr. Johnson; while this new and unheard of rival quietly seated herself as if not hearing what was passing; for she shrunk from the explanation that she feared might ensue, as she saw a smile stealing over every countenance,that of Dr. Johnson himself not excepted, at the discomfiture and surprise of Mr. Boswell.
Mr. Boswell, however, was so situated as not to remark it in the Doctor; and of every one else, when in that presence, he was unobservant, if not contemptuous. In truth, when he met with Dr. Johnson, he commonly forbore even answering anything that was said, or attending to any thing that went forward, lest he should miss the smallest sound from that voice to which he paid such exclusive, though merited homage. But the moment that voice burst forth, the attention which it excited in Mr. Boswell amounted almost to pain. His eyes goggled with eagerness; he leant his ear almost on the shoulder of the Doctor; and his mouth dropt open to catch every syllable that might be uttered: nay, he seemed not only to dread losing a word, but to be anxious not to miss a breathing; as if hoping from it, latently, or mystically, some information.
But when, in a few minutes, Dr. Johnson, whose eye did not follow him, and who had concluded him to be at the other end of the table, said something gaily and good-humouredly, by the appellation of Bozzy; and discovered, by the sound of the reply,that Bozzy had planted himself, as closely as he could, behind and between the elbows of the new usurper and his own, the Doctor turned angrily round upon him, and, clapping his hand rather loudly upon his knee, said, in a tone of displeasure, “What do you do there, Sir?—Go to the table, Sir!”
Mr. Boswell instantly, and with an air of affright, obeyed: and there was something so unusual in such humble submission to so imperious a command, that another smile gleamed its way across every mouth, except that of the Doctor and of Mr. Boswell; who now, very unwillingly, took a distant seat.
But, ever restless when not at the side of Dr. Johnson, he presently recollected something that he wished to exhibit, and, hastily rising, was running away in its search; when the Doctor, calling after him, authoritatively said: “What are you thinking of, Sir? Why do you get up before the cloth is removed?—Come back to your place, Sir!”
Again, and with equal obsequiousness, Mr. Boswell did as he was bid; when the Doctor, pursing his lips, not to betray rising risibility, muttered halfto himself: “Running about in the middle of meals!—One would take you for a Brangton!—”
“A Brangton, Sir?” repeated Mr. Boswell, with earnestness; “What is a Brangton, Sir?”
“Where have you lived, Sir,” cried the Doctor, laughing, “and what company have you kept, not to know that?”
Mr. Boswell now, doubly curious, yet always apprehensive of falling into some disgrace with Dr. Johnson, said, in a low tone, which he knew the Doctor could not hear, to Mrs. Thrale: “Pray, Ma’am, what’s a Brangton?—Do me the favour to tell me?—Is it some animal hereabouts?”
Mrs. Thrale only heartily laughed, but without answering: as she saw one of her guests uneasily fearful of an explanation. But Mr. Seward cried, “I’ll tell you, Boswell,—I’ll tell you!—if you will walk with me into the paddock: only let us wait till the table is cleared; or I shall be taken for a Brangton, too!”
They soon went off together; and Mr. Boswell, no doubt, was fully informed of the road that had led to the usurpation by which he had thus been annoyed. But the Brangton fabricator took care to mount toher chamber ere they returned; and did not come down till Mr. Boswell was gone.
Dr. Burney had no greater enjoyment of the little leisure he could tear from his work and his profession, than that which he could dedicate to Dr. Johnson; and he now, at the Doctor’s most earnest invitation, carried this Memorialist to Bolt Court, to pay a visit to the blind poetess, Anna Williams.
They were received by Dr. Johnson with a kindness that irradiated his austere and studious features into the most pleased and pleasing benignity. Such, indeed, was the gentleness, as well as warmth, of his partiality for this father and daughter, that their sight seemed to give him a new physiognomy.[35]
It was in the apartment—a parlour—dedicated to Mrs. Williams, that the Doctor was in this ready attendance to play the part of the master of theceremonies, in presenting his new guest to his ancient friend and ally. Anna Williams had been a favourite of his wife, in whose life-time she had frequently resided under his roof. The merit of her poetical talents, and the misfortune of her blindness, are generally known; to these were now super-added sickness, age, and infirmity: yet such was the spirit of her character, that to make a new acquaintance thus rather singularly circumstanced, seemed to her almost an event of moment; and she had incessantly solicited the Doctor to bring it to bear.
Her look, air, voice, and extended hands of reception, evinced the most eager, though by no means obtrusive curiosity. Her manner, indeed, shewed her to be innately a gentlewoman; and her conversation always disclosed a cultivated as well as thinking mind.
Dr. Johnson never appeared to more advantage than in the presence of this blind poetess; for the obligations under which he had placed her, were such as he sincerely wished her to feel with the pleasure of light, not the oppression of weighty gratitude. All his best sentiments, therefore, were strenuously her advocates, to curb what was irritable in his temper by the generosity of his principles; and bythe congeniality, in such points, of their sensibility.
His attentions to soften the burthen of her existence, from the various bodily diseases that aggravated the evil of her loss of sight, were anxious and unceasing; and there was no way more prominent to his favour than that of seeking to give any solace, or shewing any consideration to Anna Williams.
Anna, in return, honouring his virtues and abilities, grateful for his goodness, and intimately aware of his peculiarities, made it the pride of her life to receive every moment he could bestow upon her, with cordial affection; and exactly at his own time and convenience; to soothe him when he was disposed to lament with her the loss of his wife; and to procure for him whatever was in her power of entertainment or comfort.
This introduction was afterwards followed, through Dr. Johnson’s zealous intervention, by sundry other visits from the Memorialist; and though minor circumstances made her compliance rather embarrassing, it could not have been right, and it would hardly have been possible, to resist an entreaty of Dr. Johnson. And every fresh interview at his own home showed the steady humanity of his assiduity to enliven his poorblind companion; as well as to confer the most essential services upon two other distressed inmates of his charitable house, Mrs. Desmoulins, the indigent daughter of Dr. Swinfen, a physician who had been godfather to Dr. Johnson; and Mr. Levet, a poor old ruined apothecary, both of whom he housed and supported with the most exemplary Christian goodness.
Dr. Burney was daily more enchanted at the kindness with which his daughter was honoured by Dr. Johnson; but neither parental exaltation, nor the smiles of fortune; nor the enticing fragrance of those flowery paths which so often allure from vigorous labour to wasting repose, the votary of rising fame; could even for a day, or scarcely for an hour, draw the ardent and indefatigable musical historian to any voluntary relaxation from his self-appointed task; to which he constantly devoted every moment that he could snatch from the multitudinous calls upon his over-charged time.
But the year that followed this still rising tide of pleasure and prosperity to Dr. Burney, 1779, opened to him with the personal loss of a friend whom the world might vainly, perhaps, be challenged to replace, for agreeability, delight, and conviviality, Garrick!—the inimitable David Garrick! who left behind him all previous eminence in his profession beyond reach of comparison; save the Roscius of Rome, to whose Ciceronian celebrity we owe the adoption of an appropriate nomenclature, which at no period could have been found in our own dominions:—Garrick, so long the darling and unrivalled favourite of the public; who possessed resistlessly, where he chose to exert it, the power of pleasing, winning, and exhilarating all around him:—Garrick, who, in the words of Dr. Johnson, seemed “Formed to gladden life,” was taken from his resplendent worldly fame, and admiring worldly friends, by “that stroke of death,” says Dr. Johnson, “which eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the stock of harmless pleasure.”
He had already retired from the stage, and retired without waiting for failing powers to urge, or precipitate his retreat; for still hisunequalled animal spirits, gaily baffling the assaults of age, had such extraordinary exuberance as to supply and support both body and mind at once; still clear, varying, and penetrating, was his voice; still full of intelligence or satire, of disdain, of rage, or of delight, was the fire, the radiance, the eloquence of his eye; still made up at will, of energy or grace, of command or supplication, was his form, and were his attitudes; his face alone—ah!“There was the rub!—” his face alone was the martyr of time: or rather, his forehead and cheeks; for his eyes and his countenance were still beaming with recent, though retiring beauty.
But the wear and tear of his forehead and cheeks, which, as Dr. Johnson had said, made sixty years in Garrick seem seventy, had rendered them so wrinkled, from an unremitting play of expression, off as well as on the stage, that, when he found neither paint nor candle-light, nor dress nor decoration, could conceal those lines, or smooth those furrows which were ploughing his complexion; he preferred to triumph, even in foregoing his triumphs, by plunging, through voluntary impulse, from the dazzling summit to which he had mounted, and heroicallypronouncing his Farewell!—amidst the universal cry, echoed and re-echoing all around him, of “Stop, Garrick, stop!—yet a little longer stop!”
A brief account of the last sight of this admired and much loved friend is thus given in a manuscript memoir of Dr. Burney.
“I called at his door, with anxious inquiries, two days before he expired, and was admitted to his chamber; but though I saw him, he did not seem to see me,—or any earthly thing! His countenance that had never remained a moment the same in conversation, now appeared as fixed and as inanimate as a block of marble; and he had already so far relinquished the world, as I was afterwards told by Mr. Wallace, his executor, that nothing that was said or done that used to interest him the most keenly, had any effect upon his muscles; or could extort either a word or a look from him for several days previously to his becoming a corpse.”
“I called at his door, with anxious inquiries, two days before he expired, and was admitted to his chamber; but though I saw him, he did not seem to see me,—or any earthly thing! His countenance that had never remained a moment the same in conversation, now appeared as fixed and as inanimate as a block of marble; and he had already so far relinquished the world, as I was afterwards told by Mr. Wallace, his executor, that nothing that was said or done that used to interest him the most keenly, had any effect upon his muscles; or could extort either a word or a look from him for several days previously to his becoming a corpse.”
Dr. Burney, in the same carriage with Whitehead, the poet laureate, the erudite Mr. Beauclerk, and Mr. Wallace, the executor, attended the last remains of this celebrated public character to their honourable interment in Westminster Abbey.
Long, and almost universally felt was this loss: to Dr. Burney it was a deprivation of lasting regret. In his doggrel chronology he has left the following warm testimony of his admiration.
1779.