Part 6

If ’tis meet to fee or bribe A leech of th’ Æsculapius tribe, We Hepburn have, who’s wise as Socrates, And deep in physic as Hippocrates. Or, if ’tis meet to take the air, You borne shall be on horse or mare; And, ’gainst all chances to provide, I’ll be your faithful ’squire and guide. If unadulterate wine be good To glad the heart, and mend the blood, We that in plenty boast at Lynn, Would make with pleasure Bacchus grin. Should nerves auricular demand A head profound, and cunning hand, The charms of music to display, Pray,—cannot _I_ compose and play? And strains to your each humour suit On organ, violin, or flute?

If these delights you deem too transient, We modern authors have, or antient, Which, while I’ve lungs from phthisicks freed, To thee with rapture, sweet, I’ll read. If Homer’s bold, inventive fire, Or Virgil’s art, you most admire; If Pliny’s eloquence and ease, Or Ovid’s flowery fancy please; In fair array they marshall’d stand, Most humbly waiting your command. To humanize and mend the heart, Our serious hours we’ll set apart.

* * * * *

We’ll learn to separate right from wrong, Through Pope’s mellifluous moral song. If wit and humour be our drift, We’ll laugh at knaves and fools with Swift. To know the world, its follies see, Ourselves from ridicule to free, To whom for lessons shall we run, But to the pleasing Addison? Great Bacon’s learning; Congreve’s wit, By turns thy humour well may hit. How sweet, original, and strong, How high the flights of Dryden’s song! He, though so often careless found, Lifts us so high above the ground That we disdain terrestrial things, And scale Olympus while he sings. Among the bards who mount the skies Whoe’er to such a height could rise As Milton? he, to whom ’twas given To plunge to Hell, and mount to Heaven. How few like thee—my soul’s delight! Can follow him in every flight? La Mancha’s knight, on gloomy day, Shall teach our muscles how to play, And at the black fanatic class, We’ll sometimes laugh with Hudibras. When human passions all subside, Where shall we find so sure a guide Through metaphysics’ mazy ground As Locke—scrutator most profound? One bard there still remains in store, And who has him need little more: A bard above my feeble lay; Above what wiser scribes can say. He would the secret thoughts reveal Of all the human mind can feel: None e’er like him in every feature So fair a likeness drew of Nature. No passion swells the mortal breast But what his pencil has exprest: Nor need I tell my heart’s sole queen That Shakespeare is the bard I mean. May heaven, all bounteous in its care, These blessings, and our offspring spare! And while our lives are thus employ’d, No earthly bliss left unenjoy’d, May we—without a sigh or tear— Together finish our career! Together gain another station Without the pangs of separation! And when our souls have travelled far Beyond this little dirty star, Beyond the reach of strife, or noise, To taste celestial, stable joys— O may we still together keep— Or may our death he endless sleep!

“_Lynn Regis, 19th Dec. 1751._”

The wife and the babies were soon now in his arms; and this generous appreciator of the various charms of the one, and kind protector of the infantile feebleness of the other, cast away every remnant of discontent; and devoted himself to his family and profession, with an ardour that left nothing unattempted that seemed within the grasp of industry, and nothing unaccomplished that came within the reach of perseverance.

He had immediately for his pupils the daughters of every house in Lynn, whose chief had the smallest pretensions to belonging to the upper classes of the town; while almost all persons of rank in its vicinity, eagerly sought the assistance of the new professor for polishing the education of their females: and all alike coveted his society for their own information or entertainment.

First amongst those with whom these latter advantages might be reciprocated, stood, as usual, in towns far off from the metropolis, the physicians; who, for general education, learning, science, and politeness, are as frequently the leaders in literature as they are the oracles in health; and who, with the confraternity of the vicar, and the superior lawyer, are commonly the allowed despots of erudition and the belles lettres in provincial circles.

But while amongst the male inhabitants of the town, Mr. Burney associated with many whose understandings, and some few whose tastes, met his own; his wife, amongst the females, was less happy, though not more fastidious. She found them occupied almost exclusively, in seeking who should be earliest in importing from London what was newest and most fashionable in attire; or in vying with each other in giving and receiving splendid repasts; and in struggling to make their every rotation become more and more luxurious.

By no means was this love of frippery, or feebleness of character among the females, peculiar to Lynn: such, ALMOST[12] universally, is the inheritance bequeathed from mother to daughter in small towns at a distance from the metropolis; where there are few suspensive subjects or pursuits of interest, ambition, or literature, that can enlist either imagination or instruction into conversation.

That men, when equally removed from the busy turmoils of cities, or the meditative studies of retirement, to such circumscribed spheres, should manifest more vigour of mind, may not always be owing to possessing it; but rather to their escaping, through the calls of business, that inertness which casts the females upon themselves: for though many are the calls more refined than those of business, there are few that more completely do away with insignificancy.

In the state, however, in which Lynn then was found, Lynn will be found no longer. The tide of ignorance is turned; and not there alone, nor alone in any other small town, but in every village, every hamlet, nay, every cottage in the kingdom; and though mental cultivation is as slowly gradual, and as precarious of circulation, as Genius, o’erleaping all barriers, and disdaining all auxiliaries, is rapid and decisive, still the work of general improvement is advancing so universally, that the dark ages which are rolling away, would soon be lost even to man’s joy at their extirpation, but for the retrospective and noble services of the press, through which their memory—if only to be blasted—must live for ever.

There were two exceptions, nevertheless, to this stagnation of female merit, that were flowing with pellucid clearness.

The first, Mrs. Stephen Allen, has already been mentioned. She was the wife of a wine-merchant of considerable fortune, and of a very worthy character. She was the most celebrated beauty of Lynn, and might have been so of a much larger district, for her beauty was high, commanding, and truly uncommon: and her understanding bore the same description. She had wit at will; spirits the most vivacious and entertaining; and, from a passionate fondness for reading, she had collected stores of knowledge which she was always able, and “nothing loath” to display; and which raised her to as marked a pre-eminence over her townswomen in literary acquirements, as she was raised to exterior superiority from her personal charms.

The other exception, Miss Dorothy Young, was of a different description. She was not only denied beauty either of face or person, but in the first she had various unhappy defects, and in the second she was extremely deformed.

Here, however, ends all that can be said in her disfavour; for her mind was the seat of every virtue that occasion could call into use; and her disposition had a patience that no provocation could even momentarily subdue; though her feelings were so sensitive, that tears started into her eyes at every thing she either saw or heard of mortal sufferings, or of mortal unkindness—to any human creature but herself.

It may easily be imagined that this amiable Dorothy Young, and the elegant and intellectual Mrs. Allen, were peculiar and deeply attached friends.

When a professional call brought Mr. Burney and his wife to this town, that accomplished couple gave a new zest to rational, as well as a new spring to musical, society. Mr. Burney, between business and conviviality, immediately visited almost every house in the county; but his wife, less easily known, because necessarily more domestic, began her Lynn career almost exclusively with Mrs. Allen and Dolly Young, and proved to both an inestimable treasure; Mrs. Allen generously avowing that she set up Mrs. Burney as a model for her own mental improvement; and Dolly Young becoming instinctively the most affectionate, as well as most cultivated of Mrs. Burney’s friends; and with an attachment so fervent and so sincere, that she took charge of the little family upon every occasion of its increase during the nine or ten years of the Lynn residence.[13]

With regard to the extensive neighbourhood, Mr. Burney had soon nothing left to desire in hospitality, friendship, or politeness; and here, as heretofore, he scarcely ever entered a house upon terms of business, without leaving it upon those of intimacy.

The first mansions to which, naturally, his curiosity pointed, and at which his ambition aimed, were those two magnificent structures which stood loftily pre-eminent over all others in the county of Norfolk, Holcomb and Haughton; though neither the nobleness of their architecture, the grandeur of their dimensions, nor the vast expense of their erection, bore any sway in their celebrity, that could compare with what, at that period, they owed to the arts of sculpture and of painting.

HOLCOMB.

At Holcomb, the superb collection of statues, as well as of pictures, could not fail to soon draw thither persons of such strong native taste for all the arts as Mr. Burney and his wife; though, as there were, at that time, which preceded the possession of that fine mansion by the Cokes, neither pupils nor a Male chief, no intercourse beyond that of the civilities of reception on a public day, took place with Mr. Burney and the last very ancient lady of the house of Leicester, to whom Holcomb then belonged.

HAUGHTON HALL.

boasted, at that period, a collection of pictures that not only every lover of painting, but every British patriot in the arts, must lament that it can boast no longer.[14]

It had, however, in the heir and grandson of its founder, Sir Robert Walpole, first Earl of Orford, a possessor of the most liberal cast; a patron of arts and artists; munificent in promoting the prosperity of the first, and blending pleasure with recompense to the second, by the frank equality with which he treated all his guests; and the ease and freedom with which his unaffected good-humour and good sense cheered, to all about him, his festal board.

Far, nevertheless, from meriting unqualified praise was this noble peer; and his moral defects, both in practice and example, were as dangerous to the neighbourhood, of which he ought to have been the guide and protector, as the political corruption of his famous progenitor, the statesman, had been hurtful to probity and virtue, in the courtly circles of his day, by proclaiming, and striving to bring to proof, his nefarious maxim, “that every man has his price.”

At the head of Lord Orford’s table was placed, for the reception of his visitors, a person whom he denominated simply “Patty;” and that so unceremoniously, that all the most intimate of his associates addressed her by the same free appellation.

Those, however, if such there were, who might conclude from this degrading familiarity, that the Patty of Lord Orford was “every body’s Patty,” must soon have been undeceived, if tempted to make any experiment upon such a belief. The peer knew whom he trusted, though he rewarded not the fidelity in which he confided; but the fond, faulty Patty loved him with a blindness of passion, that hid alike from her weak perceptions, her own frailties, and his seductions.

In all, save that blot, which, on earth, must to a female be ever indelible, Patty was good, faithful, kind, friendly, and praise-worthy.

The table of Lord Orford, then commonly called Arthur’s Round Table, assembled in its circle all of peculiar merit that its neighbourhood, or rather that the county produced, to meet there the great, the renowned, and the splendid, who, from their various villas, or the metropolis, visited Haughton Hall.

Mr. Burney was soon one of those whom the penetrating peer selected for a general invitation to his repasts; and who here, as at Wilbury House, formed sundry intimacies, some of which were enjoyed by him nearly through life. Particularly must be mentioned

Mr. Hayes, who was a scholar, a man of sense, and a passionate lover of books and of prints. He had a great and pleasant turn for humour, and a fondness and facility for rhyming so insatiable and irrepressible, that it seemed, like Strife in Spencer’s Faerie Queene, to be always seeking occasion.

Yet, save in speaking of that propensity, Strife and John Hayes ought never to come within the same sentence; for in character, disposition, and conduct, he was a compound of benevolence and liberality.

There was a frankness of so unusual a cast, and a warmth of affection, that seemed so glowing from the heart, in Mr. Hayes for Lord Orford; joined to so strong a resemblance in face and feature, that a belief, if not something beyond, prevailed, that Mr. Hayes was a natural son of Sir Robert Walpole, the first Earl of Orford, and, consequently, a natural uncle of his Lordship’s grandson.

RAINHAM.

To name the several mansions that called for, or welcomed, Mr. Burney, would almost be to make a Norfolk Register. At Rainham Castle he was full as well received by its master, General Lord Townshend, as a guest, as by its lady, the Baroness de Frerrars in her own right, for an instructor; the lady being natively cold and quiet, though well bred and sensible; while the General was warm-hearted, witty, and agreeable; and conceived a liking for Mr. Burney, that was sustained, with only added regard, through all his lordship’s various elevations.

FELBRIG.

But there was no villa to which he resorted with more certainty of finding congenial pleasure, than to Felbrig, where he began an acquaintance of highest esteem and respect with Mr. Windham, father of the Right Honourable Privy Counsellor and orator; with whom, also, long afterwards, he became still more closely connected; and who proved himself just the son that so erudite and elegant a parent would have joyed to have reared, had he lived to behold the distinguished rank in the political and in the learned world to which that son rose; and the admiration which he excited, and the pleasure which he expanded in select society.

WILLIAM BEWLEY.

A name next comes forward that must not briefly be glided by; that of William Bewley; a man for whom Mr. Burney felt the most enlightened friendship that the sympathetic magnetism of similar tastes, humours, and feelings, could inspire.

Mr. Bewley was truly a philosopher, according to the simplest, though highest, acceptation of that word; for his love of wisdom was of that unsophisticated species, that regards learning, science, and knowledge, with whatever delight they may be pursued abstractedly, to be wholly subservient, collectively, to the duties and practice of benevolence.

To this nobleness of soul, which made the basis of his character, he superadded a fund of wit equally rare, equally extraordinary: it was a wit that sparkled from the vivid tints of an imagination as pure as it was bright; untarnished by malice, uninfluenced by spleen, uninstigated by satire. It was playful, original, eccentric: but the depth with which it could have cut, and slashed, and pierced around him, would never have been even surmised, from the urbanity with which he forbore making that missile use of its power, had he not frequently darted out its keenest edge in ridicule against himself.

And not alone in this personal severity did he resemble the self-unsparing Scarron; his outside, though not deformed, was peculiarly unfortunate; and his eyes, though announcing, upon examination, something of his mind, were ill-shaped, and ill set in his head, and singularly small; and no other feature parried this local disproportion; for his mouth, and his under-jaw, which commonly hung open, were displeasing to behold.

The first sight, however, which of so many is the best, was of Mr. Bewley, not only the worst, but the only bad; for no sooner, in the most squeamish, was the revolted eye turned away, than the attracted ear, even of the most fastidious, brought it back, to listen to genuine instruction conveyed through unexpected pleasantry.

This original and high character, was that of an obscure surgeon of Massingham, a small town in the neighbourhood of Haughton Hall. He had been brought up with no advantages, but what laborious toil had worked out of native abilities; and he only subsisted by the ordinary process of rigidly following up the multifarious calls to which, in its provincial practice, his widely diversified profession is amenable.

Yet not wholly in “the desert air,” were his talents doomed to be wasted: they were no sooner spoken of at Haughton Hall, than the gates of that superb mansion were spontaneously flung open, and its Chief proved at once, and permanently remained, his noble patron and kind friend.

LYNN REGIS.

The visits of Mr. Burney to Massingham, and his attachment to its philosopher, contributed, more than any other connection, to stimulate that love and pursuit of knowledge, that urge its votaries to snatch from waste or dissipation those fragments of time, which, by the general herd of mankind, are made over to Lethe, for reading; learning languages; composing music; studying sciences; fathoming the theoretical and mathematical depths of his own art; and seeking at large every species of intelligence to which either chance or design afforded him any clew.

As he could wait upon his country pupils only on horseback, he purchased a mare that so exactly suited his convenience and his wishes, in sure-footedness, gentleness and sagacity, that she soon seemed to him a part of his family: and the welfare and comfort of Peggy became, ere long, a matter of kind interest to all his house.

On this mare he studied Italian; for, obliged to go leisurely over the cross roads with which Norfolk then abounded, and which were tiresome from dragging sands, or dangerous from deep ruts in clay, half his valuable time would have been lost in nothingness, but for his trust in Peggy; who was as careful in safely picking her way, as she was adroit in remembering from week to week whither she was meant to go.

Her master, at various odd moments, and from various opportunities, had compressed, from the best Italian Dictionaries, every word of the Italian language into a small octavo volume; and from this in one pocket, and a volume of Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Ariosto, or Metastasio, in another, he made himself completely at home in that language of elegance and poetry.

His common-place book, at this period, rather merits the appellation of _un_common, from the assiduous research it manifests, to illustrate every sort of information, by extracts, abstracts, strictures, or descriptions, upon the almost universality of subject-matter which it contains.

It is without system or method; he had no leisure to put it into order; yet it is possible, he might owe to his familiar recurrence to that desultory assemblage of unconcocted materials, the general and striking readiness with which he met at once almost every topic of discourse.

This manuscript of scraps, drawn from reading and observation, was, like his Italian Dictionary, always in his great-coat pocket, when he travelled; so that if unusually rugged roads, or busied haste, impeded more regular study, he was sure, in opening promiscuously his pocket collection of _odds and ends_, to come upon some remark worth weighing; some point of science on which to ruminate; some point of knowledge to fix in his memory; or something amusing, grotesque, or little known, that might recreate his fancy.

THE GREVILLES.

Meanwhile, he had made too real an impression on the affections of his first friends, to let absence of sight produce absence of mind. With Mr. and Mrs. Greville he was always in correspondence; though, of course, neither frequently nor punctually, now that his engagements were so numerous, his obligations to fulfil them so serious, and that his own fireside was so bewitchingly in harmony with his feelings, as to make every moment he passed away from it a sacrifice.

He expounds his new situation and new devoirs, in reply to a letter that had long been unanswered, of Mr. Greville’s, from the Continent, with a sincerity so ingenuous that, though it is in rhyme, it is here inserted biographically.

“TO FULK GREVILLE, ESQ., AT PARIS.

“Hence, ‘loathed business,’ which so long Has plunged me in the toiling throng. Forgive, dear Sir! and gentle Madam! A drudging younger son of Adam, Who’s forc’d from morn to night to labor Or at the pipe, or at the tabor: Nor has he hope ’twill e’er be o’er Till landed on some kinder shore; Some more propitious star, whose rays Benign, may cheer his future days. Ah, think for rest how he must pant Whose life’s the summer of an ant! With grief o’erwhelm’d, the wretched Abel[15] Is dumb as architect of Babel. —Three months of sullen silence—seem With black ingratitude to teem; As if my heart were made of stone Which kindness could not work upon; Or benefits e’er sit enshrin’d Within the precincts of my mind. But think not so, dear Sir! my crime Proceeds alone from want of time. No more a giddy youth, and idle, Without a curb, without a bridle, Who frisk’d about like colt unbroke, And life regarded as a joke.— No!—different duties now are mine; Nor do I at my cares repine: With naught to think of but myself I little heeded worldly pelf; But now, alert I act and move For others whom I better love. Should you refuse me absolution, Condemning my new institution, ’Twould chill at once my heart and zeal For this my little commonweal.— O give my peace not such a stab! Nor slay—as Cain did—name-sake Nab.

* * * * *

This prologue first premis’d, in hopes Such figures, metaphors, and tropes For pardon will not plead in vain, We’ll now proceed in lighter strain.

* * * * *

The epistle then goes on to strictures frank and honest, though softened off by courteous praise and becoming diffidence, on a manuscript poem of Mr. Greville’s, that had been confidentially transmitted to Lynn, for the private opinion and critical judgment of Mr. Burney.

Mr. Greville, now, was assuming a new character—that of an author; and he printed a work which he had long had in agitation, entitled “Maxims, Characters, and Reflections, Moral, Serious, and Entertaining;” a title that seemed to announce that England, in its turn, was now to produce, in a man of family and fashion, a La Bruyere, or a La Rochefoucaul. And Mr. Greville, in fact, waited for a similar fame with dignity rather than anxiety, because with expectation unclogged by doubt.