Not the least, nor least prized honour, in the life of Dr. Burney,
occurred in the June of this year, 1798, in seconding the motion of Mr.
Windham for the election of Mr. Canning as a member of the Literary
Club; “though, strange to say,” he relates, “I had already honoured
myself by seconding the same motion once before, when Mr. Canning was
put up, I believe, by Lord Spencer; but was rejected by one abominable
party black-ball, though there were ten or eleven balls all white.”
As this club was instituted for the pursuits and enjoyment of
literature, independent of party or politics, it seems strangely
foreign to such a design, either to elect or reject merely from
political incitement. Dissensions through politics in the senate must
necessarily be endured; nay, cannot rationally be lamented; they are
the unavoidable offsprings of the most exalted exercise of the human
faculties, freedom of debate; that freedom whence spring independence,
justice, and liberty.
But, in meetings consecrated to social intellectuality, might not the
chance be greater of obtaining and dispensing liberal knowledge, if the
scrutiny of the electors were solely directed to the general powers of
instruction or entertainment in the candidates, than in being cast upon
any arbitrary standard of political creeds?
How, but by this comprehensive view of literary conviviality, could
Dr. Johnson and Charles Fox, so opposite in state opinions, yet so
approximate in powers of colloquial combat, have been members of this
very club, without leaving one record behind them of controversial
discord? In truth, to exclude from meetings formed for social
enlargement, all who are not in all things of the same opinion, seems
assembling a company to face an echo, and calling its neat repetition
of whatever is uttered, conversation.
The election this time, however, was honourable to the club, for it was
successful to Mr. Canning. And Mr. Marsden, author of the curious and
spirited account of Sumatra, was happily white-balled at the same time;
which Dr. Burney called, in his next letter to the Hermits, a revival
of the true spirit of the institution.