With regard to his writings, he had now, for many years, ceased
furnishing any articles for the Monthly Review, having broken up his
critic-intercourse with Mr. Griffith, that he might devote himself
exclusively to the Cyclopedia.
But for the Cyclopedia, also, about the year 1805, he had closed his
labours: labours which must ever remain memorials of the clearness,
fulness, and spirit of his faculties up to the seventy-eighth year of
his age: for more profound knowledge of his subject, or a more natural
flow of pleasing language, or more lively elucidations of his theme,
appear not in any of even his most favoured productions.
The list, numbered alphabetically, that he drew up of his plan for this
work, might almost have staggered the courage of a man of twenty-five
years of age for its completion; but fifty years older than that
was Dr. Burney when it was formed! There is not a book upon music,
which it was possible he could consult, that he has not ransacked;
nor a subject, that could afford information for the work, that he
has not fathomed. And so excellent are his articles, both in manner
and matter, that, to equal him upon the subjects he has selected,
another writer must await a future period; when new musical genius,
composition, and combinations in the powers of harmony, and the
varieties of melody, by creating new tastes, may kindle sensations that
may call for a new Historian.
* * * * *
Less pleasing, or rather, extremely painful, is what remains to relate
of the last efforts of his genius, and last, and perhaps most cherished
of his literary exercises, namely, his Poem on Astronomy; which the
Memorialist had now the chagrin, almost the consternation, to learn had
been renounced, nay, committed to the flames!
To this work, as, upon her return, he reminded her, with a look
implying, though unwillingly, nay, even tenderly, something like
reproach, he had been urged by her solicitations.
This, however, he could not but forgive, and freely forgive, knowing
that her motive was to draw him from the melancholy inertness that
threatened his future existence, upon the loss, and at so late a period
of life, of a companion of thirty years.
The subject, also, was his own, and was one in which he had long and
early delighted; which offered, therefore, the fairest promise of
enabling him
“When all his genial years were flown,
And all the Life of Life was gone,”
to find, through the energy of a favourite pursuit, that his
intellectual faculties were not for ever interred before the funeral of
the machine, through which, so long and so vividly, they had emanated.
She had the consolation, also, to know that, for many years, this Poem
had answered all the purposes for which it had been suggested. Its
idea had amused his fancy; its researches had kept alive his thirst of
knowledge; and had meandered into so many new channels of information,
in the bright regions which it led him to contemplate, that it had been
a source to him of pleasure, and a new spring to exertion, that, though
not competent to drive away sorrow, had frequently, at least, discarded
sadness.
What new view, either of the occupation, or its execution, had
determined its total relinquishment, was never to its instigator
revealed; the solemn look with which he announced that _it was over_,
had an expression that she had not courage to explore.
Enough, however, remains of the original work, scattered amongst his
manuscripts, to shew his project to have been skilfully conceived,
while its plan of execution was modestly and sensibly circumscribed to
his bounded knowledge of the subject. And its idea, with its general
sketch, drawn up at so advanced a period of a life—verging upon
eighty—that had been spent in another and an absorbent study, must
needs remain a monument of wonder for the general herd of mankind; and
a stimulus to courage and enterprise for the gifted few, with whom
longevity is united with genius.