The education of the subject of these memoirs, when, at length, he was
removed from this his first instructress, whom he quitted, as he always
protested, with agony of grief, was begun at the Free School at Chester.
It can excite no surprise, his brilliant career through life
considered, that his juvenile studies were assiduous, ardent, and
successful. He was frequently heard to declare that he had been once
only chastised at school, and that not for slackness, but forwardness
in scholastic lore. A favourite comrade, who shared his affections,
though not his application or his genius, was hesitating through an
ill-learnt lesson, and on the point of incurring punishment, when young
Burney, dropping his head on his breast to muffle his voice, whispered
the required answer.
“Burney prompts, Sir!” was loudly called out by a jealous, or
malevolent fellow-student: and Burney paid the ignoble tax at which his
incautious good nature, and superior talents, were assessed.
The resources of practical education ought, perhaps, to be judged
only by the experience which puts them into play; but incongruous, at
least to all thinking, though it may be incompetent, observers, must
seem the discipline that appoints to the instinctive zeal of youthful
friendship, the same degrading species of punishment that may be
necessary for counteracting the sluggard mischiefs of indolence, or the
dangerous examples of misconduct.
The prominent talents of young Burney for music fixed that tuneful
art for his profession; and happily so; for while its pursuit was his
business, its cultivation was his never-ceasing delight.
Yet not exclusively: far otherwise. He had a native love of literature,
in all its branches, that opened his intellects to observation, while
it furnished his mind with embellishments upon almost every subject;
a thirst of knowledge, that rendered science, as far as he had
opportunity for its investigation, an enlargement to his understanding;
and an imagination that invested all the arts with a power of
enchantment.