Dr. Arne, professionally, has been fully portrayed by the pupil who,
nominally, was under his guidance; but who, in after-times, became the
historian of his tuneful art.
Eminent, however, in that art as was Dr. Arne, his eminence was to
that art alone confined. Thoughtless, dissipated, and careless, he
neglected, or rather scoffed at all other but musical reputation.
And he was so little scrupulous in his ideas of propriety, that he
took pride, rather than shame, in being publicly classed, even in the
decline of life, as a man of pleasure.
Such a character was ill qualified to form or to protect the morals
of a youthful pupil; and it is probable that not a notion of such a
duty ever occurred to Dr. Arne; so happy was his self-complacency in
the fertility of his invention and the ease of his compositions,
and so dazzled by the brilliancy of his success in his powers of
melody—which, in truth, for the English stage, were in sweetness and
variety unrivalled—that, satisfied and flattered by the practical
exertions and the popularity of his fancy, he had no ambition, or,
rather, no thought concerning the theory of his art.
The depths of science, indeed, were the last that the gay master had
any inclination to sound; and, in a very short time, through something
that mingled jealousy with inability, the disciple was wholly left
to work his own way as he could through the difficulties of his
professional progress.
Had neglect, nevertheless, been the sole deficiency that young Burney
had had to lament, it would effectually have been counteracted
by his own industry: but all who are most wanting to others, are
most rapacious of services for themselves; and the time in which
the advancement of the scholar ought to have been blended with the
advantage of the teacher, was almost exclusively seized upon for the
imposition of laborious tasks of copying music: and thus, a drudgery
fitted for those who have no talents to cultivate; or those who, in
possessing them, are driven from their enjoyment by distress, filled
up nearly the whole time of the student, and constituted almost wholly
the directions of the tutor.