The ensuing initiation into this mingled existence of inertness and
effort, of luxury and of desolation, was made at Bath. But Bath, from
its buildings and its position, had a charm around it for the subject
of these memoirs, to soften off the monotony of this wayward taste, and
these wilful sufferings; though the seat of dissipation alone he found
to be changed; its basis—cards, dice, or betting—being always the
same.
Nevertheless, that beautiful city, then little more than a splendid
village in comparison with its actual metropolitan size and grandeur,
had intrinsic claims to the most vivid admiration, and the strongest
incitements to youthful curiosity, from the antiquity of its origin,
real as well as fabulous; from its Bladud, its baths, its cathedral;
and its countless surrounding glories of military remains; all
magically followed up, to vary impression, and stimulate approbation,
by its rising excellence in Grecian and Roman architecture.
Born with an enthusiastic passion for rural scenery, the picturesque
view of this city offered to the ravished eye of young Burney some new
loveliness, or striking effect, with an endless enchantment of variety,
at almost every fresh opening of every fresh street into which he
sauntered.
And here, not only did he find this perpetual, yet changeful, prospect
of Nature in her most smiling attire, and of Art in her most chaste
and elegant constructions; Bath had yet further attraction to its new
visitor; another captivation stronger still to a character soaring
to intellectual heights, caught him in its chains,—it was that of
literary eminence; Bath, at this moment, being illumined by that
sparkling but dangerous Meteor of philosophy, politics, history, and
metaphysics, St. John, Lord Bolingbroke.
Happily, perhaps, for his safety, it was in vain that young Burney
struggled, by every effort of ingenuity he could exert, to bask in the
radiance of this Meteor’s wit and eloquence. Every attempt at that
purpose failed; and merely a glimpse of this extraordinary personage,
was all that the utmost vigilance of romantic research ever caught.
Young Burney could not, at that period, have studied the works of Lord
Bolingbroke, who was then chiefly known by his political honours and
disgraces; his exile and his pardon; and by that most perfect panegyric
that ever, perhaps, poet penned, of Pope:
“Come then, my friend! my Genius!——
Oh, master of the poet and the song!”
Fortunately, therefore, the ingenuous youth and inexperience of the
subject of these memoirs, escaped the brilliant poison of metaphysical
sophistry, that might else have disturbed his peace, and darkened his
happiness.
The set to which Mr. Greville belonged, was as little studious to seek,
as likely to gain, either for its advantage or its evil, admission to a
character so eminently scholastic, or so personally fastidious, as that
of Lord Bolingbroke; though, had he been unhampered by such colleagues,
Lord Bolingbroke, as a metaphysician, would have been sought with
eager, nay, fond alacrity, by Mr. Greville; metaphysics being, in
his own conception and opinion, the proper bent of his mind and
understanding. But those with whom he now was connected, encompassed
him with snares that left little opening to any higher pursuits than
their own.
The aim, therefore, of young Burney, was soon limited to obtaining a
glance of the still noble, though infirm figure, and still handsome,
though aged countenance of this celebrated statesman. And of these, for
the most transitory view, he would frequently, with a book in his hand,
loiter by the hour opposite to his lordship’s windows, which were _vis
à vis_ to those of Mr. Greville; or run, in circular eddies, from side
to side of the sedan chair in which his lordship was carried to the
pump-room.
Mr. Greville, though always entertained by the juvenile eagerness of
his young favourite, pursued his own modish course with the alternate
ardour and apathy, which were then beginning to be what now is
called the order of the day; steering—for he thought that was _the
thing_—with whatever was most in vogue, even when it was least to his
taste; and making whatever was most expensive the criterion for his
choice, even in diversions; because that was what most effectually
would exclude plebeian participation.
And to this lofty motive, rather than to any appropriate fondness for
its charms, might be attributed, in its origin, his fervour for gaming;
though gaming, with that poignant stimulus, self-conceit, which, where
calculation tries to battle with chance, goads on, with resistless
force, our designs by our presumption, soon left wholly in the back
ground every attempt at rivalry by any other species of recreation.
Hunting therefore, shooting, riding, music, drawing, dancing, fencing,
tennis, horse-racing, the joys of Bacchus, and numerous other exertions
of skill, of strength, of prowess, and of ingenuity, served but, ere
long, to fill up the annoying chasms by which these nocturnal orgies
were interrupted through the obtrusion of day.