The first entrance of young Burney into Wilbury House was engraven,
ever after it took place, in golden characters of sacred friendship
upon his mind, for there he first met with Mr. Crisp. And as his
acquaintance with Mr. Greville had opened new roads and pursuits in
life to his prospects, that of Mr. Crisp opened new sources and new
energies to his faculties, for almost every species of improvement.
Mr. Crisp, by birth and education a gentleman, according to the
ordinary acceptation of that word, was in mind, manners, and habits
yet more truly so, according to the most refined definition of the
appellation, as including honour, spirit, elegance, language, and grace.
His person and port were distinguished; his address was even courtly;
his face had the embellishment of a strikingly fine outline; bright,
hazel, penetrating, yet arch eyes; an open front; a noble Roman nose;
and a smile of a thousand varied expressions.
But all that was external, however attractive, however full of promise,
however impossible to pass over, was of utterly inferior worth
compared with the inward man; for there he was rare indeed. Profound
in wisdom; sportive in wit; sound in understanding. A scholar of the
highest order; a critic of the clearest acumen; possessing, with equal
delicacy of discrimination, a taste for literature and for the arts;
and personally excelling, as a _dilettante_, both in music and painting.
It was difficult to discuss any classical or political work, that his
conversation did not impregnate with more information and more wit
than, commonly speaking, their acutest authors had brought forward.
And such was his knowledge of mankind, that it was something beyond
difficult, it was scarcely even possible, to investigate any subject
requiring worldly sagacity, in which he did not dive into the abysses
of the minds and the propensities of the principals, through whom the
business was to be transacted, with a perspicuity so masterly, that
while weighing all that was presented to him, it developed all that was
held back; and fathomed at once the intentions and the resources of his
opponents.
And with abilities thus grand and uncommon for great and important
purposes, if to such he had been called, he was endowed with discursive
powers for the social circle, the most varied in matter, the most solid
in reasoning, and the most delighting in gaiety—or nearly so—that
ever fell to favoured mortal’s lot.
The subject of these memoirs was but seventeen years of age, when
first he had the incalculable advantage of being attracted to explore
this Mine of wisdom, experience, and accomplishments. His musical
talents, and a sympathy of taste in the choice of composers, quickly
caught the responsive ears of Mr. Crisp; which vibrated to every
passage, every sound, that the young musician embellished by graces
intuitively his own, either of expression or execution. And whenever
Mr. Crisp could contrive to retreat, and induce his new Orpheus to
retreat, from the sports of the field, it was even with ardour that he
escaped from the clang of horses and hounds, to devote whole mornings
to the charms,
Softly sweet, in Lydian measures,
of harmony. And harmony indeed, in its most enlarged combinations,
united here the player and the auditor; for they soon discovered that
not in music alone, but in general sentiments, their hearts were tuned
to the same key, and expanded to the same “concord of sweet sounds.”
The love of music, in Mr. Crisp, amounted to passion; yet that passion
could not have differed more from modern enthusiasm in that art, if it
had been hatred; since, far from demanding, according to the present
mode, every two or three seasons, new compositions and new composers,
his musical taste and consistency deviated not from his taste and
consistency in literature: and where a composer had hit his fancy,
and a composition had filled him with delight, he would call for his
favourite pieces of Bach of Berlin, Handel, Scarlatti, or Echard, with
the same reiteration of eagerness that he would again and again read,
hear, or recite chosen passages from the works of his favourite bards,
Shakespeare, Milton, or Pope.
Mr. Greville was sometimes diverted, and sometimes nettled, by this
double defection; for in whatever went forward, he loved to be lord
of the ascendant: but Mr. Crisp, whose temper was as unruffled as his
understanding was firm, only smiled at his friend’s diversion; and
from his pique looked away. Mr. Greville then sought to combat this
musical mania by ridicule, and called upon his companions of the chase
to halloo the recreant huntsman to the field; affirming that he courted
the pipe and the song, only to avoid clearing a ditch, and elude
leaping a five-barred gate.
This was sufficient to raise the cry against the delinquent; for Man
without business or employment is always disposed to be a censor of
his neighbour; and whenever he thinks his antagonist on the road to
defeat, is always alert to start up for a wit. Mr. Crisp, therefore,
now, was assailed as a renegado from the chase; as a lounger; a
loiterer; scared by the horses; panic-struck by the dogs; and more
fearful of the deer, than the deer could be of the hunter.
In the well-poized hope, that the less the sportsmen were answered,
the sooner they would be fatigued and depart, Mr. Crisp now and then
gave them a nod, but never once a word; even though this forbearance
instigated a triumph, loud, merry, and exulting; and sent them off, and
brought them back, in the jovial persuasion that, in their own phrase,
they had dumb-founded him.
With this self-satisfied enjoyment, Mr. Crisp unresistingly indulged
them; though with a single pointed sentence, he could rapidly have
descended them from their fancied elevation. But, above all petty
pride of superiority in trifles, he never held things of small import
to be worth the trouble of an argument. Still less, however, did he
choose to be put out of his own way; which he always pursued with
placid equanimity whenever it was opposed without irrefragable reason.
Good-humouredly, however, he granted to his adversaries, in whose
laughs and railing he sometimes heartily joined, the full play of their
epigrams; internally conscious that, if seriously provoked, he could
retort them by lampoons. Sometimes, nevertheless, when he was hard
beset by gibes and jeers at his loss of sport; or by a chorus of mock
pitiers shouting out, “Poor Crisp! poor fellow! how consumedly thou art
moped!” he would quietly say, with a smile of inexpressible archness,
“Go to, my friends, go to! go you your way, and let me go mine! And
pray, don’t be troubled for me; depend upon it there is nobody will
take more care of Samuel Crisp than I will!”
* * * * *
In this manner, and in these sets, rapidly, gaily, uncounted, and
untutored, glided on imperceptibly the first youth of the subject
of these memoirs: surrounded by temptations to luxury, expense, and
dangerous pleasures, that, in weaker intellects, might have sapped for
ever the foundations of religion and virtue. But a love of right was
the predominant feature of the mind of young Burney. Mr. Greville,
also, himself, with whatever mockery he would have sneered away
any expression tending either to practice or meditation in piety,
instinctively held in esteem whatever was virtuous; and what was
vicious in scorn: though his esteem for virtue was never pronounced,
lest it should pass for pedantry; and his scorn for vice was studiously
disguised, lest he should be set down himself for a Fogrum.