Immediately upon his arrival at Paris, Mr. Burney, by singular good
fortune, had the honour to be introduced to Lady Clifford, a Roman
Catholic dowager, of a character the most benevolent, who resided
entirely in France, for the pious purpose of enjoying with facility the
rites of her religion, which could not, at that period, be followed in
England without peril of persecution.
This lady took the children of Mr. Burney into her kindest favour, and
invited their father to consult with her unreservedly upon his projects
and wishes; and, through such honourable auspices, scarcely ten days
elapsed, ere Esther and Susan were placed under the care of Madame St.
Mart, a woman of perfect goodness of heart, and of a disposition the
most affectionate.
Madame St. Mart was accustomed to the charge of _des jeunes Anglaises_,
two daughters of Sir Willoughby Aston, Selina and Belinda, being then
under her roof.
Highly satisfied with this arrangement, Mr. Burney now visited the
delightful capital of France; made himself acquainted with its
antiquities, curiosities, public buildings, public places, general
laws, and peculiar customs; its politics, its resources, its
festivities, its arts and its artists; as well as with the arbitrary
tyrannies, and degrading oppressions towards the lower classes,
which, at that epoch, were, to an English looker-on, incomprehensibly
combined, not with murmurs nor discontent, but with the most lively
animal spirits, and the freshest glee of national gaiety.
But his chosen haunts were the Public Libraries, to which an easiness
of access, at that time deplorably unknown in England, encouraged, nay,
excited, the intelligent visitor, who might be mentally inclined to any
literary project, to hit upon some subject congenial to his taste; by
rousing in him that spirit of emulation, which ultimately animates the
humbly instructed, to soar to the heights that distinguish the luminous
instructor.
Collections of books, even the most multitudinous and the most rare,
may hold, to the common runner through life, but an ordinary niche in
places of general resort; nevertheless, the Public Libraries, those
Patrons of the Mind, must always be entered with a glow of grateful
pleasure, by those who, instinctively, meditate upon the vast mass of
thought that they contain.
To wander amidst those stores, that commit talents to posterity as
indubitably as the Herald’s Register transmits names and titles;
to develop as accurately the systems of nations, the conditions of
communities, the progress of knowledge, and the turn of men’s minds,
two or three thousand years ago, as in this our living minute; to
visit, in fact, the Brains of our fellow-creatures,—not alone with
the harrowing knife to dissect physical conformation, but, with
the piercing eye of penetration to dive into the recesses of human
intelligence, the sources of imagination, and the springs of genius;
and there, in those sacred receptacles of mental remains, to survey,
in clear, indestructible evidence, all of the soul that man is able to
bequeath to man— —
Views such as these of the powers of his gifted, though gone
fellow-creatures, seen thus abstractedly through their intellectual
attributes; purified equally from the frailties and selfishness of
active life, and the sickly humours and baleful infirmities of age;
seen through the medium of learned, useful, or fanciful productions;
and beheld in so insulated a moment of vacuity of any positive plan
of life, instinctively roused the dormant faculties of the subject of
these memoirs, by setting before him a comprehensive chart of human
capabilities, which involuntarily incited a conscious inquiry: what,
peradventure, might be his own share, if sought for, in such heavenly
gifts?
And it was now that, vaguely, yet powerfully, he first fell into
that stream of ideas, or visions, that seemed to hail him to that
class indefinable and indescribable, from its mingled elevation and
abjectness, which, by joining the publicity of the press to the
secret intercourse of the mind with the pen, insensibly allures its
adventurous votaries to make the world at large the judge of their
abilities, or their deficiencies—namely, the class of authors.
For this was the real, though not yet the ostensible epoch, whence may
be traced the opening of his passion for literary pursuits.
And from this period, to the very close of his long mortal career,
this late, though newly chosen occupation, became all that was most
consoling to his sorrows, most diversifying to his ideas, and most
animating to his faculties.
Some new stimulus had been eminently wanting to draw a man of his
natively ardent and aspiring character from the torpid blight of
availless misery; which, in despoiling him of all bosom felicity, had
left only to an attempt at some untried project and purpose, any chance
for the restoration of his energies.
He did not immediately fix on a subject for any work, though he had
the wisdom, at once, and the modesty, to resolve, since so tardily he
entered such lists, to adopt no plan that might wean him from his
profession—for his profession was his whole estate! but rather to seek
one that might amalgamate his rising desire of fame in literature, with
his original labours to be distinguished as a follower of Orpheus.
He took notes innumerable in the public libraries, which he meant
to revisit on returning to Paris for his daughters, of the books,
subjects, passages, and authors which invited re-perusal; and which,
hereafter, might happily conduct to some curious investigation, or
elucidating commentary.
He made himself master of a beautiful collection of what then was
esteemed to be most select of the French classics.
He completed, by adding to what already he possessed, all that recently
had been published of that noblest work that had yet appeared in the
republic of letters, the original Encyclopedia.
He opened an account with the reigning bookseller of the day, whose
reputation in his mind-enlightening business still sustains its renown,
M. Guy, whom he commissioned to send over to England the principal
works then suspending over the heights of the French Parnassus; where
resplendently were grouped all that was most attractive in Wit,
Poetry, Eloquence, Science, Pathos, and Entertainment; from Rousseau,
Voltaire, d’Alembert, Marmontel, Destouches, Marivaux, Gilbert,
Diderot, Fontenelle, de Jaucourt; and many others.
It will easily be conceived how wistfully Mr. Burney must have coveted
to make acquaintance with this brilliant set; his high veneration for
genius having always led him to consider the first sight of an eminent
author to form a data in his life.
But he had neither leisure, nor recommendatory letters; nor, perhaps,
courage for such an attempt; the diffidence of his nature by no means
anticipating the honourable place he himself was destined to hold in
similar circles.
Not small, however, was his solace, while missing every ray of living
light from this foreign constellation, when he found himself shone upon
by a fixed star of the first magnitude belonging to his own system;
for at the house of the English ambassador, the Earl of Hertford, he
became acquainted with the celebrated secretary of his lordship, the
justly admired, and justly censured DAVID HUME; who, with the skilful
discernment that waited neither name nor fame for its stimulus, took
Mr. Burney immediately and warmly into his favour.
Had this powerful and popular author, in his erudite, spirited, and
intellectual researches and reflections, given to mankind his luminous
talents, and his moral philosophy, for fair, open, and useful purposes,
suited to the high character which he bore, not alone for genius, but
for worth and benevolence; instead of bending, blending, involving
them with missive weapons of baneful sarcasm, insidiously at work to
undermine our form of faith; he would have been hailed universally, not
applauded partially, as, in every point, one of the first of British
writers.
To the world no man is accountable for his thoughts and his
ruminations; but for their propagation, if they are dangerous or
mischievous, the risks which he may allure others to share, seem
impelled by wanton lack of feeling; if not by an ignorant yet
presumptuous dearth of foresight to the effect he is working to
produce: two deficiencies equally impossible to be attributed to a man
to whom philanthropy is as unequivocally accorded as philosophy.
Unsolved therefore, perhaps, yet remains, as a problem in the history
of human nature, how a being, at once wise and benign, could have
refrained from the self-examination of demanding: what—had he been
successful in exterminating from the eyes and the hearts of men the
lecture and the doctrines of the Holy Scriptures, would have been
achieved? Had he any other more perfect religion to offer? More
purifying from evil? more fortifying in misfortune? more consoling in
woe?—No!—indubitably no!—Nothing fanatical, or mystic, could cope
with judgment such as his. To undermine, not to construct, is all the
obvious purpose of his efforts—of which he laments the failure as
a calamity![25] He leaves, therefore, nothing to conjecture of his
motives but what least seems to belong to a character of his sedate
equanimity; a personal desire to proclaim to mankind their folly in
their belief, and his sagacity in his infidelity.