The quick-spreading favour with which the Tours were received; the
celebrity which they threw around the name and existence of Dr.
Burney; the associations of rank, talents, literature, learning, and
fashionable coteries, to which they opened an entrance, could not fail,
ere long, to make their author become an object of envy, since they
raised him to be one of admiration.
The character, conduct, and life of Dr. Burney were now, therefore,
no doubt, critically examined, and morally sifted, by the jealous
herd of contemporary rivals, who had worked far longer, and far more
laboriously, through the mazes of science; yet, working without similar
genius, had failed of rising to similar heights.
Nevertheless, the immediate path in which Dr. Burney flourished was
so new, so untrodden, that he displaced no competitor, he usurped
no right of others; and the world, unsought and uncanvassed, was so
instinctively on his side, that, for a considerable time, his palpable
pre-eminence seemed as willingly accorded, as it was unequivocally
acknowledged.
But the viper does not part with its venom from keeping its body
in ambush; and, before the History came out, though long after the
publication of the Tours, a ludicrous parody of the latter was sent
forth into the world, under the name of Joel Collier.
The Doctor, delicately anxious not to deserve becoming an object for
satire, was much hurt, on its first appearance, by this burlesque
production. It attacked, indeed, little beyond the technical
phraseology of the Tours; the tourist himself was evidently above the
reach of such anonymous shafts.
It was generally supposed to be a _jeu d’esprit_ of some enemy, to
counteract his rapid progress in public favour; and to undermine the
promising success of his great work.
But the Doctor himself did not give way to this opinion: he had done
nothing to incur enemies; he had done much to conciliate friends; and,
believing in virtue because practising it, he knew not how to conceive
personal malice without personal offence. He imagined it, therefore,
the work of some stranger, excited solely by the desire of making money
from his own risible ideas; without caring whom they might harass, or
how they might irritate, provided, in the words of Rodrigo, he “put
money in his purse.”
The Doctor, however, as has been said, from the unimpeachable goodness
of his heart and character, had the fair feelings of mankind in his
favour. The parody, therefore, though executed with burlesque humour,
whether urged or not by malevolence, was never reprinted; and obtained
but the laugh of a moment, without making the shadow of an impression
to the disadvantage of the tourist.