But the happiest produce to Dr. Burney of this enterprise, and the
dearest mede of his musical labours, was the cordial connexion to which
it led with Mr. Twining, afterwards called Aristotle Twining; which
opened with an impulsive reciprocation of liking, and ended in a
friendship as permanent as it was exhilarating.
Mr. Twining, urged by an early and intuitive taste, equally deep and
refined, for learning and for letters, had begun life by desiring to
make over the very high emoluments of a lucrative business, with its
affluence and its cares, to a deserving younger brother; while he
himself should be quietly settled, for the indulgence of his literary
propensities, in some retired and moderate living, at a distance from
the metropolis.
His father listened without disapprobation; and at the vicarage of
Colchester, Mr. Twining established his clerical residence.
His acquaintance with Dr. Burney commenced by a letter of singular
merit, and of nearly incomparable modesty. After revealing, in terms
that showed the most profound skill in musical science, that he had
himself not only studied and projected, but, in various rough desultory
sections, had actually written certain portions of a History of Music,
he liberally acknowledged that he had found the plan of the Doctor
so eminently superior to his own, and the means that had been taken
for its execution so far beyond his power of imitation, that he had
come to a resolution of utterly renouncing his design; of which not
a vestige would now remain that could reflect any pleasure upon his
lost time and pains, unless he might appease his abortive attempt by
presenting its fruits, with the hope that they would not be found
utterly useless, to Dr. Burney.
So generous an offering could not fail of being delightedly accepted;
and the more eagerly, as the whole style of the letter decidedly spoke
its writer to be a scholar, a wit, and a man of science.
Dr. Burney earnestly solicited to receive the manuscript from Mr.
Twining’s own hands: and Mr. Twining, though with a timidity as rare
in accompanying so much merit as the merit itself, complied with the
request.
The pleasure of this first interview was an immediate guarantee of the
mental union to which it gave rise. Every word that issued from Mr.
Twining confirmed the three high characters to which his letter had
raised expectation,—of a man of science, a scholar, and a wit. Their
taste in music, and their selection of composers and compositions, were
of the same school; _i.e._ the modern and the Italian for melody, and
the German for harmony.
Nor even here was bounded the chain by which they became linked: their
classical, literary, and poetical pursuits, nay, even their fancies,
glided so instinctively into the same channel, that not a dissonant
idea ever rippled its current: and the animal spirits of both partook
of this general coincidence, by running, playfully, whimsically, or
ludicrously, with equal concord of pleasantry, into similar inlets of
imagination.
The sense of this congeniality entertained by Dr. Burney, will be
best shewn by the insertion of some biographical lines, taken from a
chronological series of events which he committed to paper, about this
time, for the amusement of Mrs. Burney.
* * * after toil and fatigue — —
To Twining I travel, in hopes of relief,
Whose wit and good-humour soon drive away grief.
And now, free from care, in night-gown and sandals,
Not a thought I bestow on the Goths and the Vandals.
Together we fiddled, we laugh’d, and we sung,
And tried to give sound both a soul and a tongue.
Ideas we sift, we compare, and commute,
And, though sometimes we differ, we never dispute;
Our minds to each other we turn inside out,
And examine each source of belief and of doubt;
For as musical discord in harmony ends,
So our’s, when resolv’d, makes us still better friends.
The whole family participated in this delightful accession to the
comfort and happiness of its chief; and, Mr. Crisp alone excepted, no
one was received by the Burnean tribe with such eagerness of welcome as
Mr. Twining.
A correspondence, literary, musical, and social, took place between
this gentleman and the Doctor, when they separated, that made a
principal pleasure, almost an occupation, of their future lives.
And Dr. Burney thenceforward found in this willing and accomplished
fellow-labourer, a charm for his work that made him hasten to it after
his business and cares, as to his most grateful recreation. While Mr.
Twining, exchanging a shyness that amounted nearly to bashfulness,
for a friendly trust that gave free play to his sportive and original
colloquial powers, felt highly gratified to converse at his ease with
the man whose enterprise had filled him with an admiration to which he
had been almost bursting to give some vent; but which he had so much
wanted courage to proclaim, that, as he afterwards most humorously
related, he had no sooner sent his first letter for Dr. Burney to the
post-office, than he heartily hoped it might miscarry! and had hardly,
though by appointment, softly knocked at the door of the Doctor, than
he all but prayed that he should not find him at home!