His house in Queen-Square had been relinquished from difficulties
respecting its title; and Mrs. Burney, assiduously and skilfully,
purchased and prepared another, during his confinement, that was
situated in St. Martin’s-street, Leicester-fields.
If the house in Queen-Square had owed a fanciful part of its value to
the belief that, formerly, in his visits to Alderman Barber, it had
been inhabited occasionally by Dean Swift, how much higher a local
claim, was vested in imagination, for a mansion that had decidedly been
the dwelling of the immortal Sir Isaac Newton!
Dr. Burney entered it with reverence, as may be gathered from the
following lines in his doggrel chronology.
“This house, where great Newton once deign’d to reside,
Who of England, and all Human Nature the pride,
Sparks of light, like Prometheus, from Heaven purloin’d,
Which in bright emanations flash’d full on mankind.”
This change of position from Queen-Square to St. Martin’s-street,
required all that it could bestow of convenience to business, of
facilitating fashionable and literary intercourse, of approximation
to travelling foreigners of distinction, and of vicinity to the Opera
House; to somewhat counter-balance its unpleasant site, its confined
air, and its shabby immediate neighbourhood; after the beautiful
prospect which the Doctor had quitted of the hills, ever verdant
and smiling, of Hampstead and Highgate; which, at that period, in
unobstructed view, had faced his dwelling in Queen-Square.
St. Martin’s-street, though not narrow, except at its entrance from
Leicester-square, was dirty, ill built, and vulgarly peopled.
The house itself was well-constructed, sufficiently large for the
family, and, which now began to demand nearly equal accommodation, for
the books of the Doctor. The observatory of Sir Isaac Newton, which
surmounted its roof, over-looked all London and its environs. It still
remained in the same simple state in which it had been left by Sir
Isaac; namely, encompassed completely by windows of small old-fashioned
panes of glass, so crowded as to leave no exclusion of the glazier,
save what was seized for a small chimney and fire-place, and a
cupboard, probably for instruments. Another cupboard was borrowed from
the little landing-place for coals.
The first act of Dr. Burney, after taking possession of this house,
was to repair, at a considerable expense, the observatory of the
astronomical chief of nations: and he had the enthusiasm, soon
afterwards, of nearly re-constructing it a second time, in consequence
of the fearful hurricane of 1778, by which its glass sides were utterly
demolished; and its leaden roof, in a whirl of fighting winds, was
swept wholly away.
Dr. Burney, who was as elevated in spirit as he was limited in means,
for being to all the arts, and all the artists, a patron, preferred
any self-denial to suffering such a demolition. He would have thought
himself a ruthless Goth, had he permitted the _sanctum sanctorum_ of
the developer of the skies in their embodied movements, to have been
scattered to nonentity through his neglect or parsimony; and sought
for, thenceforward, in vain, by posterity.
* * * * *
Amongst the earliest hailers of this removal, stood forth the worthy
and original Mr. Hutton, who was charmed to visit his enthusiastically
esteemed new friend in the house of the great Newton; in which he
flattered himself with retaining a faint remembrance that he had been
noticed, when a boy, by the niece of that most stupendous of human
geniuses.
In shaking hands around with the family upon this occasion, Mr. Hutton
related that he had just come from the apartment of M. de Solgas,
sub-preceptor to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales;[45] in which
he had had the high honour of being permitted to discourse with his
Majesty; whom he had found the best of men, as well as the best of
Kings; for, in talking over the letters of Lord Chesterfield, and
his Lordship’s doctrines, and subtle definitions of simulation and
dissimulation, his Majesty said, “It is very deep, and may be it is
very clever; but for me, I like more straight-forward work.”
This tribute to the honour of simple truth excited a general plaudit.
Mr. Hutton then, with a smile of benevolent pleasure, said that the
subject had been changed, by Mr. Smelt, from Lord Chesterfield’s
letters to Dr. Burney’s Tours, which had been highly commended: “And
then I,” added the good old man, “could speak my notions, and my
knowledge, too, of my excellent friend the tourist, as well as of his
writings; and so, openly and plainly, as one honest man should talk to
another, I said it outright to my sovereign lord the King—who is as
honest a man himself as any in his own three kingdoms. God bless him!”
All the party, greatly pleased, smiled concurrence; and Mrs. Burney
said that the Doctor was very happy to have had a friend to speak of
him so favourably before the King.
“Madam,” cried the good man, with warmth, “I will speak of him before
my God! And that is doing much more.”
The Stranges, who lived in the immediate neighbourhood of St.
Martin’s-street, were speedy welcomers to the new dwelling; where
heartily they were welcomed.
The Doctor’s worthy and attached old friend, Mr. Hayes, rejoiced in
this near approach to his habitation, which was in James-street,
Westminster; though the fast advancing ravages and debilities of time
and infirmities, soon bereaved him of all other advantage from the
approximation, than that which he could court to his own house.
Mr. Twining, when in town, which was only for a week or two every year,
loved not to pass even a day without bestowing a few minutes of it upon
a house at which he was always hailed with delight.
But Mr. Crisp, though unalterably he maintained that first place in the
heart of Dr. Burney, to which priority of every species entitled him,
had become subject to such frequent fits of the gout, that to London
he was almost lost: he dreaded sleeping even a night from Chesington,
which now was his nearly unbroken residence.
The learned and venerable Mr. Latrobe, and his two sons, each of them
men of genius, though of different characters, were frequent in their
visits, and amongst the Doctor’s warmest admirers; and, in the study of
the German language and literature, amongst his most useful friends.
The elegant translator of Tasso, Mr. Hoole, and his erudite and
poetical son, the Rev. Samuel Hoole,[46] to form whose characters worth
and modesty went hand in hand, were often of the social circle.
The Doctor’s two literary Italian friends, Martinelli and Baretti,
were occasional visitors; and by the rapidity of their elocution, the
exuberance of their gestures, and the distortion of their features,
upon even the most trivial contradiction, always gave to the Doctor a
divertingly national reminiscence of the Italian, or Volcanic, portion
of his tours.
Mr. Nollekens, the eminent sculptor, was one of the travelled
acquaintances of Dr. Burney, with whom he had frequently assorted while
in Italy; and with whom now, and through life, he kept up the connexion
then formed.
Nollekens was one of those who shewed, in the most distinct point of
view, the possible division of partial from general talent. He was
uncultivated and under-bred; his conversation was without mark; his
sentiments were common; and his language was even laughably vulgar; yet
his works belong to an art of transcendant sublimity, and are beautiful
with elegance and taste.