Amongst other new friends that this new neighbourhood procured, or
confirmed, to Dr. Burney, there was one of so congenial, so Samaritan,
a sort, that neighbour he must have been to the Doctor from the time of
their first acquaintance, had his residence been in Dorset-square, or
at Botolph’s Wharf; instead of Leicester-square, and scarcely twenty
yards from the Doctor’s own short street.
Sir Joshua Reynolds, this good Samaritan, was, like Dr. Burney, though
well-read and deeply studious, as easy and natural in discourse as if
he had been merely a man of the world; and though his own art was
his passion, he was open to the warmest admiration of every other:
and again, like the Doctor, he was gay though contemplative, and flew
from indolence, though he courted enjoyment. There was a striking
resemblance in the general amenity of their intercourse, that not only
made them, at all times, and with all persons, free from any approach
to envy, peevishness, or sarcasm themselves, but seemed to spread
around them a suavity that dissolved those angry passions in others.
In his chronological doggrels, Dr. Burney records that he now began his
intimacy with the great English Raphael; of whom he adds,
“’Twere vain throughout Europe to look for his peer
Who by converse and pencil alike can endear.”