Fair was this period in the life of Dr. Burney. It opened to him a new
region of enjoyment, supported by honours, and exhilarated by pleasures
supremely to his taste: honours that were literary, pleasures that were
intellectual. Fair was this period, though not yet was it risen to its
acme: a fairer still was now advancing to his highest wishes, by free
and frequent intercourse with the man in the world to whose genius and
worth united, he looked up the most reverentially—Dr. Johnson.
And this intercourse was brought forward through circumstances of
such infinite agreeability, that no point, however flattering, of the
success that led him to celebrity, was so welcome to his honest and
honourable pride, as being sought for at Streatham, and his reception
at that seat of the Muses.
Mrs. Thrale, the lively and enlivening lady of the mansion, was then
at the height of the glowing renown which, for many years, held her in
stationary superiority on that summit.
It was professionally that Dr. Burney was first invited to Streatham,
by the master of that fair abode. The eldest daughter of the house[10]
was in the progress of an education fast advancing in most departments
of juvenile accomplishments, when the idea of having recourse to the
chief in “music’s power divine,”—Dr. Burney,—as her instructor in
harmony, occurred to Mrs. Thrale.
So interesting was this new engagement to the family of Dr. Burney,
which had been born and bred to a veneration of Dr. Johnson; and
which had imbibed the general notion that Streatham was a coterie of
wits and scholars, on a par with the blue assemblages in town of Mrs.
Montagu and Mrs. Vesey; that they all flocked around him, on his return
from his first excursion, with eager enquiry whether Dr. Johnson had
appeared; and whether Mrs. Thrale merited the brilliant plaudits of her
panegyrists.
Dr. Burney, delighted with all that had passed, was as communicative
as they could be inquisitive. Dr. Johnson had indeed appeared; and
from his previous knowledge of Dr. Burney, had come forward to him
zealously, and wearing his mildest aspect.
Twenty-two years had now elapsed since first they had opened a
correspondence, that to Dr. Burney had been delightful, and of which
Dr. Johnson retained a warm and pleased remembrance. The early
enthusiasm for that great man, of Dr. Burney, could not have hailed a
more propitious circumstance for promoting the intimacy to which he
aspired, than what hung on this recollection; for kind thoughts must
instinctively have clung to the breast of Dr. Johnson, towards so
voluntary and disinterested a votary; who had broken forth from his
own modest obscurity to offer homage to Dr. Johnson, long before his
stupendous Dictionary, and more stupendous character, had raised him to
his subsequent towering fame.
Mrs. Thrale, Dr. Burney had beheld as a star of the first magnitude in
the constellation of female wits; surpassing, rather than equalizing,
the reputation which her extraordinary endowments, and the splendid
fortune which made them conspicuous, had blazoned abroad; while her
social and easy good-humour allayed the alarm excited by the report of
her spirit of satire; which, nevertheless, he owned she unsparingly
darted around her, in sallies of wit and gaiety, and the happiest
spontaneous epigrams.
Mr. Thrale, the Doctor had found a man of sound sense, good parts, good
instruction, and good manners; with a liberal turn of mind, and an
unaffected taste for talented society. Yet, though it was everywhere
known that Mrs. Thrale sportively, but very decidedly, called and
proclaimed him her master, the Doctor never perceived in Mr. Thrale any
overbearing marital authority; and soon remarked, that while, from a
temper of mingled sweetness and carelessness, his wife never offered
him any opposing opinion, he was too wise to be rallied, by a sarcastic
nickname, out of the rights by which he kept her excess of vivacity
in order. Composedly, therefore, he was content with the appellation;
though from his manly character, joined to his real admiration of her
superior parts, he divested it of its commonly understood imputation of
tyranny, to convert it to a mere simple truism.
But Dr. Burney soon saw that he had little chance of aiding his young
pupil in any very rapid improvement. Mrs. Thrale, who had no passion
but for conversation, in which her eminence was justly her pride,
continually broke into the lesson to discuss the news of the times;
politics, at that period, bearing the complete sway over men’s minds.
But she intermingled what she related, or what she heard, with sallies
so gay, so unexpected, so classically erudite, or so vivaciously
entertaining, that the tutor and the pupil were alike drawn away from
their studies, to an enjoyment of a less laborious, if not of a less
profitable description.
Dr. Johnson, who had no ear for music, had accustomed himself, like
many other great writers who have had that same, and frequently sole,
deficiency, to speak slightingly both of the art and of its professors.
And it was not till after he had become intimately acquainted with Dr.
Burney and his various merits, that he ceased to join in a jargon so
unworthy of his liberal judgment, as that of excluding musicians and
their art from celebrity.
The first symptom that he shewed of a tendency to conversion upon this
subject, was upon hearing the following paragraph read, accidentally,
aloud by Mrs. Thrale, from the preface to the History of Music, while
it was yet in manuscript.
“The love of lengthened tones and modulated sounds, seems
a passion implanted in human nature throughout the globe;
as we hear of no people, however wild and savage in other
particulars, who have not music of some kind or other, with
which they seem greatly delighted.”
“Sir,” cried Dr. Johnson, after a little pause, “this assertion I
believe may be right.” And then, see-sawing a minute or two on his
chair, he forcibly added: “All animated nature loves music—except
myself!”
Some time later, when Dr. Burney perceived that he was generally
gaining ground in the house, he said to Mrs. Thrale, who had civilly
been listening to some favourite air that he had been playing: “I have
yet hopes, Madam, with the assistance of my pupil, to see your’s become
a musical family. Nay, I even hope, Sir,” turning to Dr. Johnson, “I
shall some time or other make you, also, sensible of the power of my
art.”
“Sir,” answered the Doctor, smiling, “I shall be very glad to have a
new sense put into me!”
The Tour to the Hebrides being then in hand, Dr. Burney inquired of
what size and form the book would be. “Sir,” he replied, with a little
bow, “you are my model!”
Impelled by the same kindness, when the Doctor lamented the
disappointment of the public in Hawkesworth’s Voyages,—“Sir,” he
cried, “the public is always disappointed in books of travels;—except
your’s!”
And afterwards, he said that he had hardly ever read any book quite
through in his life; but added: “Chamier and I, Sir, however, read all
your travels through;—except, perhaps, the description of the great
pipes in the organs of Germany and the Netherlands!—”
Mr. Thrale had lately fitted up a rational, readable, well chosen
library. It were superfluous to say that he had neither authors for
show, nor bindings for vanity, when it is known, that while it was
forming, he placed merely one hundred pounds in Dr. Johnson’s hands for
its completion; though such was his liberality, and such his opinion of
the wisdom as well as knowledge of Doctor Johnson in literary matters,
that he would not for a moment have hesitated to subscribe to the
highest estimate that the Doctor might have proposed.
One hundred pounds, according to the expensive habits of the present
day, of decorating books like courtiers and coxcombs, rather than
like students and philosophers, would scarcely purchase a single row
for a book-case of the length of Mr. Thrale’s at Streatham; though,
under such guidance as that of Dr. Johnson, to whom all finery seemed
foppery, and all foppery futility, that sum, added to the books
naturally inherited, or already collected, amply sufficed for the
unsophisticated reader, where no peculiar pursuit, or unlimited spirit
of research, demanded a collection for reference rather than for
instruction and enjoyment.
This was no sooner accomplished, than Mr. Thrale resolved to surmount
these treasures for the mind by a similar regale for the eyes, in
selecting the persons he most loved to contemplate, from amongst his
friends and favourites, to preside over the literature that stood
highest in his estimation.
And, that his portrait painter might go hand in hand in judgment
with his collector of books, he fixed upon the matchless Sir Joshua
Reynolds to add living excellence to dead perfection, by giving him the
personal resemblance of the following elected set; every one of which
occasionally made a part of the brilliant society of Streatham.
Mrs. Thrale and her eldest daughter were in one piece, over the
fire-place, at full length.
The rest of the pictures were all three-quarters.
Mr. Thrale was over the door leading to his study.
The general collection then began by Lord Sandys and Lord Westcote, two
early noble friends of Mr. Thrale.