The time is now come for commemorating the connection which, next alone
to that of Dr. Johnson, stands highest in the literary honours of Dr.
Burney, namely, that which he formed with Edmund Burke.
Their first meetings had been merely accidental and public, and wholly
unaccompanied by any private intimacy or intercourse; though, from
the time that the author of Evelina had been discovered, there had
passed between them, on such occasional junctions, what Dr. Burney
playfully called _an amiable coquetry_ of smiles, and other symbols,
that showed each to be thinking of the same thing: for Mr. Burke, with
that generous energy which, when he escaped the feuds of party, was
the distinction of his character, and made the charm of his oratory,
had blazed around his approbation of that happy little work, from the
moment that it had fallen, incidentally, into his hands: and when
he heard that the author, from her acquaintance with the lovely and
accomplished nieces of Sir Joshua Reynolds, was a visitor at the house
of that English Raphael, he flatteringly desired of the Knight an
appointed interview.
But from that, though enchanted as much as astonished at such
a proposal from Mr. Burke, she fearfully, and with conscious
insufficiency, hung back; hoping to owe to chance a less ostentatious
meeting.
Various parties, during two or three years, had been planned, but
proved abortive; when in June, 1782, Sir Joshua Reynolds invited Dr.
Burney and the Memorialist to a dinner upon Richmond Hill, to meet the
Bishop of St. Asaph, Miss Shipley, and some others.
This was gladly accepted by the Doctor; who now, upon his new system,
was writing more at his ease; and by his daughter, who was still
detained from Streatham, as her second work, though finished, was yet
in the press.
Sir Joshua, and his eldest niece,[41] accompanied by Lord Cork, called
for them in St. Martin’s-street; and the drive was as lively, from
the discourse within the carriage, as it was pleasant from the views
without.
Here the editor, as no traits of Mr. Burke in conversation can be
wholly uninteresting to an English reader, will venture to copy an
account of this meeting, which was written while it was yet new, and
consequently warm in her memory, as an offering to her second father,