Amongst the Italians, the most essential to his business was Padre
Martini; the most essential and the most generous. While the Doctor
was at Bologna, he was allowed free access to the rare library of that
learned Padre, with permission to examine his Istoria della Musica,
before it was published. And this favour was followed by a display
of the whole of the materials which the Padre had collected for his
elaborate undertaking: upon all which he conversed with a frankness
and liberality, that appeared to the Doctor to spring from a nature
so completely void of all earthly drops of envy, jealousy, or love of
pre-eminence, as to endow him with the nobleness of wishing that a
fellow-labourer in the same vineyard in which he was working himself,
should share the advantages of his toil, and reap in common its fruits.
With similar openness the Doctor returned every communication; and
produced his own plan, of which he presented the Padre with a copy,
which that modest man of science most gratefully received; declaring
it to be not only edifying, but, in some points, surprisingly new.
They entered into a correspondence of equal interest to both, which
subsisted, to their mutual pleasure, credit, and advantage, through the
remnant life of the good old Padre; and which not unfrequently owed its
currency to the friendly intervention of the amiable, and, as far as
his leisure and means accorded with his native inclination, literary
Pacchierotti.