Amongst the many cotemporary tributes paid to the merits of Dr. Burney,
there was one from a celebrated and estimable artist, that caused no
small diversion to the friends of the Doctor; and, perhaps, to the
public at large; from the Hibernian tale which it seemed instinctively
to unfold of the birth-place of its designer.
The famous painter, Mr. Barry, after a formal declaration that his
picture of The Triumph of the Thames, which was painted for the Society
of Arts, should be devoted exclusively to immortalizing the eminent
dead, placed, in the watery groupes of the renowned departed, Dr.
Burney, then full of life and vigour.
This whimsical incident produced from the still playful imagination
of Mr. Owen Cambridge the following _jeu d’esprit_; to which he was
incited by an accident that had just occurred to the celebrated Gibbon;
who, in stepping too lightly from, or to a boat of Mr. Cambridge’s,
had slipt into the Thames; whence, however, he was intrepidly and
immediately rescued, with no other mischief than a wet jacket, by one
of that fearless, water-proof race, denominated, by Mr. Gibbon, the
amphibious family of the Cambridges.
“When Chloe’s picture was to Venus shown,” &c.