After this harrowing loss, Dr. Burney again returned to melancholy
Chesington; but—still its inmate—to his soothingly reviving Susanna.
These two admirable and bosom friends, the one of early youth, the
other of early manhood, Mr.
Crisp and Mr. Bewley, both thus gone; both, in the same year, departed;
Mr. Twining only now, for the union of musical with mental friendship,
remained: but Mr. Twining, though capable to exhilarate as well
as console almost every evil—except his own absence, was utterly
unattainable, save during the few weeks of his short annual visit to
London; or the few days of the Doctor’s yet shorter visits to the
vicarage of Fordham.
Alone, therefore, and unassisted, except by the slow mode of
correspondence, Dr. Burney prosecuted his work. This labour,
nevertheless, however fatiguing to his nerves, and harassing to his
health, upon missing the triple participation that had lightened his
toil, gradually became, what literary pursuits will ever become to
minds capable of their development, when not clogged by the heavy
weight of recent grief; first a check to morbid sadness, next a
renovator of wearied faculties, and lastly, through their oblivious
influence over all objects foreign to their purposes, a source of
enjoyment.
To this occupation he owed the re-invigoration of courage that,
ere long, was followed by a return to the native temperature of
tranquillity, that had early and intuitively taught him not to sully
what yet he possessed of happiness, by inconsolably bemoaning what was
withdrawn! and he resolved, in aid at once of his spirits and of his
work, to cultivate more assiduously than ever his connexions with Dr.
Johnson, Mr. Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Mrs. Delany.