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Six heartless, nearly desolate, years of lonely conjugal chasm, had sticceeded to double their number of nearly unparalleled conjugal enjoyment and the void was still fallow and hopeless!—when the yetvery-handsome-though-no-longer-in-her-bloom Mrs. Stephen Allen, of Lynn, now become a widow, decided, for promoting the education of her eldest daughter, to make London her winter residence.' -p. 189.

Burney was applied to for assistance in the musical line,' as Madame D'Arblay, with unusual simplicity, phrases it, and soon offered himself in the conjugal line, and was accepted. The first Mrs. Burney had, on her death-bed, generously and considerately recommended a second marriage, and had suggested a Miss Dorothy Young, another of her Lynn friends; but Dorothy was not handsome, and

Mr. Burney, sacred as he held the opinions and wishes of his Esther, was too ardent an admirer of beauty to dispense, in totality, with that attractive embellishment of the female frame.'p. 193.

Madame D'Arblay, though enthusiastically devoted to the memory of her mother, is too just and too dutiful to complain of her father's re-marriage, and indeed-rather too eloquently-defends it.

Those who judge of the sincerity of pristine connubial tenderness merely by its abhorrence of succession, take a very unenlightened, if not false, view of human grief; unless they limit their stigma to an eager or a facile repetition of those rites which, on their first inauguration, had seemed inviolable and irreplaceable.

So still, in fact, they may faithfully, though silently continue, even under a subsequent new connexion. The secret breast, alive to memory though deprived of sympathy, may still internally adhere to its own choice and fondness; notwithstanding the various and imperious calls of current existence may urge a second alliance.'-p. 191.

The marriage seems to have been not unacceptable to the young families of either of the parties, and probably was not unhappy, though very little mention is made of the second Mrs. Burney in the remainder of the work-her maiden name is not told, nor the number of their children; in short, she is a cypher in Madame d'Arblay's history of the family-the doctor's own memoirs would probably have been more communicative. The almost single occasion in which she is mentioned, is worth noticing, not for her sake indeed, but for that of Mrs. Greville:

When the new Mrs. Burney recited, with animated encomiums, various passages of Sterne's seducing sensibility, Mrs. Greville, shrugging her shoulders, exclaimed:-" A feeling heart is certainly a right heart; nobody will contest that: but when a man chooses to walk about the world with a cambrick handkerchief always in his hand, that he may always be ready to weep, either with man or beast,―he only turns me sick."-p. 201.

This

This alludes, no doubt; to the story of the Dead Ass'—the affected sensibility of which suited so little with what was rumoured of Sterne's conduct towards his own widowed and indigent parent-that it was said, by Horace Walpole we believe, that a dead donkey was to him of more interest than a living mother.'

About this time Burney met with a severe mortification, in not obtaining the place of' Master of the King's Band." David Hume interested himself in his favour with his friend Lord Hertford, the then Chamberlain-but the place had been already disposed of. Madame D'Arblay does not state on what pretensions or grounds Burney had raised his hopes to such a height, that their disappointment should have affected him as if he had suffered some grievous injustice. He had at this period published none of his literary works, and the only musical production noticed by his biographer was the abortive translation of the Devin du Village-no claim certainly to the first honorary reward of musical excellence.

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In 1769 Burney received another rebuff' in not being employed to compose the music of Gray's ode, for the Duke of Gloucester's installation, as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. Indignant at this slight, he would not honour that university by applying to it for a degree, and he accordingly repaired to Oxford, and there, in the same year, became a doctor of music. In this year too he revised and enlarged a translation, made (if we rightly understand Madame d'Arblay's circumlocutory statement) by his late wife, of Maupertuis's Letter on Comets, and published it under the title of An Essay towards a History of Comets: this was his first publication. In 1770 he made musical tour' to France and Italy, and in a year or two after another to Germany, of both of which he published accounts, which are said to have received from Dr. Johnson the high praise of his having had them in his eye when writing his Journey to the Hebrides:** though we confess we do not see in what the resemblance consists, unless, as Madame d'Arblay's account leads us to suspect, he alluded to the shape and form.' (vol. ii., p. 78.) His German tour concluded with an odd accident:-during the passage from Calais he suffered so intolerably from sea-sickness, that on his arrival at Dover he would not leave his cot, but fell into a profound sleep, from which he was awakened by a recurrence of the disorder, and found that the packet was on her way back to France; so that his incapacity to sustain_one_voyage subjected him to two others. Soon after this, Dr. Burney, who had resided successively in Poland-street and Queen-square, removed to the house No. 6, St. Martin's Street, which had been Sir Isaac Newton's, and whose observatory at the top of the

6

* Croker's Boswell, vol. v., p. 65.

house

house Burney repaired. This residence subjected him to the visits of sundry foreigners who, about this time, catching from Voltaire and Algarotti, an enthusiasm about Newton, were ambitious of making pilgrimages to the residence of the great philosopher, of whose real merits they had about as just an idea as the guides who had inspired them. Amongst these was the Duke de Chaulnes, better known in his own country as Duke de Pecquigny-a strange, eccentric man—a great traveller and a clever chemist. Having visited Egypt and China, he at last bethought himself of seeing London, especially Newton-House' and Dr. Johnson. His invitation to Burney to meet Johnson at dinner is amusing:

"The Duke of Chaulnes' best compliments to Doctor Burney: he desires the favour of his company to dinner with Doctor Johnson on Sunday next, between three and four o'clock, which is the hour convenient to the excellent old doctor, the best piece of man,* indeed, that the duke ever saw."-vol. ii. p. 338.

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Neither Boswell, nor Mrs. Thrale, nor Johnson's own letters, mention this acquaintance with M. de Chaulnes; it was no doubt very transient, and confined probably to a few visits and this dinThe dinner, however, owing to Johnson's deplorable state of health, disappointed all parties. We heartily wish that Boswell had been present: he would probably have enlivened it; and at all events we should like to have had his description of the meeting between this very extraordinary duke and the best piece of man he ever saw.'

In 1776 Burney published the first volume of his History of Music; the second volume followed in 1779, and the third and fourth in 1789. He also published in 1785 an account of the commemoration of Handel, and in 1796 a life of Metastasio.

In 1783, the friendship of Mr. Burke, then Paymaster of the Forces, made Dr. Burney's declining life comfortable, by the office of Organist of Chelsea College, with apartments in the building, and a salary, the increase of which to the sum of 50l. was the last act of Mr. Burke's official life. It would be unjust to Madame D'Arblay not to extract the following letter, in which Mr. Burke attributes to her a considerable share in his kindness towards her father.

To Dr. Burney

"I had yesterday the pleasure of voting you, my dear Sir, a salary of fifty pounds a year, as organist to Chelsea Hospital. But as every increase of salary made at our Board is subject to the approbation of the Lords of the Treasury, what effect the change (of ministry) now

*In this odd phrase we almost suspect a misprint of' piece' for paste, which at first sight would seem quite as odd, but the French have a phrase la meilleure pâte 'homme, which may have been running in the duke's head.

made

made may have I know not;-but I do not think any Treasury will rescind it.

"This was pour faire la bonne bouche at parting with office; and I am only sorry that it did not fall in my way to show you a more substantial mark of my high respect for you and Miss Burney. "I have the honour to be, &c. EDM. BURKE.

""Horse-Guards, Dec. 9, 1783.

"I really could not do this business at a more early period, else it would have been done infallibly."-vol. ii., p. 374.

From this period there is little to tell of Dr. Burney, but that little is told by his daughter in a style which must not be altogether suppressed. The year 1784, which was brightened at its commencement by Mr. Burke's bounty, was to be shaded towards its close

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by a fearful and calamitous event, that made the falling leaves of its autumn corrosively sepulchral to Dr. Burney.'-vol. ii., p. 347.

Mr. Bewley, an old friend of his, (immortalised in Boswell for the reverence with which he accepted and preserved, as a memorial of Dr. Johnson, some cuttings of a hearth broom which Burney had transmitted to him,) paid him a visit in St. Martin's Street-but he brought with him

an occult disease, which for many years had been preying upon the constitution of the too patient philosopher, and began more roughly to ravage his debilitating frame: the excess of his pains, with whatever fortitude they were borne, forced him from his Stoic endurance, by dismembering it, through bodily torture, from the palliations of intellectual occupation.'-p. 348.

Poor Mr. Bewley died under his friend's roof, and

' after this harrowing loss, Dr. Burney again returned to melancholy Chesington; but—still its inmate—to his soothingly reviving Susanna.' ―p. 353.

This lady, his third daughter, the wife of Mr. Phillips, was soon to be a source of affliction to her father, by an event of which, but for the grandiloquence of her sister, we should have thought very slightly.

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Bright again, with smiling success and gay prosperity, was this period to Dr. Burney; but not more bright than brittle! for, almost at its height, its serenity was broken by a stroke that rent it asunder! -a wound that never could be healed!

The peculiar darling of the whole house of Dr. Burney, as well as of his heart; whose presence always exhilarated, or whose absence saddened every branch of it, his daughter Susanna, was called, by inevitable circumstances, from his paternal embraces and fond society, to accompany her husband and children upon indispensable business to Ireland.'-vol. iii. p. 219.

A visit to Ireland, even in 1796, hardly deserved such pathetic notice; but a more serious event followed.

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And not here ended the sharp reverse of this altered year; scarcely had this harrowing filial separation taken place, ere an assault was made upon his conjugal feelings, by the sudden-at-the-momentthough-from-lingering-illnesses-often-previously-expected death of Mrs. Burney, his second wife.'-p. 223:

Here we have again taken the liberty of putting hyphens between the component parts of an adjective phrase. This last specimen is, as far as we recollect, the longest in the language, and so great a curiosity in its kind, that it would be unpardonable not to recommend it to the special attention of our readers.

At last we arrive at a scene which Madame D'Àrblay, much to the credit of her heart, describes in language more simple and natural than she has employed on any other occasion. The good old Doctor himself died in April 1814, terminating by a Christian death a blameless and honourable life. Of this life we confess we should be glad to see some more distinct, intelligible, and orderly account than that now before us: which, besides the errors of style which are so ridiculous, and a want of arrangement which is exceedingly perplexing, has also the more serious fault of being anything rather than a history of the life and writings of Dr. Burney. Madame d'Arblay gives a hint that the original correspondence of Dr. Burney is destined to the flames, and it is not clear that his original memoirs are not threatened with a similar fate. We venture to entreat that this design may not be executed; the extracts from his own pen are certainly, as are certainly, as we have already said, the most satisfactory parts of these volumes, and without rating very highly the importance of the history of Dr. Burney to the general literature of the country, we think the public would be glad to see a good life of him; and if his own materials can afford such a narrative, so much the better. Madame d'Arblay's book has certainly not occupied this ground, and instead of being called Memoirs of Dr. Burney,' might better be described as Scattered Recollections of Miss Fanny Burney and her Acquaintance.' Of her father she tells almost nothing that was not already to be found in the obituary of the Gentleman's Magazine and other biographies; and she does not even notice three or four musical works, which we learn from those authorities he composed a strange omission in the Memoirs of a musical professor.

This leads us to a second part of our task-namely, to give some account of what appears to us the real object of the work; and if we have covered half-a-dozen pages without touching on that essential subject, it is because Madame d'Arblay, with consummate art-or a confusion of ideas which has had the same effect as consummate art,-conceals from her readers, and perhaps

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