HISTORY OF MUSIC.
So many years had elapsed since the appearance of the first volume, and the murmurs of the subscribers were so general for the publication of the second, that the earnestness of the Doctor to fulfil his engagement, became such as to sicken him of almost every occupation that turned him from its pursuit. Yet uninterrupted attention grew more than ever difficult; for as his leisure, through the double claims of his profession and his work, diminished, his celebrity increased; and the calls upon it, as usual, from the wayward taste of public fashion for what is hard to obtain, were perpetual, were even clamorous; and he had constantly a long list of petitioning parents, awaiting a vacant hour, upon any terms that he could name, and at any part of the day.
He had always some early pupil who accepted his attendance at eight o’clock in the morning; and a strong instance has been given of its being seized upon even at seven;[37] and, during the height of the season for fashionable London residence, his tour from house to house was scarcely ever finished sooner than eleven o’clock at night.
But so urgent grew now the spirit of his diligence for the progress of his work, that he not only declined all invitations to the hospitable boards of his friends, he even resisted the social hour of repast at his own table; and took his solitary meal in his coach, while passing from scholar to scholar; for which purpose he had sandwiches prepared in a flat tin box; and wine and water ready mixed, in a wickered pint bottle, put constantly into the pockets of his carriage.
If, at this period, Dr. Burney had been as intent and as skilful in the arrangement and the augmentation of his income, as he was industrious to procure, and assiduous to merit, its increase, he might have retired from business, its toils and its cares, while yet in the meridian of life; with a comfortable competence for its decline, and adequate portions for his daughters. With regard to his sons, it was always his intention to bestow upon them good educations, and to bring them up to honourable professions; and then to leave them to form, as he had done himself, a dynasty of their own. But, unfortunately for all parties, he had as little turn as time for that species of speculation which leads to financial prosperity; and he lived chiefly upon the principal of the sums which he amassed; and which he merely, as soon as they were received, locked up in his bureau for facility of usage; or stored largely at his bankers as an asylum of safety: while the cash which he laid out in any sort of interest, was so little, as to make his current revenue almost incredibly below what might have been expected from the remuneration of his labours; or what seemed due to his situation in the world.
But, with all his honourable toil, his philosophic privations, and his heroic self-denials,
THE SECOND VOLUME of the HISTORY OF MUSIC,
from a continually enlarging view of its capability of improvement, did not see the light till the year 1782.
Then, however, it was received with the same favour and the same honours that had graced the entrance into public notice of its predecessor. The literary world seemed filled with its praise; the booksellers demanded ample impressions; and her Majesty Queen Charlotte, with even augmented graciousness, accepted its homage at court.
Relieved, by this publication, from a weight upon his spirits and his delicacy, which, for more than six years had burthened and disturbed them, he prudently resolved against working any longer under the self-reproachful annoyance of a promised punctuality which his position in life disabled him from observing, by fettering himself with any further tie of time to his subscribers for the remaining volumes.
He renounced, therefore, the excess of studious labour with which, hitherto,
his toil
O’er books consum’d the midnight oil;
and restored himself, in a certain degree, to his family, his friends, and a general and genial enjoyment of his existence. And hailed was the design, by all who knew him, with an energetic welcome.
And yet, in breathing thus a little from so unremitting an ardour; and allowing himself to bask awhile in that healing sunshine of applause which administers more relief to the brain-shattered, and mind-exhausted patient, than all the materia medica of the Apothecaries’ Hall; so small still, and so fugitive, were his intervals of relaxation, that the diminished exertion which to him was gentle rest, would, to almost any other, have still seemed overstrained occupation, and a life of drudgery.
With no small pleasure, now, he resumed his wonted place at the opera, at concerts, and in circles of musical excellence; which then were at their height of superiority, because presided over by the royal and accomplished legislator of taste, fashion, and elegance, the Prince of Wales;[38] who frequently deigned to call upon Dr. Burney for his opinion upon subjects of harmony: and even condescended to summon him to his royal vicinity, both at the opera and at concerts, that they might “compare notes,” in his own gracious expression, upon what was performing.
Not, however, to his daughter did the Doctor recommend any similar remission of penmanship. The extraordinary favour with which her little work had been received in the world; and which may chiefly, perhaps, be attributed to the unpretending and unexpecting mode in which, not skilfully, but involuntarily, it had glided into public life; being now sanctioned by the eclât of encouragement from Dr. Johnson and from Mr. Burke, gave a zest to his paternal pleasure and hopes, that made it impossible, nay, that even led him to think it would be unfatherly, to listen to her affrighted wishes of retreat, from her fearful apprehensions of some reverse; or suffer her to shrink back to her original obscurity, from the light into which she had been surprised.
And, indeed, though he made the kindest allowance for her tremors and reluctance, he was urged so tumultuously by others, that it was hardly possible for him to be passive: and Mr. Crisp, whose voice, in whatever was submitted to his judgment, had the effect of a casting vote, called out aloud: “More! More! More!—another production!”
The wishes of two such personages were, of course, resistless; and a new mental speculation, which already, though secretly, had taken a rambling possession of her ideas, upon the evils annexed to that species of family pride which, from generation to generation, seeks, by mortal wills, to arrest the changeful range of succession enacted by the immutable laws of death, became the basis of a composition which she denominated Memoirs of an Heiress.[39]
No sooner was her consent obtained, than Dr. Burney, who had long with regret, though with pride, perceived that, at Streatham, she had no time that was her own, earnestly called her thence.
He called, however, in vain, from the acuter, though fonder cry of Mrs. Thrale for her detention; and, kind and flexible, he was yielding up his demand, when Mr. Crisp, emphatically exclaiming:
“There is a tide in the affairs of men”— — —
“and—” comically adding—“and of girls, too!” charged him not to risk that turn for his daughter, through a false delicacy from which, should she become its victim, he would have the laugh against,—and nothing for him.
The Doctor then frankly revealed to Mrs. Thrale, the tide-fearing alarm of Mr. Crisp.
Startled, she heard him. Unwelcome was the sound to her affection, to her affliction—and, it may be, to her already growing perplexities!—but justice and kindness united to forbid any conflict:—though struck was the Doctor, and still more struck was the Memorialist, by the miserable “Adieu!” which she uttered at parting.
Mr. Crisp himself hastened in person to Streatham, to convey his young friend alike from that now monopolizing seclusion, and from her endlessly increasing expansion of visits and acquaintance in London;—all which he vehemently denounced as flattering idleness,—to the quiet and exclusive possession of what he had denominated The Doctor’s Conjuring Closet, at Chesington.
And there, with that paternal and excellent friend, and his worthy associates, Mrs. Hamilton and Miss Cooke, in lively sociality, gay good-humour, and unbounded confidence, she consigned some months to what he called her new conjuring. And there she proposed to remain till her work should be finished: but, ere that time arrived, and ere she could read any part of it with Mr. Crisp, a tender call from home brought her to the parental roof, to be present at the marriage of a darling sister:[40] after which, the Doctor kept her stationary in St. Martin’s-street, till she had written the word Finis, which ushered her “Heiress” into the world.