HISTORY OF MUSIC.
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early and intuitively taught him not to sully what yet he possessed of happiness, by inconsolably bemoaning what was withdrawn!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.