SIR JOHN HAWKINS’S HISTORY OF MUSIC.
The fate of this work was decided like that of many more important things, by a trifle, a word, a pun. A ballad, chanted by a fille-de-chambre, undermined the colossal power of Alberoni; a single line of Frederic the Second, reflecting not on the politics but the poetry of a French minister, plunged France into the seven years’ war; and a pun condemned Sir John Hawkins’s sixteen years’ labour to long obscurity and oblivion. Some wag wrote the following catch, which Dr. Callcott set to music:—
“Have you read Sir John Hawkins’s History? Some folks think it quite a mystery; Both I have, and I aver That Burney’s History I prefer.”
Burn his History was straightway in every one’s mouth; and the bookseller, if he did not follow the advice à pied de la lettre, actually wasted, as the term is, or sold for waste paper, some hundred copies, and buried the rest of the impression in the profoundest depth of a damp cellar, as an article never likely to be called for, so that now hardly a copy can be procured undamaged by damp and mildew. It has been for some time, however, rising,—is rising,—and the more it is read and known, the more it ought to rise in public estimation and demand.—Harmonicon.