His acquaintance with Dr. Burney commenced by a letter of singular merit, and of nearly incomparable modesty. After revealing, in terms that showed the most profound skill in musical science, that he had himself not only studied and projected, but, in various rough desultory sections, had actually written certain portions of a History of Music, he liberally acknowledged that he had found the plan of the Doctor so eminently superior to his own, and the means that had been taken for its execution so far beyond his power of imitation, that he had come to a resolution of utterly renouncing his design; of which not a vestige would now remain that could reflect any pleasure upon his lost time and pains, unless he might appease his abortive attempt by presenting its fruits, with the hope that they would not be found utterly useless, to Dr. Burney.
So generous an offering could not fail of being delightedly accepted; and the more eagerly, as the whole style of the letter decidedly spoke its writer to be a scholar, a wit, and a man of science.
Dr. Burney earnestly solicited to receive the manuscript from Mr. Twining’s own hands: and Mr. Twining, though with a timidity as rare in accompanying so much merit as the merit itself, complied with the request.
The pleasure of this first interview was an immediate guarantee of the mental union to which it gave rise. Every word that issued from Mr. Twining confirmed the three high characters to which his letter had raised expectation,—of a man of science, a scholar, and a wit. Their taste in music, and their selection of composers and compositions, were of the same school; i.e. the modern and the Italian for melody, and the German for harmony.
Nor even here was bounded the chain by which they became linked: their classical, literary, and poetical pursuits, nay, even their fancies, glided so instinctively into the same channel, that not a dissonant idea ever rippled its current: and the animal spirits of both partook of this general coincidence, by running, playfully, whimsically, or ludicrously, with equal concord of pleasantry, into similar inlets of imagination.
The sense of this congeniality entertained by Dr. Burney, will be best shewn by the insertion of some biographical lines, taken from a chronological series of events which he committed to paper, about this time, for the amusement of Mrs. Burney.
* * * after toil and fatigue — —
To Twining I travel, in hopes of relief,
Whose wit and good-humour soon drive away grief.
And now, free from care, in night-gown and sandals,