“To Miss Dorothy Young.
“I had not thought it possible that any thing could urge me to write in the present deplorable disposition of my mind; but my dear Miss Young’s letter haunts me! Neither did I think it possible for any thing to add to my affliction, borne down and broken-hearted as I am. But the current of your woes and sympathetic sorrows meeting mine, has overpowered all bounds which [Pg 141] religion, philosophy, reason, or even despair, may have been likely to set to my grief. Oh Miss Young! you knew her worth—you were one of the few people capable of seeing and feeling it. Good God! that she should be snatched from me at a time when I thought her health re-establishing, and fixing for a long old age! when our plans began to succeed, and we flattered ourselves with enjoying each other’s society ere long, in a peaceable and quiet retirement from the bustling frivolousness of a capital, to which our niggard stars had compelled us to fly for the prospect of establishing our children.
“Amongst the numberless losses I sustain, there are none that unman me so much as the total deprivation of domestic comfort and converse—that converse from which I tore myself with such difficulty in a morning, and to which I flew back with such celerity at night! She was the source of all I could ever project or perform that was praise-worthy—all that I could do that was laudable had an eye to her approbation. There was a rectitude in her mind and judgment, that rendered her approbation so animating, so rational, so satisfactory! I have lost the spur, the stimulus to all exertions, all warrantable pursuits,—except those of another world. From an ambitious, active, enterprising Being, I am become a torpid drone, a listless, desponding wretch!—I know you will bear with my weakness, nay, in part, participate in it; but this is a kind of dotage unfit for common eyes, or even for common friends, to be entrusted with.
“You kindly, and truly, my dear Miss Young, styled her one of the greatest ornaments of society; but, apart from the ornamental, in which she shone in a superior degree, think, oh think, of her high merit as a daughter, mother, wife, sister, friend! I always, from the first moment I saw her to the last, had an ardent passion for her person, to which time had added [Pg 142] true friendship and rational regard. Perhaps it is honouring myself too much to say, few people were more suited to each other; but, at least, I always endeavoured to render myself more worthy of her than nature, perhaps, had formed me. But she could mould me to what she pleased! A distant hint—a remote wish from her was enough to inspire me with courage for any undertaking. But all is lost and gone in losing her—the whole world is a desert to me! nor does its whole circumference afford the least hope of succour—not a single ray of that fortitude She so fully possessed!
“You, and all who knew her, respected and admired her understanding while she was living. Judge, then, with what awe and veneration I must be struck to hear her counsel when dying!—to see her meet that tremendous spectre, death, with that calmness, resignation, and true religious fortitude, that no stoic philosopher, nor scarcely christian, could surpass; for it was all in privacy and simplicity. Socrates and Seneca called their friends around them to give them that courage that perhaps solitude might have robbed them of, and to spread abroad their fame to posterity; but she, dear pattern of humility! had no such vain view; no parade, no grimace! When she was aware that all was over—when she had herself pronounced the dread sentence, that she felt she should not outlive the coming night, she composedly gave herself up to religion, and begged that she might not be interrupted in her prayers and meditations.
“Afterwards she called me to her, and then tranquilly talked about our family and affairs, in a manner quite oracular.
“Sometime later she desired to see Hetty,[21] who, till that day, had spent the miserable week almost constantly at her bed-side, [Pg 143] or at the foot of the bed. Fanny, Susan, and Charley, had been sent, some days before, to the kind care of Mrs. Sheeles in Queen-Square, to be out of the way; and little Charlotte was taken to the house of her nurse.
“To poor Hetty she then discoursed in so kind, so feeling, so tender a manner, that I am sure her words will never be forgotten. And, this over, she talked of her own death—her funeral—her place of burial,—with as much composure as if talking of a journey to Lynn! Think of this, my dear Miss Young, and see the impossibility of supporting such a loss—such an adieu, with calmness! I hovered over her till she sighed, not groaned, her last—placidly sighed it—just after midnight.
“Her disorder was an inflammation of the stomach, with which she was seized on the 19th of September, after being on that day, and for some days previously, remarkably in health and spirits. She suffered the most excruciating torments for eight days, with a patience, a resignation, nearly quite silent. Her malady baffled all medical skill from the beginning. I called in Dr. Hunter.
“On the 28th, the last day! she suffered, I suppose, less, perhaps nothing! as mortification must have taken place, which must have afforded that sort of ease, that those who have escaped such previous agony shudder to think of! On that ever memorable, that dreadful day, she talked more than she had done throughout her whole illness. She forgot nothing, nor threw one word away! always hoping we should meet and know each other hereafter!—She told poor Hetty how sweet it would be if she could see her constantly from whence she was going, and begged she would invariably suppose that that would be the case. What a lesson to leave to a daughter!—She exhorted her to remember how much her example might influence the poor younger ones; [Pg 144] and bid her write little letters, and fancies, to her in the other world, to say how they all went on; adding, that she felt as if she should surely know something of them.
“Afterwards, feeling probably her end fast approaching, she serenely said, with one hand on the head of Hetty, and the other grasped in mine: “Now this is dying pleasantly! in the arms of one’s friends!” I burst into an unrestrained agony of grief, when, with a superiority of wisdom, resignation, and true religion,—though awaiting, consciously, from instant to instant awaiting the shaft of death,—she mildly uttered, in a faint, faint voice, but penetratingly tender, “Oh Charles!—”
“I checked myself instantaneously, over-awed and stilled as by a voice from one above. I felt she meant to beg me not to agitate her last moments!—I entreated her forgiveness, and told her it was but human nature. “And so it is!” said she, gently; and presently added, “Nay, it is worse for the living than the dying,—though a moment sets us even!—life is but a paltry business—yet
“‘Who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey
This pleasing—anxious being e’er resign’d?
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?’”
“She had still muscular strength left to softly press both our hands as she pronounced these affecting lines.
“Other fine passages, also, both from holy writ, and from what is most religious in our best poets, she from time to time recited, with fervent prayers; in which most devoutly we joined.
“These, my dear Miss Young, are the outlines of her sublime and edifying exit—— —— —What a situation was mine! but for my poor helpless children, how gladly, how most gladly [Pg 145] should I have wished to accompany her hence on the very instant, to that other world to which she so divinely passed!—for what in this remains for me?”
Part of a letter, also, to Mrs. Stephen Allen, the friend to whom, next to Miss Dorothy Young, the departed had been most attached, seems to belong to this place. Its style, as it was written at a later period, is more composed; but it evinces in the wretched mourner the same devotion to his Esther’s excellences, and the same hopelessness of earthly happiness.
“To Mrs. Stephen Allen.
* * * * *
“Even prosperity is insipid without participation with those we love; for me, therefore, heaven knows, all is at an end—all is accumulated wretchedness! I have lost a soul congenial with my own;—a companion, who in outward appurtenances and internal conceptions, condescended to assimilate her ideas and manners with mine. Yet believe not that all my feelings are for myself; my poor girls have sustained a loss far more extensive than they, poor innocents! are at present sensible of. Unprovided as I should have left them with respect to fortune, had it been my fate to resign her and life first, I should have been under no great apprehension for the welfare of my children, in leaving them to a mother who had such inexhaustible resources in her mind and intellects. It would have grieved me, indeed, to have quitted her oppressed by such a load of care; but I could have [Pg 146] had no doubt of her supporting it with fortitude and abilities, as long as life and health had been allowed her. Fortitude and abilities she possessed, indeed, to a degree that, without hyperbole, no human being can conceive but myself, who have seen her under such severe trials as alone can manifest, unquestionably, true parts and greatness of mind. I am thoroughly convinced she was fitted for any situation, either exalted or humble, which this life can furnish. And with all her nice discernment, quickness of perception, and delicacy, she could submit, if occasion seemed to require it, to such drudgery and toil as are suited to the meanest domestic; and that, with a liveliness and alacrity that, in general, are to be found in those only who have never known a better state. Yet with a strength of reason the most solid, and a capacity for literature the most intelligent, she never for a moment relinquished the female and amiable softness of her sex with which, above every other attribute, men are most charmed and captivated.”
Such, in their early effervescence, was the vent which this man of affliction found to his sorrows, in the sympathy of his affectionate friends.
At other times, they were beguiled from their deadly heaviness by the expansion of fond description in melancholy verse. To this he was less led by poetical enthusiasm—for all of fire, fancy, and imagery, that light up the poet’s flame, was now extinct, or smothered—than by a gentle request of his Esther, uttered in her last days, that he would address to her some poetry; a request intended, there can be no doubt, as a stimulus to some endearing occupation that might tear him from his first despondence, by an idea that he had still a wish of hers to execute.
Not as poetry, in an era fastidious as the present in metrical criticism, does the editor presume to offer the verses now about to be selected and copied from a vast mass of elegiac laments found amongst the posthumous papers of Dr. Burney: it is biographically alone, like those that have preceded them, that they are brought forward. They are testimonies of the purity of his love, as well as of the acuteness of his bereavement; and, as such, they certainly belong to his memoirs. The reader, therefore, is again entreated to remember that they were not designed for the press, though they were committed, unshackled, to the discretion of the editor. If that be in fault, the motive will probably prove a palliative that will make the heart, not the head, of the reader, the seat of his judgment.
“She’s gone!—the all-pervading soul is fled
T’ explore the unknown mansions of the dead,
Where, free from earthly clay, the immortal mind
Casts many a pitying glance on those behind; [Pg 148]