It was professionally that Dr. Burney was first invited to Streatham, by the master of that fair abode. The eldest daughter of the house[10] was in the progress of an education fast advancing in most departments of juvenile accomplishments, when the idea of having recourse to the chief in “music’s power divine,”—Dr. Burney,—as her instructor in harmony, occurred to Mrs. Thrale.
So interesting was this new engagement to the family of Dr. Burney, which had been born and bred to a veneration of Dr. Johnson; and which had imbibed the general notion that Streatham was a coterie of wits and scholars, on a par with the blue assemblages in town of Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Vesey; that they all flocked around him, on his return from his first excursion, with eager enquiry whether Dr. Johnson had appeared; and whether Mrs. Thrale merited the brilliant plaudits of her panegyrists.
Dr. Burney, delighted with all that had passed, was as communicative as they could be inquisitive. Dr. Johnson had indeed appeared; and from his previous knowledge of Dr. Burney, had come forward to him zealously, and wearing his mildest aspect.
Twenty-two years had now elapsed since first they had opened a correspondence, that to Dr. Burney had been delightful, and of which Dr. Johnson retained a warm and pleased remembrance. The early enthusiasm for that great man, of Dr. Burney, could not have hailed a more propitious circumstance for promoting the intimacy to which he aspired, than what hung on this recollection; for kind thoughts must instinctively have clung to the breast of Dr. Johnson, towards so voluntary and disinterested a votary; who had broken forth from his own modest obscurity to offer homage to Dr. Johnson, long before his stupendous Dictionary, and more stupendous character, had raised him to his subsequent towering fame.
Mrs. Thrale, Dr. Burney had beheld as a star of the first magnitude in the constellation of female wits; surpassing, rather than equalizing, the reputation which her extraordinary endowments, and the splendid fortune which made them conspicuous, had blazoned abroad; while her social and easy good-humour allayed the alarm excited by the report of her spirit of satire; which, nevertheless, he owned she unsparingly darted around her, in sallies of wit and gaiety, and the happiest spontaneous epigrams.
Mr. Thrale, the Doctor had found a man of sound sense, good parts, good instruction, and good manners; with a liberal turn of mind, and an unaffected taste for talented society. Yet, though it was everywhere known that Mrs. Thrale sportively, but very decidedly, called and proclaimed him her master, the Doctor never perceived in Mr. Thrale any overbearing marital authority; and soon remarked, that while, from a temper of mingled sweetness and carelessness, his wife never offered him any opposing opinion, he was too wise to be rallied, by a sarcastic nickname, out of the rights by which he kept her excess of vivacity in order. Composedly, therefore, he was content with the appellation; though from his manly character, joined to his real admiration of her superior parts, he divested it of its commonly understood imputation of tyranny, to convert it to a mere simple truism.
But Dr. Burney soon saw that he had little chance of aiding his young pupil in any very rapid improvement. Mrs. Thrale, who had no passion but for conversation, in which her eminence was justly her pride, continually broke into the lesson to discuss the news of the times; politics, at that period, bearing the complete sway over men’s minds. But she intermingled what she related, or what she heard, with sallies so gay, so unexpected, so classically erudite, or so vivaciously entertaining, that the tutor and the pupil were alike drawn away from their studies, to an enjoyment of a less laborious, if not of a less profitable description.
Dr. Johnson, who had no ear for music, had accustomed himself, like many other great writers who have had that same, and frequently sole, deficiency, to speak slightingly both of the art and of its professors. And it was not till after he had become intimately acquainted with Dr. Burney and his various merits, that he ceased to join in a jargon so unworthy of his liberal judgment, as that of excluding musicians and their art from celebrity.
The first symptom that he shewed of a tendency to conversion upon this subject, was upon hearing the following paragraph read, accidentally, aloud by Mrs. Thrale, from the preface to the History of Music, while it was yet in manuscript.
“The love of lengthened tones and modulated sounds, seems a passion implanted in human nature throughout the globe; as we hear of no people, however wild and savage in other particulars, who have not music of some kind or other, with which they seem greatly delighted.”