DR. JOHNSON.
The friendship and kindness of heart of Dr. Johnson, were promptly brought into play by this renewed intercourse. Richard, the youngest son of Dr. Burney, born of the second marriage, was then preparing for Winchester School, whither his father purposed conveying him in person. This design was no sooner known at Streatham, where Richard, at that time a beautiful as well as clever boy, was in great favour with Mrs. Thrale, than Dr. Johnson volunteered an offer to accompany the father to Winchester; that he might himself present the son to Dr. Warton, the then celebrated master of that ancient receptacle for the study of youth.
Dr. Burney, enchanted by such a mark of regard, gratefully accepted the proposal; and they set out together for Winchester, where Dr. Warton expected them with ardent hospitality. The acquaintance of Dr. Burney he had already sought with literary liberality, having kindly given him notice, through the medium of Mr. Garrick, [11] of a manuscript treatise on music in the Winchester collection. There was, consequently, already an opening to pleasure in their meeting: but the master’s reception of Dr. Johnson, from the high-wrought sense of the honour of such a visit, was rather rapturous than glad. Dr. Warton was always called an enthusiast by Dr. Johnson, who, at times, when in gay spirits, and with those with whom he trusted their ebullition, would take off Dr. Warton with the strongest humour; describing, almost convulsively, the ecstacy with which he would seize upon the person nearest to him, to hug in his arms, lest his grasp should be eluded, while he displayed some picture, or some prospect; and indicated, in the midst of contortions and gestures that violently and ludicrously shook, if they did not affright his captive, the particular point of view, or of design, that he wished should be noticed.
This Winchester visit, besides the permanent impression made by its benevolence, considerably quickened the march of intimacy of Dr. Burney with the great lexicographer, by the tête à tête journies to and from Winchester; in which there was not only the ease of companionability, to dissipate the modest awe of intellectual super-eminence, but also the certitude of not being obtrusive; since, thus coupled in a post-chaise, Dr. Johnson had no choice of occupation, and no one else to whom to turn.
Far, however, from Dr. Johnson, upon this occasion, was any desire of change, or any requisition for variety. The spirit of Dr. Burney, with his liveliness of communication, drew out the mighty stores which Dr. Johnson had amassed upon nearly every subject, with an amenity that brought forth his genius in its very essence, cleared from all turbid dregs of heated irritability; and Dr. Burney never looked back to this Winchester tour but with recollected pleasure.
Nor was this the sole exertion in favour of Dr. Burney, of this admirable friend. He wrote various letters to his own former associates, and to his newer connexions at Oxford, recommending to them to facilitate, with their best power, the researches of the musical historian. And, some time afterwards, he again took a seat in the chaise of Dr. Burney, and accompanied him in person to that university; where every head of college, professor, and even general member, vied one with another in coupling, in every mark of civility, their rising approbation of Dr. Burney, with their established reverence for Dr. Johnson.
Most willingly, indeed, would this great and excellent man have made, had he seen occasion, far superior efforts in favour of Dr. Burney; an excursion almost any where being, in fact, so agreeable to his taste, as to be always rather a pleasure to him than a fatigue.
His vast abilities, in truth, were too copious for the small scenes, objects, and interests of the little world in which he lived; [12] and frequently must he have felt both curbed and damped by the utter insufficiency of such minor scenes, objects, and interests, to occupy powers such as his of conception and investigation. To avow this he was far too wise, lest it should seem a scorn of his fellow-creatures; and, indeed, from his internal humility, it is possible that he was not himself aware of the great chasm that separated him from the herd of mankind, when not held to it by the ties of benevolence or of necessity.
To talk of humility and Dr. Johnson together, may, perhaps, make the few who remember him smile, and the many who have only heard of him stare. But his humility was not that of thinking more lowlily of himself than of others; it was simply that of thinking so lowlily of others, as to hold his own conscious superiority of but small scale in the balance of intrinsic excellence.
After these excursions, the intercourse of Dr. Burney with Streatham became so friendly, that Mrs. Thrale desired to make acquaintance with the Doctor’s family; and Dr. Johnson, at the same time, requested to examine the Doctor’s books; while both wished to see the house of Sir Isaac Newton.