1803.
In 1803, one short record alone has been found. That he wrote no more journal-anecdotes that year, may be chiefly attributed to his then intense application to the Cyclopedia. Perhaps, also, his spirits for his Diary might be depressed by so abrupt a privation of another daughter; not, indeed, by the hand of death, yet by a species of exile that had no certain or visible term.
The following is the single record of 1803 above-mentioned:
“Beethoven’s compositions for the piano-forte were first brought to England by Miss Tate, a most accomplished dilletante singer and player. I soon afterwards heard some of his instrumental works, which are such as incline me to rank him amongst the first musical authors of the present century. He was a disciple of Mozart, and is now but three or four and twenty years of age.”
1804 turned out far more copious in events and recitals; though saddening, however philosophical and consonant to the common laws of nature, are the reflections and avowals of Dr. Burney upon his this year’s birth-day.
1804.
From the Doctor’s Journal.
“In 1804, in the month of April, I completed my 78th year, and decided to relinquish teaching and my musical patients; for both my ears and my eyes were beginning to fail me. I could still hear the most minute musical tone; but in conversation I lost the articulation, and was forced to make people at the least distance from me repeat everything that they said. Sometimes the mere tone of voice, and the countenance of the speaker, told me whether I was to smile or to frown; but never so explicitly as to allow me to venture at any reply to what was said! Yet I never, seemingly, have been more in fashion at any period of my life than this spring; never invited to more conversaziones, assemblées, dinners, and concerts. But I feel myself less and less able to bear a part in general conversation every day, from the failure of memory, particularly in names; and I am become fearful of beginning any story that occurs to me, lest I should be stopped short by hunting for Mr. How d’ye call him’s style and titles.
“I was very near-sighted from about my 30th year; but though it is usually thought that that sort of sight improves with age, I have not discovered that the notion was well founded. My sight became not only more short, but more feeble. Instead of a concave glass, I was forced to have recourse to one that was convex, and that magnified highly, for pale ink and small types.”
The Editor must here remark, that Dr. Burney never required the convex glass of which he speaks, for the perusal of either printed or written characters, except when they were presented to him at a distance. He read to his very last days every book and every letter that he could hold near to his eyes, without any species of spectacles.