SIR WILLIAM FAWCET.
“Sir William Fawcet, the successor of Lord Townshend, was one of the most honourable of men; and he is worthy of particular notice, from the credit that his nomination did to the government of this country. He was friendly, benevolent, patient, and even humble; which rarely [Pg 365] indeed is the case with men exalted from an inferior condition to professional honours, and dignity of station, such as never could have entered into their expectations when they began their career. Sir William is said to have opened his military life in the ranks; but by his bravery, diligence, and zeal in the service, as well as by his integrity, temper, and prudent conduct, to have mounted entirely by merit to the summit of his profession; regularly acquiring the good-will and favour of his superior officers, till he obtained that of the Commander in chief;[77] through whose liberal recommendation he rose to the countenance and patronage of his Majesty himself.
“He was as firm in probity and honour as in courage. I never knew a man of more amiable simplicity, or more steady temper. Madame Geoffrin, of Paris, used to say of the Baron d’Holbech, that he was simplement simple. If such a phrase could be naturalized in English, it would exactly suit Sir William Fawcet: and the suavity of manners he acquired by frequenting the court, though late in life, was certainly extraordinary. Marbles and metals very difficultly receive a polish after being long neglected, and exposed to corrosion; but when the intrinsic value is solid, the external, sooner or later, always manifests affinity.”
In a memorandum of 1805, is this paragraph:
“Lady Bruce,—after I had nearly transcribed two huge folio volumes of music, or, rather, on music, Sala’s Regole di Contrapunto, which I thought Lady Bruce had only lent me, and which I had therefore returned; sends me them back, telling me she had brought them from [Pg 366] Naples purposely to put them into my possession, and only wishing they were more worth my acceptance. What ill usage!—The books, indeed, tell me nothing I did not know, and are nothing, with all their value, to me, compared to her ladyship’s goodness and kindness. They are, nevertheless, the best digested course of study on counterpoint that have, perhaps, ever been written; and my collection of books on music would be incomplete without them.”
The severe disappointments, with their aggravating circumstances, that repeatedly had deprived Dr. Burney of the first post of nominal honour in his profession, which the whole musical world, not only of his own country, but of Europe, would have voted to be his due, were now, from the Doctor’s advanced stage in life, closing, without further struggle, into inevitable submission.
Yet his many friends to whom this history was familiar, and who knew that the approbation of the King, from the earliest time that the Doctor had been made known to His Majesty, had invariably been in his favour, could not acquiesce in this resignation; and suggested amongst themselves the propriety of presenting Dr. Burney to the King, as a fit object for the next vacancy that might occur, in the literary line, for a pension to a man of letters. And, upon the death of Mrs. Murphy, Mr. Crewe endeavoured to begin a canvass.
But an audience with the King, at that moment, from various illnesses and calamities, was so little attainable, that no application had been found feasible: weeks, months again rolled away without the effort; and nothing, certainly, could be so unexpected, so utterly unlooked for, in the course of things, as that Dr. Burney, the most zealous adherent to government principles, and the most decided enemy to democratic doctrines, should finally receive all the remuneration he ever attained for his elaborate workings in that art, which, of all others, was the avowed favourite of his King, under the administration of the great chief of opposition, Charles Fox.[78]
So, however, it was; for when, in the year 1806, that renowned orator of liberty, found himself suddenly, and, by the premature death of Mr. Pitt, almost unavoidably raised to the head of the state, Mrs. Crewe started a claim for Dr. Burney.
Mr. Windham was instant and animated in supporting it. Mr. Fox, with his accustomed grace, where he had a favour to bestow, gave it his ready countenance; the King’s Sign Manual was granted with alacrity of approbation; and the faithful, invaluable Lady Crewe, while her own new honours were freshly ornamenting her brow, had the cordial happiness of announcing to her unsoliciting and no longer expecting old friend, his participation in the new turn of the tide.