How merely an amanuensis had been the Editor of these Memoirs, had all the personal manuscripts of Dr. Burney been written at this healthy, though so much later period of his existence; instead of having fallen under his melancholy pen, to while away nerveless languor when paralysis, through the vision of his imagination, appeared to be unremittingly suspended over his head! the last given pages of his letters to Paris, though composed from his 80th to his 85th year, are all run off in the flowing and lively style of his early penmanship.
But disastrous indeed to Dr. Burney was an after event, of the year 1810, that is now to be recorded; grievously, essentially, permanently disastrous. Misfortune, with all her fevering arrows of hoarded ills, retained no longer the materials that could so deeply empoison another dart, for striking at the root of what life could yet accord him of elegant enjoyment. Lady Crewe alone remained, apart from his family, whose personal loss could more afflictingly have wounded him, than that which he now experienced by the death of the Duke of Portland.
Fatal to all future zest for worldly exertion in Dr. Burney, proved this blow; from which, though he survived it some years, he never mentally recovered; so deeply had he felt and reciprocated the extraordinary partiality conceived for him by his Grace.
It was the Duke alone who, for a long time previously, had been able to prevail with him to come forth from his already begun seclusion, to be domiciliated at Bulstrode Park; where he could animate with society, recreate in rural scenery, or meditate in solitude without difficulty or preparation; that superb country villa being as essentially, and at will, his own, as his apartments at Chelsea College.
A loss such as this, was in all ways irreparable.
The last sentence which he wrote upon the Duke, in his Journal, is mournfully impressive:
“My loss by the decease of my most affectionate and liberal friend and patron, the Duke of Portland, and my grief for his dreadful sufferings, will lower my spirits to the last hour of sensibility! The loss to my heart is indescribable!”
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FRANCE.
Yet, in the midst of this total and voluntary retreat from public life, a new honour, as little expected by Dr. Burney as, from concomitant circumstances, it was little wished, sought, in 1810, to encircle his brow.