The list, numbered alphabetically, that he drew up of his plan for this work, might almost have staggered the courage of a man of twenty-five years of age for its completion; but fifty years older than that was Dr. Burney when it was formed! There is not a book upon music, which it was possible he could consult, that he has not ransacked; nor a subject, that could afford information for the work, that he has not fathomed. And so excellent are his articles, both in manner and matter, that, to equal him upon the subjects he has selected, another writer must await a future period; when new musical genius, composition, and combinations in the powers of harmony, and the varieties of melody, by creating new tastes, may kindle sensations that may call for a new Historian.
Less pleasing, or rather, extremely painful, is what remains to relate of the last efforts of his genius, and last, and perhaps most cherished of his literary exercises, namely, his Poem on Astronomy; which the Memorialist had now the chagrin, almost the consternation, to learn had been renounced, nay, committed to the flames!
To this work, as, upon her return, he reminded her, with a look implying, though unwillingly, nay, even tenderly, something like reproach, he had been urged by her solicitations.
This, however, he could not but forgive, and freely forgive, knowing that her motive was to draw him from the melancholy inertness that threatened his future existence, upon the loss, and at so late a period of life, of a companion of thirty years.
The subject, also, was his own, and was one in which he had long and early delighted; which offered, therefore, the fairest promise of enabling him
“When all his genial years were flown,
And all the Life of Life was gone,”
to find, through the energy of a favourite pursuit, that his intellectual faculties were not for ever interred before the funeral of the machine, through which, so long and so vividly, they had emanated.
She had the consolation, also, to know that, for many years, this Poem had answered all the purposes for which it had been suggested. Its idea had amused his fancy; its researches had kept alive his thirst of knowledge; and had meandered into so many new channels of information, in the bright regions which it led him to contemplate, that it had been a source to him of pleasure, and a new spring to exertion, that, though not competent to drive away sorrow, had frequently, at least, discarded sadness.