The Biographer, therefore, ventures to close these Memoirs with the following Sepulchral Character:
Sacred to the Memory
OF
CHARLES BURNEY, MUS. D.
WHO, FULL OF DAYS, AND FULL OF VIRTUES;
THE PRIDE OF HIS FAMILY; THE DELIGHT OF SOCIETY;
THE UNRIVALLED CHIEF AND SCIENTIFIC
HISTORIAN
OF HIS TUNEFUL ART,
BELOVED, REVERED, REGRETTED,
IN HIS 87th YEAR, APRIL 12th, 1814,
BREATHED, IN CHELSEA COLLEGE, HIS LAST SIGH;
LEAVING TO POSTERITY A FAME UNBLEMISHED,
BUILT ON THE NOBLE FABRIC OF SELF-ACQUIRED ACCOMPLISHMENTS,
HIGH PRINCIPLES, AND PURE BENEVOLENCE;
GOODNESS WITH TALENTS; GAIETY WITH TASTE,
WERE OF HIS GIFTED MIND THE BLENDED ATTRIBUTES:
WHILE THE GENIAL HILARITY OF HIS AIRY SPIRITS,
FLOWING FROM A CONSCIENCE WITHOUT REPROACH,
PREPARED, THROUGH THE WHOLE TENOR OF HIS EARTHLY LIFE,
WITH THE MEDIATION OF OUR BLESSED SAVIOUR,
HIS SOUL FOR HEAVEN.—AMEN!
Footnotes
[1] Mrs. Davis is mentioned more than once by Mr. Boswell.
[2] Edward Burney, Esq., of Clipstone Street.
[3] Since Marquis.
[4] His late Majesty, George the Fourth.
[5] Afterwards Earl Mansfield.
[6] Afterwards Marchioness of Thomond.
[7] Afterwards Lady Edward Fitzgerald.
[8] Since Countess of Liverpool.
[9] When, many years after, the reparations of Windsor Castle were completed, so as to fit it for the residence of the King, George the Third, and the Royal Family, this Lodge, and the Lower, were pulled down.
[10] Miss Port: now Mrs. Waddington, of Llanover House.
[11] In this equitable judgment of Dr. Burney, other of the managers were included, and Mr. Windham was identified.
[12] Afterwards Earl of Orford.
[13] Afterwards edited by Miss Berry.
[14] Miss Port; now Mrs. Waddington, of Llanover.
[15] Mrs. Cheveley.
[16] Barrington—afterwards Bishop of Durham
[17] Afterwards Sir William.
[18] To this highly-favoured latest friend she bequeathed two medallions of the King and Queen; one of the mosaic flowers from her botanical work; her own elegant copy of Waller’s lovely Saccharissa, from Vandyke, the original of which is still in the Waller Family, at Beaconsfield; and, finally, she closed her benign offerings by a verbal commission to her nephew, Mr. Barnard Dewes, to make over to the same person her noble edition of Theobald’s Shakespeare, in eight volumes quarto; kindly desiring him to say, that it was a tribute to the pleasure with which she had listened to that immortal Bard through the reading of the legatee.
Mr. Barnard Dewes sent the Saccharissa, preceded by the following invaluable words.
Copy from the Will of Mrs. Delany.
“I take this liberty that my much-esteemed friend may sometimes recollect a person, who was so sensible to her friendship, and who delighted so much in her conversation and works.”
[19] The Memorialist has since been informed that the King himself had deigned to say, “It is but her due. She has given up five years of her pen.”
[20] This has reference to the situation, and to that only, in Chelsea College.
[21] The eels, now, are so used to being skinned, that these matters, both for the inflictors and the endurers, are become more easy.
[22] See Mr. Moore’s Life of Sheridan.
[23] George III.
[24] The Editor cannot here refuse herself the satisfaction of inserting a remarkable speech, that was made to her by a professionally experienced physiognomist, the Rev. Thomas Willis, upon observing Mr. Burke, after he had spoken to her one day in Westminster Hall: “Give me leave to ask—who was that you were conversing with just now?” “Mr. Burke!” “Is that possible!—Can a man who seeks by EVERY means, not only the obvious and the fair, but the most obscure and irrelevant, to prosecute to infamy and persecute to death—have a countenance of such marked honesty? Every line of his face denotes honour and probity!”
[25] Now Baron Crewe.
[26] Now the Hon. Mrs. Cunliffe Offley.
[27] Afterwards the Hon. Mrs. Beauclerk.
[28] Mrs. Locke of Norbury Park.
[29] Mr. Burke, in one of his unpublished Letters, says, “Coalition is the condition of Mankind!”
[30] Afterwards Lord Chancellor.
[31] Miss French, a niece of Mr. Burke’s.
[32] See Correspondence.
[33] Since Duchess.
[34] Mrs. Phillips.
[35] Afterwards Lord Chancellor.
[36] Afterwards Queen.
[37] Twice only this lady and the Memorialist had yet met, since the Italian marriage; once at a large assembly at Mrs. Locke’s; and afterwards at Windsor, on the way to St. George’s chapel; but neither of these meetings, from circumstantial obstacles, led to any further intercourse; though each of them offered indications to both parties of always subsisting kindness.
[38] Beaconsfield.
[39] Mr. Richard Burke, sen., and Mr. Burke, jun.
[40] Beaconsfield.
[41] A £20 Bank Note.
[42] The translations of Mr. Hoole were not yet in circulation.
[43] He made the same speech of melancholy, but partial regret, to Dr. Charles Burney, who visited him also at Bath.
[44] Mrs. General Hales, of Chelsea College.
[45] The Doctor’s Sons.
[46] The Burkes.
[47] At this date, 1797, the King, George III. was perfectly restored.
[48] Now the Hon. Mrs. Cunliffe Offley.
[49] Mr. Burney, the barrister, son of the late Rear-Admiral Burney.
[50] The present celebrated mathematician and author.
[51] George III.
[52] To the Editor he once avowed, that to pass twenty-four hours without one piercing pang of pain would be new to him.
[53] Generally, from the name of the author, attributed, but erroneously, to Anna Seward, of Litchfield.
[54] Now Mrs. Garnier.
[55] Now Viscountess Canning.
[56] Now Lady Elizabeth Whitbread.
[57] Now Viscount Palmerston.
[58] Mr. Twining.
[59] The Doctor’s grand-daughter, now Mrs. Raper.
[60] Afterwards Earl of Liverpool.
[61] First husband of Buonaparte’s sister, Paulina, afterwards La Princesse Borghese.
[62] The Culpability, or the Rights of the insurgents, could make no part of the business of the soldier; whose services, when once he is enlisted, as unequivocally demand personal subordination as personal bravery.
[63] Louis the Sixteenth.
[64] Of this singular and hazardous letter, M. d’Arblay, who wrote it on a sudden impulse, neither gave nor shewed one copy in England, except to M. Otto.
[65] General de La Fayette; who then, with his virtuous wife and family, resided at his old Chateau of La Grange; exclusively occupied by useful agricultural experiments, and exemplary domestic duties.
[66] Afterwards Earl of Chichester.
[67] His Sleep.
[68] As the wife of a French officer of distinction, living with him in his own country, she would have held any species of clandestine manoeuvre to its disadvantage as treachery, and, indeed, ingratitude; for, during ten unbroken years of sojourn in France, she met with a never abating warmth of friendship, and confidence in her honour, from the singularly amiable personages to whom she had the happiness of being presented by her husband; the charm of whose social intercourse is indelibly engraven on her remembrance. And she cannot here resist the indulgence of gratefully selecting from a list too numerous for this brief record, the names of the amiable Prince and Princesse de Beauvau, and their delightful family; and of the noble-minded General and Madame Victor de la Tour Maubourg, with the whole of that upright and estimable race; including most peculiarly MADAME DE MAISONENNE, the faithful, chosen, and tender friend of this Editor.
[69] Now Lady (George) Martin.
[70] This Editor had a letter from him, after a lapse of correspondence of thirty years, that was written within a few weeks of his decease, by an amanuensis, but signed by himself; and dictated with all the still unimpaired imagination of his fertile mind and poetical country; and with the fervent fancy, and expressive feelings of his grateful recollections of the nation in which he declares himself to have passed the happiest days of his life.
[71] Now Lord Stowell.
[72] George IV.
[73] Now wife of le Chevalier de Pougens.
[74] The present Hon. Mrs. Singleton and the Hon. Miss Upton.
[75] The Hon. Col. Greville Howard.
[76] Now Governor General of Bengal.
[77] The Duke of York.
[78] A mark of genuine liberality this in Mr. Fox, who, like Mr. Burke, in the affair of Chelsea College, clearly held that men of science and letters should, in all great states, be publicly encouraged, without wounding their feelings by shackling their opinions.
[79] Barrington.
[80] North.
[81] Howley, now Archbishop of Canterbury.
[82] Relative to the pension.
[83] At Bath, also, many years afterwards, an intercourse, both personal and epistolary, between Mrs. Piozzi and this Memorialist was renewed; and was gliding on to returning feelings of the early cordiality, that, gaily and delightfully, had been endearing to both—when calamitous circumstances caused a new separation, that soon afterwards became final by the death of Mrs. Piozzi.
[84] General La Fayette, who was then still living in his agricultural retirement, surrounded by a branching family, almost constituting a tribe; and, at that time, utterly a stranger to all politics or public life.
[85] Afterwards the first Marquis of Lansdowne.
[86] Mrs. Solvyns.
[87] The Count Louis de Narbonne.
[88] The Baron de Larrey.
[89] Chiefly the loyal and admirable family De la Tour Maubourg.
[90] Lady Lucy Foley.
[91] Admiral Sir Richard Foley.
[92] While she was very young, the Doctor had accustomed himself to say: “Poor Fanny’s face tells what she thinks, whether she will or no.”
[93] Every one of which the Doctor kindly remembered in his will.
[94] A Tancred Scholarship at Cambridge.
[95] The Editor resided at Paris during the astonishing period of all these events.
[96] Omitting, of course, all extraneous circumstances.
[97] The dream of human existence, from which death would awaken him to immortal life!
Transcriber’s Notes.
1. Silently corrected simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors.
2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.