Yet Dr. Burney always believed Mrs. Sheridan herself to be inherently pure in her mind, and elegantly simple in her taste; though first from the magnetism of affection, and next from the force of circumstances, she was drawn into the same vortex of dissipation and extravagance, in which the desires and pursuits of her husband unresistedly rolled.
Every thing, save rank and place, was theirs; every thing, therefore, save rank and place, seemed beneath their aim.
If, in withdrawing his fair partner from public life, the virtues of moderation had bestowed contentment upon their retreat, how dignified had been such a preference, to all the affluence attendant upon a publicity demanding personal exhibition from a delicate and sensitive female!
Such was the light in which this act of Mr. Sheridan, upon its early adoption, had appeared to Dr. Johnson; and, as such, it obtained the high sanction of his approbation.[22] But to no such view was the subsequent conduct of this too aspiring and enchanting couple respondent. They assumed the expenses of wealth, while they disclaimed the remuneration of talents; and they indulged in the luxuries of splendour, by resources not their own.
Not such, had he lived to witness the result, had been the sanction of Dr. Johnson. He had regarded the retirement from public exhibition as a measure of primitive temperance and philosophic virtue. The last of men was Dr. Johnson to have abetted squandering the delicacy of integrity, by nullifying the labours of talents.
The unhappy delusion into which this high-wrought and mis-placed self-appreciation betrayed them, finished its fatal fanaticism by dimming their celebrity, mocking their ambition, and hurling into disorder and ruin their fortune, their reputation, their virtues, and their genius.
MRS. CREWE.
At the head of the female worthies, who gratified Dr. Burney with eager good wishes on the return of the Memorialist, stood Mrs. Montague. And still the honourable corps was upheld by Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Chapone, Mrs. Garrick, and Miss More—though, alas, the last-mentioned lady is now the only one of that distinguished set still spared to the world.
But the person at this epoch the most conciliatory and the most welcome to Dr. Burney, was the still beautiful, though no longer the still young; the humorous, though contemplative; the sportively loquacious, though deeply-thinking, Mrs. Crewe.