Lord Orford, since his revival, had acquired a knowledge, at once profound and feeling, of the French Revolution—the only topic which those who had either hearts or heads could, at that time, discuss. And he animatedly asserted that never before had any country, or any epoch, produced, in one and the same nation, contrasts so striking of atrocious, unheard-of guilt, and consummate, intrepid virtue; warmly adding, as he adverted to the emigrants then pouring into England, that the detestation excited by the murderous and sacrilegious revolutionary oppressors, ought universally to instigate respect as well as commiseration for their guiltless fugitive victims.
The relapse, by which, not three weeks after this meeting, the Earl again lost his senses, had two current reports for its cause: the first of which gave it to a fall from his horse; the second to the sudden death of Mrs. Turk, his erst lovely Patty; “to whom,” says the Doctor, in a letter, after his Ereswell visit, that was addressed to Mrs. Phillips, “he was more attached than ever, from her faithful and affectionate attendance upon him during the long season of his insanity; though, at this time, she was become a fat and rather coarse old woman.”
Dr. Burney was of opinion that to both these circumstances, since one of them quickly followed the other, this last fatal seizure might be owing. Its prompt termination left the good, infirm, and far older Mr. Hayes a sorrowing, but not a long survivor.
Dr. Burney mourned for both; for Lord Orford with true concern—for Mr. Hayes with lasting regret.
Mr. Hayes bequeathed to Dr. Burney a finely chosen and beautifully bound collection of books, among which were several works of great price and rarity; to which was joined a valuable case of coins and medals. And the Doctor’s eldest son, Captain Burney, who from a boy had been known and loved by Mr. Hayes, was worthily named, by that excellent friend, his general heir and residuary legatee.
In speaking of this last event in a letter to Mrs. Phillips, the Doctor says: “I have been so melancholy as to be unwilling to communicate my lâcheté to you, who, I hope, are in better spirits. The death of my worthy and affectionate friend, Hayes, though I gain a charming collection of books by it, fills me with sorrow every time I look at them. Thirty years ago, such a bequest would have made me mad with joy; but now, alas! my literary curiosity and wants lie in a smaller compass. I was already in possession of the best books he has left me, though in worn editions and worse bindings; and as for the rest, my gain is merely nominal: for our books have been so much in common during more than thirty years, that his were mine and mine were his, as much as our own. We had only to stretch out our hands a little further, when we wanted what were distant. How much harder is such a friend to find than such books, scarce, and really valuable as are many of them!”
MR. BURKE.
Upon the publication of the celebrated Treatise of Mr. Burke on the opening of the French Revolution, Dr. Burney had felt re-wakened all his first unqualified admiration of its author, from a full conviction that error, wholly free from malevolence, had impelled alike his violence in the prosecution of Mr. Hastings, and his assertions upon the incurability of the malady of the King: while a patriotism, superior to all party feeling, and above all considerations but the love of his country, had inspired every sentence of the immortal orator in his new work.
The Doctor had interchanged some billets with Mr. Burke upon this occasion; and once or twice they had met; but only in large companies. This the Doctor lamented to Mrs. Crewe; who promised that, if he would spend three or four days at her Hampstead little villa, she would engage for his passing one of them with Mr. Burke; though she should make, she added, her own terms; namely, “that you are accompanied, Mr. Doctor, by Miss Burney.”