The following is the sportive conclusion of another letter, written in the season of fashionable engagements.
“When shall I have done with telling you of mes bonnes fortunes? Betty Carter, Hannah More, Lady Clarges—nay, t’other day, at Dickey Coxe’s, I met with the Miss Berrys, as lively and accomplished as ever; and I have strong invites to their cottage at Strawberry Hill. What say you to that, ma’am?—
“Torn to pieces, I declare!”
MR. ERSKINE.
The Doctor now, in truth, became so universally in fashion, that he was even sought, much to his amusement, by those against whose principles, as far as they were political, he was invariably at war; namely, sundry celebrated oppositionists.
In his letter to the Hermits he particularizes in this liberty list, Mr. Mason, Mr. Stonehewer, Sir William Jones, Mr. Hayley, Mr. Godwin, and the first Lord Lansdowne; ending with Mr. Erskine,[35] whom he had met at two dinners, and to whose house he had been invited to a third convivial meeting: and here this renowned orator and new acquaintance fastened upon the Doctor with all the volubility of his eloquence, and all the exuberance of his happy good-humour, in singing his own exploits and praises, without insisting that his hearer should join in chorus; or rather, perhaps, without discovering, from his own self-absorption, that that ceremony was omitted.
CAROLINE, PRINCESS OF WALES.
The dejeuner above mentioned of Mrs. Crewe at her little villa, at Hampstead, was given in honour of Caroline, Princess of Wales.[36] To this, in order to compliment at once the rank and the taste of her Royal Highness, Mrs. Crewe invited whoever she thought most distinguished, either in situation or in talents. Under the latter class, she was not likely to forget her old friend, Dr. Burney; whose name her Royal Highness no sooner heard, than she desired Mr. Windham to bring him to her for presentation. “And then,” the Doctor in his diary relates, “she said, in very good English, ‘How do you do, Dr. Burney? You and I are not strangers. You are very well known in Germany, and often mentioned there; car, enfin, vous êtes un homme celebre.’”
“After which,” the Doctor’s diary goes on, “in the little colloquial debates, and playful defences of general conversation, she commonly and flatteringly referred to me for arbitration, saying: ‘Is it not so, Dr. Burney? You are a wise man, and must know of the best.’”