No one better understood conversation than the Queen, or appreciated conversers with better judgment: gaily, therefore, she drew out, and truly enjoyed, the flowing, unpracticed, yet always informing discourse of Dr. Burney.
In 1791, Dr. Burney became a ‘member among the monthly reviewers, under the editorship of the worthy Mr. Griffith.’ In the same year he commences his journal in the following words:—
“1791.—This year was auspiciously begun, in the musical world, by the arrival in London of the illustrious Joseph Haydn. ’Tis to Salomon that the lovers of music are indebted for what the lovers of music will call this blessing. Salomon went over himself to Vienna, upon hearing of the death of the Prince of Esterhazy, the great patron of Haydn, purposely to tempt that celebrated musical genius hither; and on February 25, the first of Haydn’s incomparable symphonies, which was composed for the concerts of Salomon, was performed. Haydn himself presided at the piano-forte: and the sight of that renowned composer so electrified the audience as to excite an attention and a pleasure superior to any that had ever, to my knowledge, been caused by instrumental music in England. All the slow middle movements were encored; which never before happened, I believe, in any country.”
In 1801, Dr. Burney entered into an engagement with the proprietors of Rees’s Cyclopædia, as it is called, to furnish all its musical articles at stated periods. He thus speaks of this enterprise in a letter to some friend:—
“I have entered now into concerns that leave me not a minute or a thought to bestow on other matters. Besides professional avocations, I have deeply engaged in a work that can admit of no delay, and which occupies every instant that I can steal from business, friends, or sleep. A new edition, on a very enlarged plan, of the Cyclopædia of Chambers, is now printing in two double volumes 4to., for which I have agreed to furnish the musical articles, on a very large scale, including whatever is connected with the subject; not only definitions of the musical technica, but reflections, discussions, criticism, history, and biography. The first volume is printed, and does not finish the letter A; and in nine months’ hard labour, I have not brought forth two letters. I am more and more frightened every day at the undertaking, so long after the usual allowance of three score years and ten have expired. And the shortest calculation for the termination of this work is still ten years.”
And in his letters to West Hamble on the same subject, he mentions, that to fulfil his engagement, he generally rises at five or six o’clock every morning—! in his seventy-sixth year.
The only entry in Dr. Burney’s journal, in the year 1803, relates to Beethoven’s music, of the merits of which his quick discrimination enabled him immediately to form a favourable opinion.
“Beethoven’s compositions for the piano-forte were first brought to England by Miss Tate, a most accomplished dilettante singer and player. I soon afterwards heard some of his instrumental works, which are such as incline me to rank him amongst the first musical authors of the present century. He was a disciple of Mozart, and is now but three or four and twenty years of age.”
In his journal for 1804, he mentions his retirement from his profession, and confesses the advance of some of those infirmities which, when within two years of becoming an octogenarian, it is rather difficult to avoid.
“In 1804, in the month of April, I completed my 78th year, and decided to relinquish teaching and my musical patients; for both my ears and my eyes were beginning to fail me. I could still hear the most minute musical tone; but in conversation I lost the articulation, and was forced to make people at the least distance from me repeat everything that they said. Sometimes the mere tone of voice, and the countenance of the speaker, told me whether I was to smile or to frown; but never so explicitly as to allow me to venture at any reply to what was said! Yet I never, seemingly, have been more in fashion at any period of my life than this spring; never invited to more conversaziones, assemblées, dinners, and concerts. But I feel myself less and less able to bear a part in general conversation every day, from the failure of memory, particularly in names; and I am become fearful of beginning any story that occurs to me, lest I should be stopped short by hunting for Mr. How-d’ye-call-him’s style and titles.