In the month of May, 1805, Dr. Burney, through a private hand, re-opened, after a twelvemonth’s mournful silence, his correspondence with his absent daughter, by the following kind and cheering, though brief and politically cautious lines:
“The notice I received of our good friend, Miss Sayr’s,[73] departure for the continent, has been communicated to me so short a time before its taking place, that I am merely able to give you _signe de vie_; and tell you that, cough excepted, I am in tolerable health, for an _octogenaire_; with the usual infirmities in eyes, ears, and memory.
“God bless you, my dear daughter. Give my kindest love to our dear M. d’Arblay, and to little Alexander.
“Your ever affectionate father, “CHAS. BURNEY.
“As blind as a beetle, as deaf as a post, Whose longevity now is all he can boast.”
The following is a paragraph of another letter to Paris, written about the same time, but conveyed by another private hand:
“I passed some days very pleasantly at Bulstrode Park in the Easter week. The good Duke of Portland came himself to invite me, and sat nearly an hour by my fireside, conversing in the most open and unreserved manner possible upon matters and things. Our party at Bulstrode had the ever-admirable Lady Templeton, her two younger daughters,[74] and their brother Greville,[75] who is an excellent musician, and a very charming young man, &c. &c. The Duke’s daughters, Lady Mary Bentinck and Lady Charlotte Greville, did the honours very politely; and Lord William Bentinck,[76] one of the Duke’s son, who was in Italy with Marshal Suwarrow, and has since been in Egypt, was also there; and he and I are become _inkle-weavers_. I like him much; and we are to meet again in town. We never sat down less than thirty each day at dinner; and _we_ danced, and _we_ sung, and _we_ walked, and _we_ rode, and _we_ prayed together at chapel, and were so sociable and agreeable ‘_you’ve no notion_,’ as Miss Larolles would say.”
What will now follow, will be copied from the memoir book of Dr. Burney of this month of May; which, after a dreary winter of sorrow, seemed to have been hailed as genially by the Historian of Music, as by the minstrelsy of the woods.
“1805.—In May, at a concert at Lady Salisbury’s, I was extremely pleased, both with the music and the performance. The former was chiefly selected by the Prince of Wales. * * * I had not been five minutes in the concert room, before a messenger, sent to me by his Royal Highness, gave me a command to join him, which I did eagerly enough; when his Royal Highness graciously condescended to order me to sit down by him, and kept me to that high honour the whole evening. Our ideas, by his engaging invitation, were reciprocated upon every piece, and its execution. After the concert, Lady Melbourne, who, when Miss Milbanke, had been one of my first scholars on my return to London from Lynn, obligingly complained that she had often vainly tried to tempt me to dine with her, but would make one effort more now, by his Royal Highness’s permission, that I might meet, at Lord Melbourne’s table, with the Prince of Wales.