The first visit that Dr. Burney paid to this incomparable spot was in company with Sir Joshua Reynolds.
No place would be more worthy the painter’s eye, and painter’s mind of the knight of Plympton than this; and he entered into all the merits of the mansion, its dwellers, and its scenery, with a vivacity of approvance, as gratifying to his elegant host and hostess, as to himself were the objects of taste, fancy, and fine workmanship, with which he was encircled in that school, or assemblage of the fine arts, which seemed in Mr. Locke to exhibit a living Apollo at their head: while the delicacy, the feeling, the witching softness of his fair partner, expanded a genial cheerfulness that seemed to bloom around her wherever she looked or moved.
The conversation of Mr. Locke was a source inexhaustible of instruction, conveyed in language at once so sensitive and so pointed; with a tone, a manner, a look so impressively in harmony with every word that he uttered; that observations of a depth and a novelty that seemed to demand the most lengthened discussion, obtained immediate comprehension, if his hearer examined the penetration of his countenance while he listened to that of his voice.
His taste, alike in works of nature and of art, was profound in itself and illuminating to others: yet, from his habitual silence in mixt companies, the most strikingly amiable parts of his character could be developed only on his own domain, amidst his family, his friends, his neighbours, and the poor: where the refinement of his converse, and the melting humanity of his disposition, reflected genial lustre on each other.[75]
Here, too, the knight of Plympton made a leisurely survey of the extraordinary early sketches of the eldest son of the mansion’s Apollo; who, for boundless invention, exquisite taste, and masterly sketches of original execution, was gifted with a genius that mocked all contemporary rivalry.[76]
Dr. Burney himself, at home in all the arts, partook of this entertainment with his usual animated pleasure in excellence; while in all that accompanied it of literary or social description, he as often led as followed these distinguished conversers.
But the exhilaration of this almost heavenly sojourn—for such, to its guests, it had appeared—was succeeded by an alarm to the heart of Dr. Burney the most intense, perhaps, by which it could be attacked; an alarm deeply affecting his comforts, his wishes, and the happiness of his whole house, from a menace of consumption to his daughter Susanna, which demanded a rapid change of air, and forced a hasty and immediate trial of that of Boulogne sur Mer.