A few months after the Streathamite morning visit to St. Martin’s-street that has been narrated, an evening party was arranged by Dr. Burney, for bringing thither again Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale, at the desire of Mr. and Mrs. Greville and Mrs. Crewe; who wished, under the quiet roof of Dr. Burney, to make acquaintance with those celebrated personages.
This meeting, though more fully furnished with materials, produced not the same spirit or interest as its predecessor; and it owed, unfortunately, its miscarriage to the anxious efforts of Dr. Burney for heightening its success.
To take off, as he hoped, what might be stiff or formidable in an appointed encounter between persons of such highly famed conversational powers, who, absolute strangers to one another, must emulously, on each side, wish to shine with superior lustre, he determined
To mingle sweet discourse with music sweet;
and to vary, as well as soften the energy of intellectual debate, by the science and the sweetness of instrumental harmony. But the lovers of music, and the adepts in conversation, are rarely in true unison. Exceptions only form, not mar a rule; as witness Messieurs Crisp, Twining, and Bewley, who were equally eminent for musical and for mental melody: but, in general, the discourse-votaries think time thrown away, or misapplied, that is not devoted exclusively to the powers of reason; while the votaries of harmony deem pleasure and taste discarded, where precedence is not accorded to the melting delight of modulated sounds.
The party consisted of Dr. Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. Greville, Mrs. Crewe, Mr., Mrs., and Miss Thrale; Signor Piozzi, Mr. Charles Burney, the Doctor, his wife, and four of his daughters.[18]
Mr. Greville, in manner, mien, and high personal presentation, was still the superb Mr. Greville of other days; though from a considerable diminution of the substantial possessions which erst had given him pre-eminence at the clubs and on the turf, the splendour of his importance was now superseded by newer and richer claimants. And even in _ton_ and fashion, though his rank in life kept him a certain place, his influence, no longer seconded by fortune, was on the wane.
Mrs. Greville, whose decadence was in that very line in which alone her husband escaped it,—personal beauty,—had lost, at an early period, her external attractions, from the excessive thinness that had given to her erst fine and most delicate small features, a cast of sharpness so keen and meagre, that, joined to the shrewdly intellectual expression of her countenance, made her seem fitted to sit for a portrait, such as might have been delineated by Spencer, of a penetrating, puissant, and sarcastic fairy queen. She still, however, preserved her early fame; her Ode to Indifference having twined around her brow a garland of wide-spreading and unfading fragrance.