This Winchester visit, besides the permanent impression made by its benevolence, considerably quickened the march of intimacy of Dr. Burney with the great lexicographer, by the _tête à tête_ journies to and from Winchester; in which there was not only the ease of companionability, to dissipate the modest awe of intellectual super-eminence, but also the certitude of not being obtrusive; since, thus coupled in a post-chaise, Dr. Johnson had no choice of occupation, and no one else to whom to turn.
Far, however, from Dr. Johnson, upon this occasion, was any desire of change, or any requisition for variety. The spirit of Dr. Burney, with his liveliness of communication, drew out the mighty stores which Dr. Johnson had amassed upon nearly every subject, with an amenity that brought forth his genius in its very essence, cleared from all turbid dregs of heated irritability; and Dr. Burney never looked back to this Winchester tour but with recollected pleasure.
Nor was this the sole exertion in favour of Dr. Burney, of this admirable friend. He wrote various letters to his own former associates, and to his newer connexions at Oxford, recommending to them to facilitate, with their best power, the researches of the musical historian. And, some time afterwards, he again took a seat in the chaise of Dr. Burney, and accompanied him in person to that university; where every head of college, professor, and even general member, vied one with another in coupling, in every mark of civility, their rising approbation of Dr. Burney, with their established reverence for Dr. Johnson.
Most willingly, indeed, would this great and excellent man have made, had he seen occasion, far superior efforts in favour of Dr. Burney; an excursion almost any where being, in fact, so agreeable to his taste, as to be always rather a pleasure to him than a fatigue.
His vast abilities, in truth, were too copious for the small scenes, objects, and interests of the little world in which he lived;[12] and frequently must he have felt both curbed and damped by the utter insufficiency of such minor scenes, objects, and interests, to occupy powers such as his of conception and investigation. To avow this he was far too wise, lest it should seem a scorn of his fellow-creatures; and, indeed, from his internal humility, it is possible that he was not himself aware of the great chasm that separated him from the herd of mankind, when not held to it by the ties of benevolence or of necessity.