Brissot de Warville had begun an acquaintance with Dr. Burney upon meeting with him at the apartment of the famous Linguet, during the residence in England of that eloquent, powerful, unfortunate victim of parts too strong for his judgment, and of impulses too imperious for his safety.

At this time, 1783, Brissot de Warville announced himself as a member of a French committee employed to select subjects in foreign countries, for adding to the national stock of worthies of his own soil, who were destined to immortality, by having their portraits, busts, or statues, elevated in the Paris Pantheon. And, as such, he addressed a letter to Dr. Burney. He had been directed, he said, to choose, in England, a female for this high honour; and he wrote to Dr. Burney to say, that the gentlewoman upon whom it had pleased him to fix—was no other than a daughter of the Doctor’s![66]

At that astonished daughter’s earnest supplication, the Doctor, with proper acknowledgments, declined accepting this towering compliment.

M. Brissot employed his highest pains of flattery to conquer this repugnance; but head, heart, and taste were in opposition to his pleadings, and he had no chance of success.

Speedily after, M. Brissot earnestly besought permission to introduce to l’HÔtel du Grand Newton his newly-married wife; and a day was appointed on which he brought thither his blooming young bride, who had been English Reader, he said, to her Serene Highness Mademoiselle d’Orleans,[67] under the auspices of the celebrated Comtesse de Genlis.[68]

Madame Brissot was pretty, and gentle, and had a striking air of youthful innocence. They seemed to live together in tender amity, perfectly satisfied in following literary pursuits. But it has since appeared that Brissot was here upon some deep political projects, of which he afterwards extended the practice to America. He had by no means, at that time, assumed the dogmatizing dialect, or betrayed the revolutionary principles, which, afterwards, contributed to hurl the monarchy, the religion, and the happiness of France into that murderous abyss of anarchy into which, ill-foreseen! he was himself amongst the earliest to be precipitated.

This single visit began and ended the Brissot commerce with St. Martin’s-street. M. Brissot had a certain low-bred fullness and forwardness of look, even in the midst of professions of humility and respect, that were by no means attractive to Dr. Burney; by whom this latent demagogue, who made sundry attempts to enter into a bookish intimacy in St. Martin’s-street, was so completely shirked, that nothing more was there seen or known of him, till his jacobinical harangues and proceedings, five years later, were blazoned to the world by the republican gazettes.

What became of his pretty wife in aftertimes; whether she were involved in his destruction, or sunk his name to save her life, has not been recorded. Dr. Burney heard of her no more; and always regretted that he had been deluded into shewing even the smallest token of hospitality to her intriguing husband: yet great was his thankfulness, that the delusion had not been of such strength, as to induce him to enrol a representation of his daughter in a selection made by a man of principles and conduct so opposite to his own; however, individually, the collection might have been as flattering to his parental pride, as her undue entrance into such a circle would have been painfully ostentatious to the insufficient and unambitious object of M. Brissot’s choice.