The warm and venerating attachment of Dr. Burney to Mr. Crisp, which occasional discourse and allusions had frequently brought forward, impressed the whole Thrale family with a high opinion of the character and endowments of that excelling man. And when they found, also, that Mr. Crisp had as animated a votary in so much younger a person as their new guest; and that this enthusiasm was general throughout the Doctor’s house, they earnestly desired to view and to know a man of such eminent attraction; and gave to Dr. Burney a commission to bring on the acquaintance.

It was given, however, in vain. Mr. Crisp had no longer either health or spirit of enterprize for so formidable, however flattering, a new connexion; and inexorably resisted every overture for a meeting.

But Mrs. Thrale, all alive for whatever was piquant and promising, grew so bewitched by the delight with which her new young ally, to whom she became daily more attached and more attaching, dilated on the rare perfections of Daddy Crisp; and the native and innocent pleasures of Liberty Hall, Chesington, that she started the plan of a little excursion for taking the premises by surprise. And Dr. Burney, certain that two such singularly accomplished persons could not meet but to their mutual gratification; sanctioned the scheme; Mr. Thrale desired to form his own judgment of so uncommon a Recluse; and the Doctor’s pupil felt a juvenile curiosity to make one in the group.

The party took place; but its pleasure was nearly marred by the failure of the chief spring which would have put into motion, and set to harmony, the various persons who composed its drama.

Dr. Burney, from multiplicity of avocations, was forced, when the day arrived, to relinquish his share in the little invasion; which cast a damp upon the gaiety of the project, both to the besieged and the besiegers. Yet Mr. Crisp and Mrs. Thrale met with mutual sentiments of high esteem, though the genius of their talents was dissimilar; Mrs. Thrale delighted in bursting forth with sudden flashes of wit, which, carelessly, she left to their own consequences; while Mr. Crisp, though awake to her talents, and sensible of their rarity and their splendour, thought with Dr. Fordyce, that in woman the retiring graces are the most attractive.[34]

Nevertheless, in understanding, acuteness, and parts, there was so much in common between them, that sincere admiration grew out of the interview; though with too little native congeniality to mellow into confidence, or ripen into intimacy.

Praise, too, that dangerous herald of expectation, is often a friend more perilous than any enemy; and both had involuntarily looked for a something indefinable which neither of them found; yet both had too much justness of comprehension to conclude that such a something did not exist, because no opportunity for its development had offered in the course of a few hours.

What most, in this visit, surprised Mrs. Thrale with pleasure, was the elegance of Mr. Crisp in language and manners; because that, from the Hermit of Chesington, she had not expected.

And what most to Mr. Crisp caused a similar pleasure, was the courteous readiness, and unassuming good-humour, with which Mrs. Thrale received the inartificial civilities of Kitty Cooke, and the old-fashioned but cordial hospitality of Mrs. Hamilton; for these, from a celebrated wit, moving in the sphere of high life, he also in his turn had not expected.

The Thrales, however, were all much entertained by the place itself, which they prowled over with gay curiosity. Not a nook or corner; nor a dark passage “leading to nothing;” nor a hanging tapestry of prim demoiselles, and grim cavaliers; nor a tall canopied bed tied up to the ceiling; nor japan cabinets of two or three hundred drawers of different dimensions; nor an oaken corner cupboard, carved with heads, thrown in every direction, save such as might let them fall on men’s shoulders; nor a window stuck in some angle close to the ceiling of a lofty slip of a room; nor a quarter of a staircase, leading to some quaint unfrequented apartment; nor a wooden chimney-piece, cut in diamonds, squares, and round nobs, surmounting another of blue and white tiles, representing, vis À vis, a dog and a cat, as symbols of married life and harmony—missed their scrutinizing eyes.

They even visited the attics, where they were much diverted by the shapes as well as by the quantity of rooms, which, being of all sorts of forms that could increase their count, were far too heterogeneous of outline to enable the minutest mathematician to give them any technical denomination.

They peeped, also, through little window casements, of which the panes of glass were hardly so wide as their clumsy frames, to survey long ridges of lead that entwined the motley spiral roofs of the multitude of separate cells, rather than chambers, that composed the top of the mansion; and afforded from it a view, sixteen miles in circumference, of the adjacent country.

Mr. Crisp judged it fitting to return the received civility of a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, whatever might be the inconvenience to his health; or whatever his disinclination to such an exertion. From habitual politeness he was of the old school in the forms of good breeding; though perfectly equal to even the present march of intellect in the new one, if to the present day he had lived,—and had deemed it a march of improvement. He was the last man not to be aware that nothing stands still. All nature in its living mass, all art in its concentrated aggregate, advances or retrogrades.

He took the earliest day that one of his few gout intervals put at his own disposal, to make his appearance at Streatham; having first written a most earnest injunction to Dr. Burney to give him there the meeting. The Memorialist was then at Chesington, and had the happiness to accompany Mr. Crisp; by whom she was to be left at her new third home.

Dr. Johnson, in compliment to his friend Dr. Burney, and by no means incurious himself to see the hermit of Chesington, immediately descended to meet Mr. Crisp; and to aid Mrs. Thrale, who gave him a vivacious reception, to do the honours of Streatham.

The meeting, nevertheless, to the great chagrin of Dr. Burney, produced neither interest nor pleasure: for Dr. Johnson, though courteous in demeanour and looks, with evident solicitude to shew respect to Mr. Crisp, was grave and silent; and whenever Dr. Johnson did not make the charm of conversation, he only marred it by his presence; from the general fear he incited, that if he spoke not, he might listen; and that if he listened—he might reprove.

Ease, therefore, was wanting; without which nothing in society can be flowing or pleasing. The Chesingtonian conceived, that he had lived too long away from the world to start any subject that might not, to the Streathamites, be trite and out of date; and the Streathamites believed that they had lived in it so much longer, that the current talk of the day might, to the Chesingtonian, seem unintelligible jargon: while each hoped that the sprightly Dr. Burney would find the golden mean by which both parties might be brought into play.

But Dr. Burney, who saw in the kind looks and complacency of Dr. Johnson intentional goodwill to the meeting, flattered himself that the great philologist was but waiting for an accidental excitement, to fasten upon some topic of general use or importance, and then to describe or discuss it, with the full powers of his great mind.

Dr. Johnson, however, either in health or in spirits was, unfortunately, oppressed; and, for once, was more desirous to hear than to be heard.

Mr. Crisp, therefore, lost, by so unexpected a taciturnity, this fair and promising opportunity for developing and enjoying the celebrated and extraordinary colloquial abilities of Dr. Johnson; and finished the visit with much disappointment; lowered also, and always, in his spirits by parting from his tenderly attached young companion.

Dr. Burney had afterwards, however, the consolation to find that Mr. Crisp had impressed even Dr. Johnson with a strong admiration of his knowledge and capacity; for in speaking of him in the evening to Mr. Thrale, who had been absent, the Doctor emphatically said, “Sir, it is a very singular thing to see a man with all his powers so much alive, when he has so long shut himself up from the world. Such readiness of conception, quickness of recollection, facility of following discourse started by others, in a man who has long had only the past to feed upon, are rarely to be met with. Now, for my part,” added he, laughing, “that I should be ready, or even universal, is no wonder; for my dear little mistress here,” turning to Mrs. Thrale, “keeps all my faculties in constant play.”

Mrs. Thrale then said that nothing, to her, was so striking, as that a man who so long had retired from the world, should so delicately have preserved its forms and courtesies, as to appear equally well bred with any elegant member of society who had not quitted it for a week.

Inexpressibly gratifying to Dr. Burney was the award of such justice, from such judges, to his best and dearest loved friend.

From this time forward, Dr. Burney could scarcely recover his daughter from Streatham, even for a few days, without a friendly battle. A sportively comic exaggeration of Dr. Johnson’s upon this flattering hostility was current at Streatham, made in answer to Dr. Burney’s saying, upon a resistance to her departure for St. Martin’s-street in which Dr. Johnson had strongly joined, “I must really take her away, Sir, I must indeed; she has been from home so long.”

“Long? no, Sir! I do not think it long,” cried the Doctor, see-sawing, and seizing both her hands, as if purporting to detain her: “Sir! I would have her Always come ... and Never go!—”