This happy summer excursion may be said to have charmed away, for a while, from Dr. Burney, a species of evil which for some time had been hovering over him, and which was as new as it was inimical to his health; and as unwelcome as, hitherto, it had been unknown to his disposition; namely, a slow, unfixed, and nervous feverishness, which had infested his whole system; and which, in defiance of this salubrious episode, soon ruthlessly returned; robbing his spirits, as well as his frame, of elasticity; and casting him into a state the least natural to his vigorous character, of wasteful depression.

His recent mental trials had been grievous, and severely felt. The loss of his old and much valued friend, Mr. Hayes; and of his far more admired, and almost equally prized favourite, Sir Joshua Reynolds; joined to that of his early and constantly attached patron, the Earl of Orford, had all been inflicted, or been menacing, at the same time: and a continual anxious watchfulness over the gradual deterioration of health, and decay of life, of three such cherished friends, now nearly the last of early associations—had been ill adapted for impeding the mischief of the long and deeper disturbance caused by the precarious health, and singular situation, of his second daughter: and the accumulation of the whole had, slowly and underminingly, brought him into the state that has been described.

The sole employment to which, during this morbid interval, he could turn himself, was the difficult, the laborious work of composing the most learned and recondite canons and fugues; to which study and exposition of his art, he committed all the activity that he could command from his fatigued faculties.

This distressing state lasted, without relief or remittance, till it was suddenly and rudely superseded by a violent assault of acute rheumatism; which drove away all minor or subservient maladies, by the predominance of a torturing pain that nearly nullified every thing but itself.

He was now ordered to Bath, where the waters, the change of scene, the casually meeting with old friends, and incidentally forming new ones; so recruited his health and his nerves, by chasing away what he called the foul fiend that had subjugated his animal spirits, that he was soon imperceptibly restored to his fair genial existence.

One circumstance, more potent, perhaps, in effect, than the concurrence of every other, contributed to this revivifying termination, by a power that acted as a spell upon his mind and happiness; namely, the enlightening society of the incomparable Mr. Burke; who, most fortunately for the invalid, was then at Bath, with his amiable wife, his beloved son, and his admiring brother; and whose own good taste led him to claim the chief portion of Dr. Burney’s recreative leisure. And with Mr. Burke Dr. Burney had every feeling, every thought, nay, every emotion in common, with regard to that sole topic of the times, the French Revolution.

Dr. Burney wrote warmly of these meetings to the Memorialist, by whom he well knew no subject would be more eagerly welcomed; and he finished his last Bath details with these flattering words: “I dined, in all, eight times at the Burkes’, where every day, after dinner, your health was constantly given by Mr. Burke himself, as his favourite toast.”