The following is a paragraph of another letter to Paris, written about the same time, but conveyed by another private hand:

“I passed some days very pleasantly at Bulstrode Park in the Easter week. The good Duke of Portland came himself to invite me, and sat nearly an hour by my fireside, conversing in the most open and unreserved manner possible upon matters and things. Our party at Bulstrode had the ever-admirable Lady Templeton, her two younger daughters,[74] and their brother Greville,[75] who is an excellent musician, and a very charming young man, &c. &c. The Duke’s daughters, Lady Mary Bentinck and Lady Charlotte Greville, did the honours very politely; and Lord William Bentinck, [76] one of the Duke’s son, who was in Italy with Marshal Suwarrow, and has since been in Egypt, was also there; and he and I are become inkle-weavers. I like him much; and we are to meet again in town. We never sat down less than thirty each day at dinner; and we danced, and we sung, and we walked, and we rode, and we prayed together at chapel, and were so sociable and agreeable ‘you’ve no notion,’ as Miss Larolles would say.”

What will now follow, will be copied from the memoir book of Dr. Burney of this month of May; which, after a dreary winter of sorrow, seemed to have been hailed as genially by the Historian of Music, as by the minstrelsy of the woods.

“1805.—In May, at a concert at Lady Salisbury’s, I was extremely pleased, both with the music and the performance. The former was chiefly selected by the Prince of Wales. * * * I had not been five minutes in the concert room, before a messenger, sent to me by his Royal Highness, gave me a command to join him, which I did eagerly enough; when his Royal Highness graciously condescended to order me to sit down by him, and kept me to that high honour the whole evening. Our ideas, by his engaging invitation, were reciprocated upon every piece, and its execution. After the concert, Lady Melbourne, who, when Miss Milbanke, had been one of my first scholars on my return to London from Lynn, obligingly complained that she had often vainly tried to tempt me to dine with her, but would make one effort more now, by his Royal Highness’s permission, that I might meet, at Lord Melbourne’s table, with the Prince of Wales.

“Of course I expressed, as well as I could, my sense of so high and unexpected an honour; and the Prince, with a smile of unequalled courtesy, said, ‘Aye, do come, Dr. Burney, and bring your son with you.’ And then, turning to Lady Melbourne, he added,—‘It is singular that the father should be the best, and almost the only good judge of music in the kingdom; and his son the best scholar.’

---

“Nothing, however, for the present, came of this: but, early in July, at a concert at Lady Newark’s, I first saw, to my knowledge, their Royal Highnesses the Dukes of Cumberland and Cambridge. These Princes had lived so much abroad, that I thought I had never before beheld them; till I found my mistake, by their both speaking to me, when I [Pg 355] stood near them, not only familiarly, but with distinction; which I attribute to their respect to the noble graciousness they might have observed in their august brother; whose notice had something in it so engaging as always to brighten as well as honour me.

“But I heard nothing more of the projected dinner, till I met Lady Melbourne at an assembly at the Dowager Lady Sefton’s; when I ventured to tell her Ladyship that I feared the dinner which my son and I were most ambitious should take place, was relinquished. ‘By no means,’ she answered, ‘for the Prince really desired it.’ And, after a note or two of the best bred civility from her Ladyship, the day was settled by his Royal Highness, for—

“July 9th.—The Prince did not make the company wait at Whitehall, (Lord Melbourne’s,); he was not five minutes beyond the appointed time, a quarter past six o’clock: though he is said never to dine at Carlton House before eight. The company consisted, besides the Prince and the Lord and Lady of the house, with their two sons and two daughters, of Earls Egremont and Cowper, Mr. and Lady Caroline Lamb, Mr. Lutterel, Mr. Horner, and Mr. Windham.

“The dinner was sumptuous, of course, &c.

“I had almost made a solemn vow, early in life, to quit the world without ever drinking a dry dram; but the heroic virtue of a long life was overset by his Royal Highness, through the irresistible temptation to hobbing and nobbing with such a partner in a glass of cherry brandy! The spirit of it, however, was so finely subdued, that it was not more potent than a dose of peppermint water; which I have always called a dram.

“The conversation was lively and general the chief part of the evening; but about midnight it turned upon music, on which subject his Royal Highness deigned so wholly to address himself to me, that we kept it [Pg 356] up a full half hour, without any one else offering a word. We were, generally, in perfect tune in our opinions; though once or twice I ventured to dissent from his Royal Highness; and once he condescended to come over to my argument: and he had the skill, as well as nobleness, to put me as perfectly at my ease in expressing my notions, as I should have been with any other perfectly well-bred man.

“The subject was then changed to classical lore; and here his Royal Highness, with similar condescension, addressed himself to my son, as to a man of erudition whose ideas, on learned topics, he respected; and a full discussion followed, of several literary matters.

“When the Prince rose to go to another room, we met Lady Melbourne and her daughter, just returned from the opera; to which they had been while we sat over the wine, (and eke the cherry brandy); and from which they came back in exact time for coffee! The Prince here, coming up to me, most graciously took my hand, and said, ‘I am glad we got, at last, to our favourite subject.’ He then made me sit down by him, close to the keys of a piano-forte; where, in a low voice, but face to face, we talked again upon music, and uttered our sentiments with, I may safely say, equal ease and freedom; so politely he encouraged my openness and sincerity.

“I then ventured to mention that I had a book in my possession that I regarded as the property of his Royal Highness. It was a set of my Commemoration of Handel, which I had had splendidly bound for permitted presentation through the medium of Lord St. Asaph; but which had not been received, from public casualties. His Royal Highness answered me with the most engaging good-humour, saying that he was now building a library, and that, when it was finished, mine should be the first book [Pg 357] placed in his collection. Nobody is so prompt at polite and gratifying compliments as this gracious Prince. I had no conception of his accomplishments. He quite astonished me by his learning, in conversing with my son, after my own musical tÊte À tÊte dialogue with him. He quoted Homer in Greek as readily as if quoting Dryden or Pope in English: and, in general conversation, during the dinner, he discovered a fund of wit and humour such as demonstrated him a man of reading and parts, who knew how to discriminate characters. He is, besides, an incomparable mimic. He counterfeited Dr. Parr’s lisp, language, and manner; and Kemble’s voice and accent, both on and off the stage, so accurately, so nicely, so free from caricature, that, had I been in another room, I should have sworn they had been speaking themselves. Upon the whole, I cannot terminate my account of this Prince better than by asserting it as my opinion, from the knowledge I acquired by my observations of this night, that he has as much conversational talent, and far more learning than Charles the Second; who knew no more, even of orthography, than MoliÈre’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme.

“My next great concert was at Mr. Thomson’s, in Grosvenor-square. Before I arrived, from not knowing there was a Royal motive for every one to be early, I found the crowd of company so excessively great, that I was a considerable time before I could make my way into the music-room; which I found also so full, that not only I could not discern a place where I might get a seat, (and to stand the whole night in such a heat would have been impossible for me;) but also I could not discover a spot where I might look on even for a few minutes, to see what was going forwards, without being bodily jammed; except quite close to the orchestra; where alone there seemed a little breathing room left. To gain this desirable little opening, I ventured to follow [Pg 358] closely, as if of their party, two very fine ladies, who made their way, heaven knows how, to some sofa, I fancy, reserved for them. But what was my surprise, and shame, when, upon attaining thus my coveted harbour, I found I came bounce upon the Prince of Wales! from respect to whom alone no crowd had there resorted! I had no time, however, for repentance, and no room for apology; for that gracious and kind Prince laughed at my exploit, and shook me very heartily by the hand, as if glad to see me again; and obliged me to sit down by him immediately. Nor would he suffer me to relinquish my place, even to any of the Princes, his brothers, when they came to him! nor even to any fine lady! always making a motion to me, that was a command, to be quiet. We talked, as before, over every piece and performance, with full ease of expression to our thoughts: but how great was my gratification, when, upon going into a cooler room, between the acts, he put his hat on his seat, and said ‘Dr. Burney, will you take care of my place for me?’ thus obviating from my stay all fear of intrusion, by making it an obedience. And his notions about music so constantly agree with my own, that I know of no individual, male or female, with whom I talk about music with more sincerity, as well as pleasure, than with this most captivating Prince.

“Another time, at the Opera, the Prince of Wales, perceiving me in the pit, sent for me to his splendid box; and, making me take a snug seat close behind his Royal Highness, entered, with his usual vivacity, into discussions upon the performance; and so re-jeunied me by his gaiety and condescension, joined to his extraordinary judgment on musical subjects, that I held forth in return as if I had been but five-and-twenty!

“Soon after these festivities, I went to Bulstrode Park, where I had the grief to find the Duke more feeble and low-spirited than he had [Pg 359] been in town. He could not hear the motion of a carriage, and was seldom able to dine at the table. He merely walked a little in the flower-garden. There was no company, except one day at dinner; and for one night Lord and Lady Darnley. They came in while I was dressing, and I had not heard their names, and knew not who they were. Unacquainted, therefore, with the bigoted devotion to the exclusive merit of Handel that I had to encounter, I got into a hot dispute that I should else, at the Duke’s house, have certainly avoided. The expression, ‘modern refinements,’ happened to escape me, which both my lord and his lady, with a tone of consummate contempt, repeated: ‘Modern refinements, indeed!’ ‘Well, then,’ cried I, ‘let us call them modern changes of style and taste; for what one party calls refinements, the other, of course, constantly calls corruption and deterioration.’ They were quite irritated at this; and we all three then went to it ding-dong! I made use of the same arguments that I have so often used in my musical writings,—that ingenious men cannot have been idle during a century; and the language of sound is never stationary, any more than that of conversation and books. New modes of expression; new ideas from new discoveries and inventions, required new phrases: and in the cultivation of instruments, as well as of the voice, emulation would produce novelty, which, above all things, is wanted in music. And to say that the symphonies of Haydn, and the compositions of Mozart and Beethoven, have no merit, because they are not like Handel, Corelli, and Geminiani;—or to say that the singing of a Pacchierotti, a Marchese, a Banti, or a Billington, in their several styles, is necessarily inferior to singers and compositions of the days of Handel, is supposing time to stand still—

“I was going on, when the kind Duke, struck, I doubt not, by a view of the storm I was incautiously brewing, contrived to whisper in my ear, ‘You are upon tender ground, Dr. Burney!’

[Pg 360]

“I drew back, with as troublesome a fit of coughing as I could call to my aid; and during its mock operation, his Grace had the urbanity to call up a new subject.”