The Memoirs of Metastasio, with all their interest to a man whose love of literary composition was so eminently his ruling passion, surmounted not—for nothing could surmount—the parental benevolence that welcomed with encouragement, and hailed with hope, a project now communicated to him of a new work, the third in succession, from the author of Evelina and Cecilia.

That author, become now a mother as well as a wife, was induced to print this, her third literary essay, by a hazardous mode of publicity, from which her natively-retired temperament had made her, in former days, recoil, even when it was eloquently suggested for her by Mr. Burke to Dr. Burney; namely, the mode of subscription.

But, at this period, she felt a call against her distaste at once conjugal and maternal. Her noble-minded partner, though the most ardent of men to be himself what he thought belonged to the dignity of his sex, the efficient purveyor of his own small home and family, was despoiled, by events over which he had no control, of that post of honour.

This scheme, therefore, was adopted. Its history, however, would be here a matter of supererogation, save as far as it includes Dr. Burney in its influence and effect; for neither the author, nor her partner in all, could feel greater delight than was experienced by Dr. Burney, from the three principal circumstances which emanated from this undertaking.

The first of these was the honour graciously accorded by her Majesty, Queen Charlotte, of suffering her august name to stand at the head of the Book, by deigning to accept its Dedication.

The second was the feminine approbation marked for the author by three ladies, equally conspicuous for their virtues and their understanding; the honourable and sagacious Mrs. Boscawen, the beautiful and zealous Mrs. Crewe, and the exemplary and captivating Mrs. Locke; who each kept books for the subscription, which the kindness of their friendship raised as highly in honour as in advantage.

And the third circumstance, to the Doctor the most touching, because now the least expected, was the energetic interest, to which the prospect of seeing this Memorialist emerge again from obscurity, re-animated the still generous feelings of the now nearly sinking, altered, gone Mr. Burke! who, on finding that his charges against Mr. Hastings were adjudged in Westminster Hall to be unfounded, though he was still persuaded himself that they were just, had retired from Parliament, wearied and disgusted; and who, on the following year, had lost his deeply-attached brother; and, almost immediately afterwards, his nearly idolized son, who was “the pride of his heart, and the joy of his existence,” to use his own words in a paragraph of a letter written to the mutually respected and faithful friend of himself and of Dr. Burney, Mrs. Crewe.

That lady, well acquainted with the reverence of Dr. Burney for Mr. Burke, and the attachment with which Mr. Burke returned it, generally communicated her letters from Beaconsfield to Chelsea College; and not unfrequently with a desire that they might be forwarded on to Bookham; well knowing that the extraordinary partiality of Mr. Burke for its female recluse, would make him more than pardon the kind pleasure of Mrs. Crewe in granting that recluse such an indulgence.

The letter, whence is taken the fond sad phrase just quoted, was written in answer to the first letter of Mrs. Crewe to Mr. Burke, after his irreparable bereavement; and the whole of the paragraph in which it occurs will now be copied, to elucidate the interesting circumstance for Dr. Burney to which it led. Beautiful is the paragraph in the pathetic resignation of its submission. No flowery orator here expands his imagination; nothing finds vent but the touching simplicity of a tender parent’s heart-breaking sorrow.

The reader will not, it is hoped, imagine, that the emotion excited by these words at Bookham sprang from a credulity so simple, or a vanity so insane, as that of arraigning the judgment of Mr. Burke by a literal acceptation of their benevolent, rather than flattering exaltation:—No! the emotion was to find Mr. Burke still susceptible of his old generous warmth of regard: and that emotion was of the tenderest gratitude in the Recluse, upon seeing herself still, in defiance of absence, of distance, of time, and even of deadly sorrow, as much its honoured object as when she had been sought by him in her opening career.

The felicitations of Dr. Burney to Bookham upon this extraordinary effusion of heart-affecting kindness, were so full of happiness, as to demand felicitations in return for himself.