Hard, indeed, was this blow to Dr. Burney. He lamented this high character in all possible ways, as a friend, a patriot, a statesman, an orator, and a man of the most exalted genius.

“He was certainly,” says his letter to Bookham upon this event, “one of the greatest men of the present century; and, I think I might say, the best orator and statesman of modern times. He had his passions and prejudices, to which I did not subscribe; but I always ardently admired his great abilities, his warmth of friendship, his constitutional urbanity.”

He then adds:—

“That, while such was his character, and such his loss in public, he, (Dr. Burney,) and his daughter, to whom Mr. Burke had been so unremittingly and singularly partial, must be ungrateful indeed not yet more peculiarly to lament his departure, and honour his character in private.”

In her answer, she sorrowingly assures the Doctor that there was nothing to fear of her want of sympathy in this affliction. “I feel it,” she cries, “with my whole heart, and participate in every word you say of that truly great man. That he was not, as his enemies exclaim, perfect, is nothing in the scale of his stupendous superiority over almost all those who are merely exempt from his defects. That he was upright in heart and intention, even where he acted erroneously, I firmly believe: and that he asserted nothing that he had not persuaded himself to be true, even from Mr. Hastings being the most rapacious of villains, to the King’s being incurably insane.[47] He was as liberal in sentiment as he was luminous in intellect, and extraordinary in eloquence; and for amiability, he was surely, when in spirits and good-humour—all but the most delightful of men. Yet, though superior to envy, and glowing with the noblest zeal to exalt talents and merits in others, he had, I believe, an unavoidable, though not a vain consciousness of his own greatness, that shut out from his consideration those occasional and useful self-doubts that keep the judgment in order, by making us, from time to time, call our motives and our passions to account.”

The Doctor was amongst the invited who paid the last homage to the manes of Mr. Burke by attending his funeral.

“Malone and I,” he says, “went to Bulstrode together, in my carriage, with two added horses. We found there the Dukes of Portland and Devonshire. Windham arrived to dinner. The Lord Chancellor and the Speaker could not leave London till four o’clock, but were at Bulstrode by seven. All set off together for Beaconsfield, where we found the rest of the pall-hearers, Lords Fitzwilliam and Inchiquin, Sir Gilbert Elliot, Frederick North, Drs. King and Lawrence, Dudley North, and very many of the great orator’s personal friends; though, by his repeated [Pg 242] injunctions, the funeral was ordered to be very private. He left a list to whom rings of remembrance were to be sent, in which my name honourably occurs; and a jeweller has been with me for my measure.

“After these mournful rites, the Duke of Portland included me in his invite back to Bulstrode, with the Duke of Devonshire, the Chancellor, the Speaker, Windham, Malone, and Secretary King: and there I continued the next day.

“The Duke pressed me to stay on, and accompany him and his party to a visit, the following morning, in honour of Mr. Burke, that was to be made to the school, founded by that enlarged philanthropist, for the male children of the ruined emigrant nobility, now seeking refuge in this country. But it was not in my power to prolong my absence from town.”