Not the least, nor least prized honour, in the life of Dr. Burney, occurred in the June of this year, 1798, in seconding the motion of Mr. Windham for the election of Mr. Canning as a member of the Literary Club; “though, strange to say,” he relates, “I had already honoured myself by seconding the same motion once before, when Mr. Canning was put up, I believe, by Lord Spencer; but was rejected by one abominable party black-ball, though there were ten or eleven balls all white.”

As this club was instituted for the pursuits and enjoyment of literature, independent of party or politics, it seems strangely foreign to such a design, either to elect or reject merely from political incitement. Dissensions through politics in the senate must necessarily be endured; nay, cannot rationally be lamented; they are the unavoidable offsprings of the most exalted exercise of the human faculties, freedom of debate; that freedom whence spring independence, justice, and liberty.

But, in meetings consecrated to social intellectuality, might not the chance be greater of obtaining and dispensing liberal knowledge, if the scrutiny of the electors were solely directed to the general powers of instruction or entertainment in the candidates, than in being cast upon any arbitrary standard of political creeds?

How, but by this comprehensive view of literary conviviality, could Dr. Johnson and Charles Fox, so opposite in state opinions, yet so approximate in powers of colloquial combat, have been members of this very club, without leaving one record behind them of controversial discord? In truth, to exclude from meetings formed for social enlargement, all who are not in all things of the same opinion, seems assembling a company to face an echo, and calling its neat repetition of whatever is uttered, conversation.

The election this time, however, was honourable to the club, for it was successful to Mr. Canning. And Mr. Marsden, author of the curious and spirited account of Sumatra, was happily white-balled at the same time; which Dr. Burney called, in his next letter to the Hermits, a revival of the true spirit of the institution.