“I made an excursion to the city of Wells for one day and night, to see its admirable cathedral. The Bishop, Dr. Beadon, is an old musical acquaintance of mine, of thirty years’ standing. He wished me to have remained a week with him. And I should have liked it very well,—‘ma!—ma!—ma!’—as the Italians say, I have no weeks to spare!”
The health and spirits of Dr. Burney were now so good, that he seized another opportunity for writing again, in the same month, to his truly grateful daughter:
“Do you remember a letter of thanks which I received from Rousseau for a present of music which I sent him, with a printed copy of The Cunning Man, that I had Englishized from his _Divan du Village_? I thought myself the most fortunate of beings, in 1770, to have obtained an hour’s conversation with him; for he was then more difficult of access than ever, especially to the English, being out of humour with the whole nation, from resentment of Horace Walpole’s forged letter from the King of Prussia; and he had determined, he said, never to read or write again! Guy, the famous bookseller, was the only person he then admitted; and it was through the sagacious good offices of this truly eminent book-man, urged by my friends, Count d’Holbach, Diderot, &c., that the interview I so ardently aspired at was procured for me. Well, this letter from the great Jean Jacques, which I had not seen these twenty years, I have lately found in a cover from Lord Harcourt, to whom I had lent it, when his lordship was preparing a list of all Rousseau’s works, for the benefit of his widow; which, however, he left to find another editor, when Madame Rousseau relinquished her celebrated name, to become the wife of some ordinary man. Lord Harcourt then returned my letter, and, upon a recent review of it, I was quite struck with the politeness and condescension with which Jean Jacques had accepted my little offering, at a time when he refused all assistance, nay, all courtesy, from the first persons both of England and France. I am now writing in bed, and have not the original to quote; but, as far as I can remember, he concludes his letter with the following flattering lines:
“‘The works, Sir, which you have presented me, will often call to my remembrance the pleasure I had in seeing and hearing you; and will augment my regret at my not being able sometimes to renew that pleasure. I entreat you, Sir, to accept my humble salutations.