“As to _Miss Burney_—the subscription ought to be, for certain persons, five guineas; and to take but a single copy each. The rest as it is. I am sure that it is a disgrace to the age and nation, if this be not a great thing for her, If every person in England who has received pleasure and instruction from Cecilia, were to rate its value at the hundredth part of their satisfaction, Madame d’Arblay would be one of the richest women in the kingdom.
“Her scheme was known before she lost two[39] of her most respectful admirers from this house;[40] and this, with Mrs. Burke’s subscription and mine, make the paper I send you.[41] One book is as good as a thousand: one of hers is certainly as good as a thousand others.”
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.
In 1795 the Memoirs of Metastasio made their appearance in the republic of letters. They were received with interest and pleasure by all readers of taste, and lovers of the lyric muse. They had not, indeed, that brightness of popular success which had flourished into the world the previous works of the Doctor; for though the name of Metastasio was familiar to all who had any pretensions to an acquaintance with the classical muses, whether ancient or modern, it was only the chosen few who had any enjoyment of his merit, or who understood the motives to his fame. The Italian language was by no means then in its present general cultivation; and the feeling, exalted dramas of this tenderly touching poet, were only brought forward, in England, by the miserable, mawkish, no-meaning translations of the opera-house hired scribblers.[42] And all that was most elegant and most refined, in thought as well as in language, of this classical bard, was frequently so ill rendered into English, as to become mere matter of risibility, held up for mockery and ridicule.