If such was the benefit reaped by the daughter from this animated and very uncommon friendship, the great age of one of the parties at its formation considered, who can wonder at the glad as well as proud encouragement which it met with from Dr. Burney?
But the cordial the most potent to the feelings and the spirits of the Doctor, in this hard-trying year, was the exhilarating partiality displayed towards him by Mr. Burke; and which was doubly soothing by warmly and constantly including the Memorialist in its urbanity. From the time of the party at Sir Joshua Reynolds’ upon Richmond Hill, their intercourse had gone on with increase of regard. They met, and not unfrequently, at various places; but chiefly at Sir Joshua Reynolds’, Miss Moncton’s, and Mrs. Vesey’s. Mr. Burke delighted in society as much as of society he was the supreme delight: and perhaps to this social disposition he owed that part of his oratorical excellence that made it so entertainingly varying, and so frequently interspersed with penetrating reflections on human life.
But to the political circle to which Mr. Burke and his powers were principally devoted, Dr. Burney was, accidentally, a stranger. Accidentally may be said, for it was by no means deliberately, as he was not of any public station or rank that demanded any restrictions to his mental connexions. He was excursive, therefore, in his intercourse, though fixed in his principles.
But besides the three places above named, Mr. Burke himself, from the period of the assembly at Miss Moncton’s, had the grace and amiability to drop in occasionally, uninvited and unexpectedly, to the little tea-table of St. Martin’s-street; where his bright welcome from the enchanted Memorialist, for whom he constantly inquired when the Doctor was abroad, repaid him—in some measure, perhaps—for almost always missing the chief of whom he came in search.
The Doctor, also, when he had half an hour to spare, took the new votary of Mr. Burke to visit him and his pleasing wife, at their apartments at the Treasury, where now was their official residence. And here they saw, with wonder and admiration, amidst the whirl of politics and the perplexities of ministerial arrangements, in which Mr. Burke, then in the administration, was incessantly involved, how cheerfully, how agreeably, how vivaciously, he could still be the most winning of domestic men, the kindest of husbands, the fondest of fathers, and the most delightful of friends.