To these splendid, and truly uncommon assemblages, Dr. Burney and his daughter accepted, occasionally, some of the frequent invitations with which they were honoured.
And here they had sometimes the happiness to meet, amidst the nobles and dames of the land, with all the towering height of his almost universal superiority, Mr. Burke; who, sure, from the connexions of the lady president, to find many chosen friends with whom he could coalesce or combat upon literary or general topics, commonly entered the grand saloon with a spirited yet gentle air, that shewed him full fraught with the generous purpose to receive as well as to dispense social pleasure; untinged with one bitter drop of political rancour; and clarified from all acidity of party sarcasm.
And here, too, though only latterly, and very rarely, appeared the sole star that rose still higher in the gaze of the world, Dr. Johnson. Miss Moncton had met with the Doctor at Brighton, where that animated lady eagerly sought him as a gem to crown her coteries; persevering in her attacks for conquest, with an enthusiasm that did honour to her taste; till the Doctor, surprised and pleased, rewarded her exertions by a good-humoured compliance with her invitations.
But of these coteries, none surpassed, if they equalled, in easy pleasantry, unaffected intelligence, and information free from pedantry or formality, those of the Knight of Plympton. Sir Joshua Reynolds was singularly simple, though never inelegant in his language; and his classical style of painting could not be more pleasing, however more sublimely it might elevate and surprise, than his manners and conversation.
There was little or no play of countenance, beyond cheerfulness or sadness, in the features of Sir Joshua; but in his eyes there was a searching look, that seemed, upon his introduction to any person of whom he had thought before he had seen, to fix, in his painter’s mind, the attitude, if it may be so called, of face that would be most striking for a picture. But this was rarely obvious, and never disconcerting; he was eminently unassuming, unpretending, and natural.[50]
Dr. Burney has left amongst his papers a note of an harangue which he had heard from Sir Joshua Reynolds, at the house of Dudley Long, when the Duke of Devonshire, and various other peers, were present, and when happiness was the topic of discussion. Sir Joshua for some time had listened in silence to their several opinions; and then impressively said: “You none of you, my lords, if you will forgive my telling you so, can speak upon this subject with as much knowledge of it as I can. Dr. Burney perhaps might; but it is not the man who looks around him from the top of a high mountain at a beautiful prospect on the first moment of opening his eyes, who has the true enjoyment of that noble sight: it is he who ascends the mountain from a miry meadow, or a ploughed field, or a barren waste; and who works his way up to it step by step; scratched and harassed by thorns and briars; with here a hollow, that catches his foot; and there a clump that forces him all the way back to find out a new path;—it is he who attains to it through all that toil and danger; and with the strong contrast on his mind of the miry meadow, or ploughed field, or barren waste, for which it was exchanged,—it is he, my lords, who enjoys the beauties that suddenly blaze upon him. They cause an expansion of ideas in harmony with the expansion of the view. He glories in its glory; and his mind opens to conscious exaltation; such as the man who was born and bred upon that commanding height, with all the loveliness of prospect, and fragrance, and variety, and plenty, and luxury of every sort, around, above, beneath, can never know; can have no idea of;—at least, not till he come near some precipice, in a boisterous wind, that hurls him from the top to the bottom, and gives him some taste of what he had possessed, by its loss; and some pleasure in its recovery, by the pain and difficulty of scrambling back to it.”