The History of Music was dedicated, by permission, to her Majesty, Queen Charlotte; and was received with even peculiar graciousness when it was presented, at the drawing-room, by the author. The Queen both loved and understood the subject; and had shewn the liberal exemption of her fair mind from all petty nationality, in the frank approbation she had deigned to express of the Doctor’s Tours; notwithstanding they so palpably displayed his strong preference of the Italian vocal music to that of the German.
So delighted was Doctor Burney by the condescending manner of the Queen’s acceptance of his musical offering, that he never thenceforward failed paying his homage to their Majesties, upon the two birth-day anniversaries of those august and beloved Sovereigns.
Fair was this period in the life of Dr. Burney. It opened to him a new region of enjoyment, supported by honours, and exhilarated by pleasures supremely to his taste: honours that were literary, pleasures that were intellectual. Fair was this period, though not yet was it risen to its acme: a fairer still was now advancing to his highest wishes, by free and frequent intercourse with the man in the world to whose genius and worth united, he looked up the most reverentially—Dr. Johnson.
And this intercourse was brought forward through circumstances of such infinite agreeability, that no point, however flattering, of the success that led him to celebrity, was so welcome to his honest and honourable pride, as being sought for at Streatham, and his reception at that seat of the Muses.
Mrs. Thrale, the lively and enlivening lady of the mansion, was then at the height of the glowing renown which, for many years, held her in stationary superiority on that summit.
It was professionally that Dr. Burney was first invited to Streatham, by the master of that fair abode. The eldest daughter of the house[10] was in the progress of an education fast advancing in most departments of juvenile accomplishments, when the idea of having recourse to the chief in “music’s power divine,”—Dr. Burney,—as her instructor in harmony, occurred to Mrs. Thrale.
So interesting was this new engagement to the family of Dr. Burney, which had been born and bred to a veneration of Dr. Johnson; and which had imbibed the general notion that Streatham was a coterie of wits and scholars, on a par with the blue assemblages in town of Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Vesey; that they all flocked around him, on his return from his first excursion, with eager enquiry whether Dr. Johnson had appeared; and whether Mrs. Thrale merited the brilliant plaudits of her panegyrists.