While connexions thus various, literary, classical, noble, and professional, incidentally occurred, combatting the deadening toil of the copyist, and keeping his mind in tune for intellectual pursuits and attainments, new scenes, most unexpectedly, opened to him the world at large, and suddenly brought him to a familiar acquaintance with high life.
Fulk Greville, a descendant of The Friend of Sir Philip Sydney, and afterwards author of Characters,
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Maxims, and Reflections, was then generally looked up to as the finest gentleman about town. His person, tall and well-proportioned, was commanding; his face, features, and complexion, were striking for masculine beauty; and his air and carriage were noble with conscious dignity.
He was then in the towering pride of healthy manhood and athletic strength. He excelled in all the fashionable exercises, riding, fencing, hunting, shooting at a mark, dancing, tennis, &c.; and worked at every one of them with a fury for pre-eminence, not equalled, perhaps, in ardour for superiority in personal accomplishments, since the days of the chivalrous Lord Herbert of Cherbury.
His high birth, and higher expectation—for a coronet at that time, from some uncertain right of heritage, hung almost suspended over his head—with a splendid fortune, wholly unfettered, already in his hands, gave to him a consequence in the circles of modish dissipation that, at the clubs of St. James’s-street, and on the race ground at Newmarket, nearly crowned him as chief. For though there were many competitors of more titled importance, and more powerful wealth, neither the blaze of their heraldry,
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nor the weight of their gold, could preponderate, in the buckish scales of the day, over the elegance of equipment, the grandeur, yet attraction of demeanour, the supercilious brow, and the resplendent smile, that marked the lofty yet graceful descendant of Sir Philip Sydney.
This gentleman one morning, while trying a new instrument at the house of Kirkman, the first harpsichord maker of the times, expressed a wish to receive musical instruction from some one who had mind and cultivation, as well as finger and ear; lamenting, with strong contempt, that, in the musical tribe, the two latter were generally dislocated from the two former; and gravely asking Kirkman whether he knew any young musician who was fit company for a gentleman.
Kirkman, with honest zeal to stand up for the credit of the art by which he prospered, and which he held to be insulted by this question, warmly answered that he knew many; but, very particularly, one member of the harmonic corps, who had as much music in his tongue as in his hands, and who was as fit company for a prince as for an orchestra.
Mr. Greville, with much surprise, made sundry
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and formal inquiries into the existence, situation, and character of what he called so great a phenomenon; protesting there was nothing he so much desired as the extraordinary circumstance of finding any union of sense with sound.
The replies of the good German were so exciting, as well as satisfactory, that Mr. Greville became eager to see the youth thus extolled; but charged Mr. Kirkman not to betray a word of what had passed, that the interview might be free from restraint, and seem to be arranged merely for shewing off the several instruments that were ready for sale, to a gentleman who was disposed to purchase one of the most costly.
To this injunction Mr. Kirkman agreed, and conscientiously adhered.
A day was appointed, and the meeting took place.
Young Burney, with no other idea than that of serving Kirkman, immediately seated himself at an instrument, and played various pieces of Geminiani, Corelli, and Tartini, whose compositions were then most in fashion. But Mr. Greville, secretly suspicious of some connivance, coldly and proudly walked about the room; took snuff from a finely
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enamelled snuff-box, and looked at some prints, as if wholly without noticing the performance.
He had, however, too much penetration not to perceive his mistake, when he remarked the incautious carelessness with which his inattention was returned; for soon, conceiving himself to be playing to very obtuse ears, young Burney left off all attempt at soliciting their favour; and only sought his own amusement by trying favourite passages, or practising difficult ones, with a vivacity which shewed that his passion for his art rewarded him in itself for his exertions. But coming, at length, to keys of which the touch, light and springing, invited his stay, he fired away in a sonata of Scarlatti’s, with an alternate excellence of execution and expression, so perfectly in accord with the fanciful flights of that wild but masterly composer, that Mr. Greville, satisfied no scheme was at work to surprise or to win him; but, on the contrary, that the energy of genius was let loose upon itself, and enjoying, without premeditation, its own lively sports and vagaries; softly drew a chair to the harpsichord, and listened, with unaffected earnestness, to every note.
Nor were his ears alone curiously awakened; his eyes were equally occupied to mark the peculiar
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performance of intricate difficulties; for the young musician had invented a mode of adding neatness to brilliancy, by curving the fingers, and rounding the hand, in a manner that gave them a grace upon the keys quite new at that time, and entirely of his own devising.
To be easily pleased, however, or to make acknowledgment of being pleased at all, seems derogatory to strong self-importance; Mr. Greville, therefore, merely said, “You are fond, Sir, it seems, of Italian music?”
The reply to this was striking up, with all the varying undulations of the crescendo, the diminuendo, the pealing swell, and the “dying, dying fall,” belonging to the powers of the pedal, that most popular masterpiece of Handel’s, the Coronation Anthem.
This quickness of comprehension, in turning from Italian to German, joined to the grandeur of the composition, and the talents of the performer, now irresistibly vanquished Mr. Greville; who, convinced of Kirkman’s truth with regard to the harmonic powers of this son of Apollo, desired next to sift it with regard to the wit.
Casting off, therefore, his high reserve, with his
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jealous surmises, he ceased to listen to the music, and started some theme that was meant to lead to conversation.
But as this essay, from not knowing to what the youth might be equal, consisted of such inquiries as, “Have you been in town long, Sir?” or, “Does your taste call you back to the country, Sir?” &c. &c., his young hearer, by no means preferring this inquisitorial style to the fancy of............