Mr. Burney was compelled to make his first essay of the air, situation, and promised advantages of Lynn, without the companion to whom he owed the re-establishment of health that enabled him to try the experiment: his Esther, as exemplary in her maternal as in her conjugal duties, was now indispensably detained in town by the most endearing of all ties to female tenderness, the first offsprings of a union of mutual love; of which the elder could but just go alone, and the younger was still in her arms.
Mr. Burney was received at Lynn with every mark of favour, that could demonstrate the desire of its inhabitants to attach and fix him to that spot. He was introduced by Sir John Turner to the mayor, aldermen, recorder, clergy, physicians, lawyers, and principal merchants, who formed the higher population of the town; and who in their traffic, the wine trade, were equally eminent for the goodness of their merchandize and the integrity of their dealings.
All were gratified by an acquisition to their distant and quiet town, that seemed as propitious to
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society as to the arts; the men with respect gave their approbation to his sense and knowledge; the women with smiles bestowed theirs upon his manners and appearance. His air was so lively, and his figure was so youthful, that the most elegant as well as beautiful woman of the place, Mrs. Stephen Allen, took him for a Cambridge student, who, at that time, was expected at Lynn.
He was not insensible to such a welcome; yet the change was so great from the splendid or elegant, the classical or amusing circles, into which he had been initiated in the metropolis, that, in looking, he said, around him, he seemed to see but a void.
The following energetic lament to his Esther, written about a week after his Lynn residence, will best explain his tormented sensations at this altered scene of life. He was but in his twenty-fourth year, when he gave way to this quick burst of chagrin.

“To Mrs. Burney.
“Lynn Regis, Monday.
“Now, my amiable friend, let me unbosom myself to thee, as if I were to enjoy the incomparable felicity of thy presence. And first—let me exclaim at the unreasonableness of man’s
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desires; at his unbounded ambition and avarice, and at the inconstancy of his temper, which impels him, the moment he is in the possession of the thing that once employed all his thoughts and wishes, to relinquish it, and to fix his “mind’s eye” on some bauble that next becomes his point of view, and that, if attained, he would wish as much to change for still another toy, of still less consequence to his interest and quiet. Oh thou constant tenant of my heart! to apply the above to myself,—thou art the only good I have been constant to! the only blessing I have been thankful to Providence for! the only one, I feel, I shall ever continue to have a true sense of! Ought I not to blush at this character’s suiting me? Indeed I ought, and I do. Not that I think it one peculiar to myself; I believe it would fit more than half mankind. But it shames me to think how little I knew myself, when I fancied I should be happy in this place. Oh God! I find it impossible I should ever be so. Would you believe it, that I have more than a hundred times wished I had never heard its name? Nothing but the hope of acquiring an independent fortune in a short space of time will keep me here; though I am too deeply entered to retreat without great loss. But happiness cannot be too dearly purchased. In short, I would gladly change again for London, at any rate.

“The organ is execrably bad; and, add to that, a total ignorance of the most known and common musical merits runs through the whole body of people I have yet conversed with. Even Sir J. T., who is the oracle of Apollo in this country, is, in these matters, extremely shallow. Now the bad organ, with the ignorance of my auditors, must totally extinguish the
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few sparks of genius for composition that I may have, and entirely discourage practice; for where would any pains I may take to execute the most difficult piece of music be repaid, if, like poor Orpheus, I am to perform to sticks and stones?”

Ere long, however, Mr. Burney saw his prospects in a fairer point of view. He found himself surrounded by some very worthy and amiable persons, perfectly disposed to be his friends; and he became attached to their kindness. The unfixed state of his health made London a perilous place of abode for him; and his Esther pleaded for his accommodating himself to his new situation.
He took, therefore, a pretty and convenient house, and sent for what, next to his lovely wife, he most valued, his books; and when they came, and when she herself was coming, he revived in his hopes and spirits, and hastened her approach by the following affectionate rhymes—they must not, in these fastidious days, be called verses. The austere critic is besought, therefore, not to fall on the fair fame of the writer, by considering them as produced for public inspection; nor as assuming the high present character of poetry. They are inserted only biographically, from a dearth of any further prose document, by which might be
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conveyed, in the simplicity of his own veracious diction, some idea of the sympathy and the purity of his marriage happiness, by the rare picture which these lines present of an intellectual lover in a tender husband.

“To Mrs. Burney.
“Lynn Regis.
“Come, my darling!—quit the town;
Come!—and me with rapture crown.

If ’tis meet to fee or bribe
A leech of th’ Æsculapius tribe,
We Hepburn have, who’s wise as Socrates,
And deep in physic as Hippocrates.
Or, if ’tis meet to take the air,
You borne shall be on horse or mare;
And, ’gainst all chances to provide,
I’ll be your faithful ’squire and guide.
If unadulterate wine be good
To glad the heart, and mend the blood,
We that in plenty boast at Lynn,
Would make with pleasure Bacchus grin.
Should nerves auricular demand
A head profound, and cunning hand,
The charms of music to display,
Pray,—cannot _I_ compose and play?
And strains to your each humour suit
On organ, violin, or flute?
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If these delights you deem too transient,
We modern authors have, or antient,
Which, while I’ve lungs from phthisicks freed,
To thee with rapture, sweet, I’ll read.
If Homer’s bold, inventive fire,
Or Virgil’s art, you most admire;
If Pliny’s eloquence and ease,
Or Ovid’s flowery fancy please;
In fair array they marshall’d stand,
Most humbly waiting your command.
To humanize and mend the heart,
Our serious hours we’ll set apart.

We’ll learn to separate right from wrong,
Through Pope’s mellifluous moral song.
If wit and humour be our drift,
We’ll laugh at knaves and fools with Swift.
To know the world, its follies see,
Ourselves from ridicule to free,
To whom for lessons shall we run,
But to the pleasing Addison?
Great Bacon’s learning; Congreve’s wit,
By turns thy humour well may hit.
How sweet, original, and strong,
How high the flights of Dryden’s song!
He, though so often careless found,
Lifts us so high above the ground
That we disdain terrestrial things,
And scale Olympus while he sings.
Among the bards who mount the skies
Whoe’er to such a height could rise
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As Milton? he, to whom ’twas given
To plunge to Hell, and mount to Heaven.
How few like thee—my soul’s delight!
Can follow him in every flight?
La Mancha’s knight, on gloomy day,
Shall teach our muscles how to play,
And at the black fana............