With Dr. Hawkesworth Mr. Burney renewed an acquaintance that he had begun at Wilbury House, where he who could write the Adventurer, was not
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likely to have wanted the public voice to awaken his attention to a youth of such striking merit. Long before that voice had sounded, Dr. Hawkesworth had formed the most liberal and impartial opinion of the young favourite of Mr. Greville. And when, upon the occasion of the Doctor’s writing a hymn for the children of the Foundling Hospital, Mr. Burney, through the medium of Mr. Greville, was applied to for setting it to music, the expressions, incidentally dropt, of genius and judgment, in a letter of thanks from Dr. Hawkesworth, would have been in perfect accord with the attributes of the composer, had they been bestowed after the History of Music had stamped them as his due.
No opportunity was omitted by Mr. Burney for cultivating the already established kindness of Mr. Mason and of Dr. Armstrong.
Mr. Burney had frequent relations also, with that scientific diver into natural history, and whatever was ingenious, quaint, and little known, the Hon. Daines Barrington.
Arthur Young, the afterwards famous agriculturist, who had married a younger sister of Mr. Burney, was, when in London, all but an inmate of the Poland-street family; and the high, nay, at that
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time, volatile spirits of Arthur Young, though always kept within certain bounds by natively well-bred manners, and instinctive powers of pleasing, made him, to the younger group especially, the most entertaining guest that enlivened the fire side.
Amongst those whom neither literature nor science, but taste and choice, taught to signalise Mr. Burney, foremost in the list of youthful beauty, native talents, and animated softnes............