But the social enjoyment that came closest to the bosom of Mr. Burney, and of all his race, sprang spontaneously and unremittingly from the delight of all their hearts, Mr. Crisp; who, from his never abating love of music, of painting, of his early friend, and of that friend’s progeny, never failed to make his almost secret visit once a year to town; though still, save for those few weeks, he adhered, with inflexible perseverance, to his retirement and his concealment.
[Pg 208]
Yet whatever disinclination to general society had been worked upon his temper by disappointment, and fastened to his habits by ill health, the last reproach that could be cast upon his conduct was that of misanthropy; though upon his opinions it might deserve, perhaps, to be the first.
He professed himself to be a complete disciple of Swift, where that satirist, in defending his Yahoos, in Gulliver’s Travels, avows that, dearly as he loves John, William, and Thomas, when taken individually, mankind, taken in the lump, he abhors or despises.
Nevertheless, Mr. Crisp had so pitying a humanity for wrongs or misfortunes that were casual, or that appeared to be incurred without vice or crime, that, to serve a fellow-creature who called for assistance, whether from his purse or his kindness, was so almost involuntarily his common practice, that it was performed as a thing of course, without emotion or commentary.
Mr. Crisp, at this time, was the chief supporter of Chesington Hall, which had now lost the long dignity of its title, and was sunk into plain Chesington, by the death of its last male descendant, Christopher Hamilton; whose extravagances had
[Pg 209]
exhausted, an............