With a spirit greatly hurt through a lively sense of injustice, and a laudable ambition surreptitiously suppressed by misconception and prejudice, all that was left for Dr. Burney in this ungracious business was to lament loss of time, and waste of meditation.
Yet, the matter being without redress, save by struggles which he thought beneath the fair design of the enterprise, he combatted the intrusion of availless discontent, by calling to his aid his well-experienced antidote to inertness and discouragement, a quickened application to changed, or renewed pursuits.
[Pg 245]
Again, therefore, he returned to his History of Music; and now, indeed, he went to work with all his might. The capacious table of his small but commodious study, exhibited, in what he called his chaos, the countless increasing stores of his materials. Multitudinous, or, rather, innumerous blank books, were severally adapted to concentrating some peculiar portion of the work. Theory, practice; music of the ancients; music in parts; national music; lyric, church, theatrical, warlike music; universal biography of composers and performers, of patrons and of professors; and histories of musical institutions, had all their destined blank volumes.
And he opened a widely circulating correspondence, foreign and domestic, with various musical authors, composers, and students, whether professors or dilettante.
And for all this mass of occupation, he neglected no business, he omitted no devoir. The system by which he obtained time that no one missed, yet that gave to him lengthened life, independent of longevity from years, was through the skill with which, indefatigably, he profited from every fragment of leisure.
[Pg 246]
Every sick or failing pupil bestowed an hour upon his pen. Every holiday for others, was a day of double labour to his composition. Even illness took activity only from his body, for his mind refused all relaxation. He had constantly, when indisposed, one of his daughters by hi............