The quick-spreading favour with which the Tours were received; the celebrity which they threw around the name and existence of Dr. Burney; the associations of rank, talents, literature, learning, and fashionable coteries, to which they opened an entrance, could not fail, ere long, to make their author become an object of envy, since they raised him to be one of admiration.
The character, conduct, and life of Dr. Burney were now, therefore, no doubt, critically examined, and morally sifted, by the jealous herd of contemporary rivals, who had worked far longer, and far more laboriously, through the mazes of science; yet, working without similar genius, had failed of rising to similar heights.
Nevertheless, the immediate path in which Dr.
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Burney flourished was so new, so untrodden, that he displaced no competitor, he usurped no right of others; and the world, unsought and uncanvassed, was so instinctively on his side, that, for a considerable time, his palpable pre-eminence seemed as willingly accorded, as it was unequivocally acknowledged.
But the viper does not part with its venom from keeping its body in ambush; and, before the History came out, though long after the publication of the Tours, a ludicrous parody of the latter was sent forth into the world, under the name of Joel Collier.
The Doctor, delicately anxious not to deserve becom............