His house in Queen-Square had been relinquished from difficulties respecting its title; and Mrs.
[Pg 289]
Burney, assiduously and skilfully, purchased and prepared another, during his confinement, that was situated in St. Martin’s-street, Leicester-fields.
If the house in Queen-Square had owed a fanciful part of its value to the belief that, formerly, in his visits to Alderman Barber, it had been inhabited occasionally by Dean Swift, how much higher a local claim, was vested in imagination, for a mansion that had decidedly been the dwelling of the immortal Sir Isaac Newton!
Dr. Burney entered it with reverence, as may be gathered from the following lines in his doggrel chronology.
“This house, where great Newton once deign’d to reside,
Who of England, and all Human Nature the pride,
Sparks of light, like Prometheus, from Heaven purloin’d,
Which in bright emanations flash’d full on mankind.”
This change of position from Queen-Square to St. Martin’s-street, required all that it could bestow of convenience to business, of facilitating fashionable and literary intercourse, of approximation to travelling foreigners of distinction, and of vicinity to the Opera House; to somewhat counter-balance its unpleasant site, its confined air, and its shabby immediate
[Pg 290]
neighbourhood; after the beautiful prospect which the Doctor had quitted of the hills, ever verdant and smiling, of Hampstead and Highgate; which, at that period, in unobstructed view, had faced his dwelling in Queen-Square.
St. Martin’s-street, though not narrow, except at its entrance from Leicester-square, was dirty, ill built, and vulgarly peopled.
The house itself was well-constructed, sufficiently large for the family, and, which now began to demand nearly equal accommodation, for the books of the Doctor. The observatory of Sir Isaac Newton, which surmounted its roof, over-looked all London and its environs. It still remained in the same simple state in which it had been left by Sir Isaac; namely, encompassed completely by windows of small old-fashioned panes of glass, so crowded as to leave no exclusion of the glazier, save what was seized for a small chimney and fire-place, and a cupboard, probably for instruments. Another cupboard was borrowed from the little landing-place for coals.
The first act of Dr. Burney, after taking possession of this house, was to repair, at a considerable expense, the observatory of the astronomical chief of nations: and he had the enthusiasm, soon afterwards,
[Pg 291]
of nearly re-constructing it a second time, in consequence of the fearful hurricane of 1778, by which its glass sides were utterly demolished; and its leaden roof, in a whirl of fighting winds, was swept wholly away.
Dr. Burney, who was as elevated in spirit as he was limited in means, for being to all the arts, and all the artists, a patron, preferred any self-denial to suffering such a demolition. He would have thought himself a ruthless Goth, had he permitted the sanctum sanctorum of the developer of the skies in their embodied movements, to have been scattered to nonentity through his neglect or parsimony; and sought for, thenceforward, in vain, by posterity.

Amongst the earliest hailers of this removal, stood forth the worthy and original Mr. Hutton, who was charmed to visit his enthusiastically esteemed new friend in the house of the great Newton; in which he flattered himself with retaining a faint remembrance that he had been noticed, when a boy, by the niece of that most stupendous of human geniuses.
In shaking hands around with the family upon this occasion, Mr. Hutton related that he had just
[Pg 292]
come from the apartment of M. de Solgas, sub-preceptor to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales;[45] in which he had had the high honour of bein............