1015 



BURNEY, CHARLES. 



BURNS, ROBERT. 



10W 



Andover, was the means of much, extending his intercourse with the 

 literati and persons of rank. 



Mr. Burney was soon afterwards united to Miss Esther Sleepe, a 

 young lady to whom he was ardently attached, and whose mental and 

 personal qualities have been frequently eulogised. He now settled iu 

 London, and may be said to have seriously entered for the first time 

 on his professional career. Scarcely however had a year elapsed, when 

 he was attacked by a dangerous fever, from which he recovered through 

 the assistance of Dr. Armstrong, now only known as a poet. But the 

 disease was followed by symptoms which were thought to indicate 

 consumption, and he was earnestly advised by his physician to quit 

 London : he therefore accepted the situatiou of organist at'Lynn, with 

 a salary of lOOi, and resided in that town nine years. There he 

 designed his great work, the ' General History of Music ; ' and there 

 too he commenced that correspondence with Dr. Johnson, which 

 subsequently ripened into intimacy and friendship. 



In 1760, his health being completely restored, Mr. Burney returned 

 to the metropolis, and soon had his time fully occupied by his pro- 

 fessional pursuits. Six years afterwards he produced at I)rury-lane 

 theatre the ' Cunning Man,' founded on, and adapted to, the music of 

 Rousseau's 'Devin du Tillage.' In 1769 the university of Oxford 

 conferred on him the degree of Doctor in Music, on which occasion he 

 produced, as an exercise, au anthem, which was afterwards performed 

 in Germany under the direction of the celebrated Emanuel Bach. 

 Ilis primary object however was his ' History ; ' and in order to collect 

 materials for it he made a personal examination of the great libraries 

 of Europe, and visited many of the more distinguished professors on 

 the Continent. Of this tour he gave an account in his ' Present State 

 of Music in France and Italy,' a work, the arrangement of which was 

 avowedly imitated by Dr. Johnson, in his ' Tour to the Hebrides.' 



In 1 772 Dr. Burney proceeded again to the continent. In order to 

 compk'Uyhis inquiries, he found it expedient to visit the Netherlands 

 and G -rinany. At Vienna he formed au intimacy with Metastasio, 

 and became acquainted with Hasse and Gliick. From the capital of 

 the Austrian dominions he went by Prague, Dresden, and Berlin, to 

 Hamburg. In the latter city he passed a great deal of time with 

 C. P. E. Bach, from whom he gained much interesting information 

 concerning the numerous and celebrated family of harmonists, and 

 relative to other objects of his inquiry. In 1773 Dr. Burney was 

 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. 



The first volume of the 'History of Music' appeared in 1776; the 

 second in 1782 ; and the third and fourth in 1789. The Commemo- 

 ration of Handel in 1784, an event of too much importance to remain 

 imperfectly recorded, likewise employed Dr. Burney's pen. In 1789 

 he was appointed by his friend Edmund Burke organist of Chelsea 

 College, an office which he accepted rather for the sake of airy and 

 desirable apartments, which he was in consequence enabled to obtain, 

 than with a view to the trifling emolument arising out of it. In 1796 

 he produced a ' Life of Metastasio,' in 3 vols. 8vo, a work written in 

 au admirable style, displaying great candour and taste, and highly 

 interesting to the lovers of the lyric drama and music ; though many 

 of the poet's letters to his friend Farinelli, the once far-famed soprano, 

 might have been spared. His last literary effort was his contribution 

 to the ' Cyclopaedia ' of Reea, for which he supplied all the musical 

 articles, except those of a mathematical character. 



During the whole of his life, Dr. Burney's high Tory principles were 

 openly avowed, though the party never exerted their influence hi his 

 favour; but when the Whigs came into power, in 1806, Mr. VVyndham, 

 backed by Mr. Fox, obtained for him a pension of 3001. This solid 

 proof of his country's esteem was followed, four years after, by a 

 testimony to his merits of the most honourable kind his election as 

 a member of the National Institute of France. From that period 

 Dr. Burney relinquished every pursuit which called for much intel- 

 lectual effort ; he passed the whole of his time in the society of his 

 family and friends, by all of whom he was beloved and admired. But 

 by almost imperceptible degrees his bodily strength diminished, though 

 his mental vigour continued unimpaired, as the writer of this article 

 had many opportunities of witnessing. The severe winter of 1814 

 produced a visible effect on his enfeebled frame, and on the 15th of 

 April he tranquilly expired, at his apartments iu Chelsea College. 



Several compositions by Dr. Buruey were published at different 

 periods ; but posterity will only view him in his literary and critical 

 character, in which, it is by all agreed, he attained a very high rank. 

 " In all the relations of private life," says one who knew him well, 

 " as a husband, a father, a friend, his character was exemplary." 



Dr. Burney left two sons and four daughters by his first wife ; and 

 by a second wife Mrs. Stephen Allen of Lynn, a widow one 

 daughter. JAMES BURNEY, his eldest son, entered early in life into 

 the naval service, and accompanied Captain Cook in his second and 

 third voyages round the world. After an active and honourable career 

 he attained the rank of rear-admiral, and died in 1821, in his seventy- 

 first year. He is perhaps best known as the author of an able and 

 laborious ' History of Voyages of Discovery in the Southern Ocean,' in 

 5 vola. 4to. Dr. Burney's second son, the REV. CHARLES BUHNEY, D.D., 

 rector of St Paul's, Deptford, who survived his father only three 

 years, was known as one of the most learned and accomplished 

 scholars and able critics, more especially in Grecian literature, of his 

 day. His library was, at his death, purchased by the nation at the 



expense of 14,000^., and placed in the British Museum. His second 

 daughter, Frances, so well known by her novel ' Evelina,' and by her 

 ' Diary,' is noticed elsewhere. [D'ARBLAY, MADAME.] A still younger 

 daughter followed the track of Madame D'Arblay as a novelist, with 

 considerable though not equal success. 



BURNEY, FRANCES. [D'AKBLAY, MADAME.] 



BURNS, ROBERT, was born on the 25th of January 1759, in a 

 small cottage about two miles S.W. from the town of Ayr. His 

 father, William Burness, was the son of a farmer in Kineardineshire, 

 but, in consequence of the reduced circumstances of his family, he had 

 left that part of Scotland in his youth to seek employment in the 

 south as a gardener. After serving different masters for a number of 

 years, he had on his marriage, in December 1757, taken a perpetual 

 lease, or feu, as it is there called, of seven acres of land, with the view 

 of setting up for himself as a nurseryman. Here he built with his 

 own hands the humble dwelling in which Robert, his eldest son, was 

 born. 



The history of the poet's early life has been very fully related both 

 by himself and by his brother Gilbert. Tho narrative of the latter, 

 in particular, is one of the most beautiful and touching ever written. 

 The life of William Burness was one continued struggle, which he 

 carried on with the honourable pride common among his countrymen 

 to better his circumstances, aud to give his children a good education. 

 Robert was first sent to a school about a mile distant, iu his sixth 

 year. Afterwards a young man was engaged by William Burness and 

 four of his neighbours to teach their children in common, his em- 

 ployers boarding him in turns. When they had removed to another 

 situation, which precluded them from this advantage, the good man, 

 after the hard work of the day, endeavoured to instruct his children 

 himself. "In this way," says Gilbert, " my two eldest sisters got all 

 the education they received." Robert obtained a little more school 

 instruction by snatches, but the amount altogether was very incon- 

 siderable. His chief acquisition was some acquaintance with French, 

 and for this he was almost entirely indebted to himself. What other 

 knowledge he obtained he gathered from the few books, mostly odd 

 volumes, which his father could contrive to borrow. At last, in the 

 beginning of the year 1784, William Burness died, worn out with toil 

 and sorrow, after living just long enough to learn that a law-suit in 

 which he was engaged with his landlord had been terminated by a 

 decision which involved his family in ruin. He left five children 

 younger than Robert and Gilbert. 



In these circumstances the youth and early manhood of the future 

 poet were dark enough. " The cheerless gloom of a hermit," he says 

 himself, " with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave, brought me to 

 my sixteenth year." His brother Gilbert writes, " To the buffetiugs 

 of misfortune we could only oppose hard labour and the most rigid 

 economy. We lived very sparing. For several years butchers' meat 

 was a stranger in the house, while all the members of the family 

 exerted themselves to the utmost of their strength, and rather beyond 

 it, iu the labours of the farm. My brother, at the age of thirteen, 

 assisted in threshing the crop of corn, and at fifteen was the principal 

 labourer on the farm, for we had no hired servant, male or female. 

 The anguish of mind we felt, at our tender years, under these straits 



and difficulties was very great I doubt not but the hard 



labour and sorrow of this period of his life was iu a great measure the 

 cause of that depression of spirits with which Robert was so often 

 afflicted through his whole life afterwards." Some time before their 

 father's death, and when his affairs were drawing to a crisis, the two 

 brothers had taken another farm, which they stocked in the best way 

 they could with the savings of the whole family. " It was," says 

 Gilbert, "a joint concern among us. Every member of the family 

 was allowed ordinary wages for the labour he performed on the farm. 

 My brother's allowance and mine was 11. per annum each; and during 

 the whole time this family concern lasted, which was four years, as 

 well as during the preceding period at Lochlea, his expenses never in 



any year exceeded his slender income His temperance and 



frugality were everything that could be wished." 



A little before his sixteenth year, as he tells us himself, he had 

 " first committed the sin of rhyme." His versos soon acquired him 

 considerable village fame, to which, as he made acquaintances in Ayr 

 and otber neighbouring towns with young men of his own age, he 

 greatly added by the remarkable fluency of his expression and the 

 vigour of his conversational powers. The charm of those social 

 meetings, at which he shone with so much distinction, gradually intro- 

 duced him to new habits. Yet his brother affirms that he does '' not 

 recollect till towards the end of his commencing author (when his 

 growing celebrity occasioned his being often in company) to have ever 

 seen him intoxicated." His attachment to female society also, which 

 had from his youth been very strong, was now no longer confined 

 within those " bounds of rigid virtue," says his brother, " which had 

 hitherto restrained him. Towards the end of the period under review 

 (in his twenty-fourth year), and soon after his father's death, he was 

 furnished with the subject of his ' Epistle to John Rankin.' " 



Another affair of this description soon after determined the whole 

 subsequent course of his life. This was his connection with Jean 

 Armour, afterwards Mrs. Burns, the fruit of which was the birth of 

 twins. In the difficulties aud distress to which both parties wero 

 reduced by the consequences of their imprudence, it was agreed between 



