"AN EXTRAORDINARY MAN" 199 



talk and whispers among the King's equerries at 

 Windsor Castle. That a man should be "wretched" 

 and " in danger of ruin," who had established himself 

 at Bath and was making a large income there, 1 points 

 to something more serious than she could realise or 

 wished to repeat. Probably the equerries knew about 

 it, and, without revealing secrets, gave her an indis- 

 tinct idea that something was or had been seriously 

 wrong. 



At the very end of 1786, Miss Burney is still in 

 raptures: "This morning my dear father carried me 

 to Dr. Herschel. That great and very extraordinary 

 man received us almost with open arms. He is very 

 fond of my father, who is one of the council of the 

 Royal Society this year, as well as himself." The 

 fondness and the friendship must have been common- 

 place, when, twelve years later, Dr. Burney did not 

 know that Dr. Herschel had been married for ten 

 years, and was the father of a son six years of age. 

 But the young lady's admiration knows no abatement. 

 Nine months after, it rises to, " Dr. Herschel is a 

 delightful man ; so unassuming with his great know- 

 ledge, so willing to dispense it to the ignorant, and 

 so cheerful and easy in his general manners that, were 

 he no genius, it would be impossible not to remark 

 him as a pleasing and sensible man." Miss Burney 's 

 picture is not over-coloured, according to the evidence 

 of other eye-witnesses. She was then thirty-four years 

 of age, and seven years after married a French emi- 

 grant, without fortune and without prospects. En- 

 thusiasm such as she showed for William Herschel, 



1 Memoirs, p. 321, "Was called from his lucrative employment at 

 Bath." 



