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 becoming an object for satire, was much hurt, on its first appearance, by this burlesque production. it attacked, indeed, little beyond the technical phraseology of the tours; the tourist himself was evidently above the reach of such anonymous shafts.
it was generally supposed to be a jeu d’esprit of some enemy, to counteract his rapid progress in public favour; and to undermine the promising success of his great work.
but the doctor himself did not give way to this opinion: he had done nothing to incur enemies;
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he had done much to conciliate friends; and, believing in virtue because practising it, he knew not how to conceive personal malice without personal offence. he imagined it, therefore, the work of some stranger, excited solely by the desire of making money from his own risible ideas; without caring whom they might harass, or how they might irritate, provided, in the words of rodrigo, he “put money in his purse.”
the doctor, however, as has been said, from the unimpeachable goodness of his heart and character, had the fair feelings of mankind in his favour. the parody, therefore, though executed with burlesque humour, whether urged or not by malevolence, was never reprinted; and obtained but the laugh of a moment, without making the shadow of an impression to the disadvantage of the tourist.
