amongst other new friends that this new neighbourhood procured, or confirmed, to dr. burney, there was one of so congenial, so samaritan, a sort, that neighbour he must have been to the doctor from the time of their first acquaintance, had his residence been in dorset-square, or at botolph’s wharf; instead of leicester-square, and scarcely twenty yards from the doctor’s own short street.

sir joshua reynolds, this good samaritan, was, like dr. burney, though well-read and deeply studious, as easy and natural in discourse as if he had been merely a man of the world; and though his own

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art was his passion, he was open to the warmest admiration of every other: and again, like the doctor, he was gay though contemplative, and flew from indolence, though he courted enjoyment. there was a striking resemblance in the general amenity of their intercourse, that not only made them, at all times, and with all persons, free from any approach to envy, peevishness, or sarcasm themselves, but seemed to spread around them a suavity that dissolved those angry passions in others.

in his chronological doggrels, dr. burney records that he now began his intimacy with the great english raphael; of whom he adds,

“’twere vain throughout europe to look for his peer

who by converse and pencil alike can endear.”