Just off Leicester Square, in inconspicuous St.

Martin Street, a hoarding may to-day be seen enclosing a desolate plot of land heaped up with rubbish. There, until a short while ago, stood an ancient house, with lofty recessed windows and broad oaken staircase, carved chimney-pieces and painted ceilings, panelled walls and old-fashioned powdering-closet. Thither in the eighteenth century came time and again Sir Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick, Edmund Burke, and many another Immortal; there night after night the greatest singers and violinists of the age filled the modest music-room with melody; and there Samuel Johnson delighted to read and talk and drink tea, and to show a side of his character unsuspected by Boswell—for in St. Martin Street at least there was nothing left of the Bear but his skin, and to those who dwelt there the Sage was mild as summer, full of social good humour, gay as a boy, sweet-tempered, anxious to please. That old house was the home of the Burneys, the happy talented family of which the great Lexicographer was wont to say, ‘I love all that breed, and love them because they love each other’ ; while the head and father of the household was Dr. Charles Burney, and of him Johnson wrote admiringly, ‘I much question if there is in the whole world such another man as Dr. Burney.’

When in 1776 Charles Burney, Doctor of Music and Fellow of the Royal Society, received from his bookseller the first volume of his gigantic General History of Music, he was in the enjoyment of an almost European reputation.