Fanny Burney and Her Friends: Select Passages from Her Diary and Other Writings. Burney Fanny

was engaged at the Pantheon to sing two songs nightly, for which she received £100.

      19. A performer of great Continental reputation, whose merits were much controverted in England. ‘Is, or has the Gabrielli been, a great singer?’ asks Walpole of his Florence correspondent. ‘She has, at least, not honoured us but with a most slender low voice.’

      20. Duets between Esther Burney, now married, and her husband, who was also her cousin and a Burney. Esther was the beauty of the family, and became a wife early.

      21. Fanny should rather have written, Count Orloff.

      22. Anthony Chamier was member of Parliament for Tamworth, and Under-Secretary of State from 1775 till his death in 1780. He was an original member of the celebrated Literary Club.

      23. A name by which Mr. Brudenel, afterwards Earl of Cardigan, was known.

      24. Afterwards Lord Malmesbury.

      25. We need scarcely remind our readers that, in 1763, Sandwich had denounced Wilkes in the House of Lords for having composed and printed the ‘Essay on Woman,’ an indecent parody on Pope’s ‘Essay on Man.’ Society resented the attack, placing the accuser and accused on a par in point of morals. ‘The public indignation went so far, that the Beggar’s Opera being performed at Covent Garden Theatre soon after this event, the whole audience, when Macheath says, “That Jemmy Twitcher should peach, I own surprises me,” burst out into an applause of application, and the nickname of “Jemmy Twitcher” stuck by the Earl so as almost to occasion the disuse of his title.’—Walpole’s ‘Memoirs of George III.,’ vol. i., p. 313.

      26. The observatory in its later form is stated to have been put up in the early years of the present century, by a Frenchman, then tenant of the house, who placed in it some mathematical instruments, which he exhibited as the identical instruments with which the great Newton made his discoveries; and we are told that this ingenious person realized a considerable sum before his imposture was exposed. See ‘The Streets of London,’ by J. T. Smith, edited by Charles Mackay, 1849, p. 76.

      27. There is some account both of the inside and outside of Newton’s house in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1814. At that date, we learn among other things, the original chimney-piece in the observatory remained, though the room itself had undergone a change. The house appears to have been built about 1692.

      28. William Seward, afterwards author of ‘Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons,’ and ‘Biographiana,’ a sequel to the same.

      29. John Christian Bach, sometimes called Bach of Berlin, who for many years was established in England.

      30. Hester Lynch Salusbury (Mrs. Thrale) claimed to be lineally descended from Adam of Saltsburg, who came over to England with the Conqueror.