"In my haste to find his lodging, I passed it; but stumping behind, with his great cudgel, he seized me ardently by the arm before I was aware, exclaiming, 'I seed ye from tha window, and kenned yer back and gait, my kind friend.' I found him in very good lodgings facing the fountain-corner of the superb Crescent, nearly opposite the Old Hall; and, after the fervid raptures of again meeting, we settled down into our usual chit-chat. There were three windows in the front room, the ledges and shutters whereof he had pencilled all over with funny characters, as he saw them pass to and fro, visiting the well. These people were the source of great amusement: the probable histories of whom, and how they came by their ailings, he would humorously narrate, and sketch their figures and features in one instant of time. I have seen him draw a striking likeness on his thumb-nail, in one moment; wipe it off with his tongue, and instantly draw another. He told me that, at watering-places, if his name were known, he was pestered with people staring at him, and inflicting foolish questions; and he cautioned me always in public to to call him the 'old gentleman.' We dined occasionally at the public table; and one day, over the wine, a dispute arose between two gentlemen about a bird; but was soon terminated by one affirming he had compared it with the figure and description of Bewick, to which the other replied that Bewick was next to Nature. Here the old gentleman seized me by the thigh with his very hand-vice of a grasp ; and I contrived to keep up the shuttlecock of conversation playfully to his highest satisfaction, though they who praised him so ardently, little imagined whose ears imbibed all their honest incense. On evenings we often smoked in the open windows of his pleasant lodgings, and chatted in all the luxury of intellectual leisure. A cocky wren ran, like a mouse, along the ledge of the window. 'Now,' says he, 'when that little fellow sings, he sings heartily!' Upon which the merry little creature, as if conscious of our conviviality, and of who heard him, perched on a post, and trilled his shrilly treble with thrilling might and main. Of nights we had music, the young ladies sang, or we read marvellous or merry ballads, or again relapsed into our pleasantries; fully agreeing with the piquant and pithy Venusian poet, that fun is no foe to philosophy, to mix short sallies with our serious discourse, and nothing so sweet as to play the fool when fitting.

'Misce stultitiain consiliis brevem Dulce est desipere in loco.'

"Of Lord Byron's poetry he spoke with great disgust, saying, it teemed with less imagination, and more trash, in any quantity, than that of any other great poet; that power was the prominent feature of his mind, which he prostituted; and the great failing of his heart was depravity, which he adorned.

He thought the romances of Sir W. Scott breathed very large and frequent aspirations of the genuine essence of poetry; that his landscapes and figures were spirited and highly coloured painting, and his real characters the finest specimens of historical portraits. Paradise, he said, was of every man's own making; all evil caused by the abuse of freewill; happiness equally distributed, and in every one's reach. 'Oh!' said he, 'this is a bonny world as God made it; but man makes a packhorse of Providence.' He held that innumerable things might be converted to our use that we ignorantly neglect; and quoted, with great ardour, the whole of Friar Laurence's speech in Romeo and Juliet, to that effect. In corroboration of this, one day, at the mouth of Poole's Hole, which, on account of the chilly damp and dripping of the cavern, he declined to enter with me and the young ladies; while we were exploring the strange and fantastic formations of calcareous tufa therein, the Flitch of Bacon, the Saddle, and Mary Stuart's Pillar, (which, it is said, she went quite round when a prisoner at Chatsworth), I found, on our emerging, he had collected his handkerchief full of nettle-tops, which, when boiled, he ate in his soup, methought with very keen relish. It was on our walk back, for some joke I cracked, they promised me a collection of all his engravings on India paper, which, at the time, I thought a joke too; yet, valuable and expensive as was the promise, I, in due time, found it faithfully and affectionately performed.

"I had never parted from him without our reciprocally thinking it would be the last; but this time we both thought otherwise, for his health was very much ameliorated. Black Monday at length came; and though the sun shone broad on every thing around, they walked slowly, and methought strangely silent, with me (I leading Rosalind, heavy as a nightmare), about two miles on the road, where, after saluting the young ladies, and shaking the good old Bewick's hand, though I hope to enjoy their friendship yet many years, it was on that mountain side that with him I parted for ever; and looking back, till the road turned the corner of a rock, dimly saw them kindly gazing after me: and this was the last time I ever beheld the portly person of my benevolent and beloved friend. We continued, however, to correspond frequently; not only on natural history, but (as the Irish scholar said) 'de omnibus rebus, et quibusdam aliis, on the manners of both feathered and unfeathered bipeds. The next summer, he visited London about his works; and thence he wrote me several very humorous letters on the utterly artificial life of the cockneys; with the mass of whom, since he was among them half a century before, he thought the march of intellect had not equalled the march of impudence. He was, however, very honourably received by many learned societies and individuals, of whom, and of whose collections, he wrote in raptures. On his return, the London and provincial papers had many paragraphs respecting this visit, his reception, and his life; to amend the errors of which statements, I must have been writing one at the very hour of his death; for I had not time to stop its insertion in one of the Shrewsbury papers, when I received a short, but most affectionate and affecting letter from his son, informing me, 'as his fathers most valued friend,' that he expired, in full possession of his fine and powerful mental faculties, in quiet and cheerful resignation, on the 8th of November, 1828. On the morning of his death, he had the satisfaction of seeing the first proof-impression of a series of large wood-engravings he had undertaken, in a superior style, for the walls of farm-houses, inns, and cottages, with a view to abate cruelty, mitigate pain, and imbue the mind and heart with tenderness and humanity; and this he called his last legacy to suffering and insulted Nature."