Life^ Genius, and Personal Habits of BewicL 433 



mouse arms emblazoned with mouse supporters on the panel, 

 in all the boast of mouse heraldry : they are going to make a 

 call on Lord Frittertime and Madam Twaddle. — See how 

 that heartless and coarse-minded tanner grins a brutal laugh 

 at the poor dog to whose tail the naughty boys have tied a 

 tinned kettle : you may hear that it has just had a bouncing 

 bang, — Those five methodists, listening to the call of their 

 master, scarce occupy two inches ; yet look at their faces, male 

 and female — special grace and election ! ! ! — and were it not 

 for the horns and claws of the preacher, by his clerical attitude 

 you might take him for a very parson. — Cast your eye on the 

 gipsies and their bear ; are not thief and harlot marked in their 

 physiognomies ? That first fellow's coat is too big for him, a 

 world too wide ; he has stolen it. — Look with luxury on the 

 light and buoyant cutter, dancing on the dashing waves, in 

 pursuit of the heavy smuggler, straining and creaking in the 

 breeze, laboriously making off in the misty moonlight. — The 

 lame man has left his crutch behind, having mounted the back 

 of the blind, who has let go his dog : hasty attachments imagine 

 friendship eternal. — That poor spaniel bitch has been howl- 

 ing all night, and has just broken her string, and found her 

 drowned puppies : look at her sudden pause and sorrow ! — 

 Ay, friend Bewick, many a lobster handles a pencil, and 

 piddles on a set palette. — Do stop your ears at opening to 

 the two fiddlers, with their jangling, discordant scrapings. — 

 I truly pity their hearts who hear not the howling of that 

 scalded dog who has overturned the pot ; and the cackling of 

 that hen who has just been laying, — Oh ! what a feast of 

 diverting and instructive amusement for an idle summer's day, 

 or a long winter's night ! What a rich and exhaustless suc- 

 cession of grotesque figures, funny groups, comical scenes, 

 pithy inscriptions, delicious landscapes, village farmsteads, 

 rocky caverns, tufts of fern, river glens and cascades, quiet 

 pools and sedgy knolls, lovely trees and woody dells, towns 

 and towers, ivied ruins, sea-side views, with sermons in every 

 stone ; dreary snows, stormy waves, rolling ships, and scream- 

 ing sea-fowl ; quiet fountains, forest glades, and woodland soli- 

 tudes ; fairy haunts, 



" Right seldom seen, • 



Lovely, lonesome, cool, .nnd green." 



The commonest capacity might read a history in every 

 one of these rich and romantic tale-pieces, and a mind of 

 wit and fancy may open to each, and feel arise from it 

 the simultaneous power of delivering a bright or blooming 

 narrative of melancholy or mirth. Thus the copious, capa- 

 cious, and bountiful mind of Bewick, not merely content to 



