MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 49 



much to my satisfaction, I promised to spend tlm 

 next evening with him, as it was to be my last at 

 Newcastle for some time. 



" On the 19th of the same month I paid him my 

 last visit, at his house. When we parted, he repeat- 

 ed three times, 'God preserve you, God bless you!' 

 He must have been sensible of the emotion which I 

 felt, and which he must have read in my looks, al- 

 though I refrained from speaking on the occasion. 



" A few weeks previous to the death of this fer- 

 vent admirer of nature, he and his daughters paid 

 me a visit to London. He looked as well s as when 

 I had seen him at Newcastle. Our interview was 

 short but agreeable, and when he bade adieu, I was 

 certainly far from thinking that it might be the last. 

 But so it was, for only a very short time had elapsed 

 when I saw his death announced in the newspapers. 



" My opinion of this remarkable man is, that he 

 was purely a son of nature, to whom alone he owed 

 nearly all that characterized him as an artist and a 

 man. Warm in his affections, of deep feeling, and 

 possessed of a vigorous imagination, with correct and 

 penetrating observation, he needed little extraneous 

 aid to make him what he became, the first engraver 

 on wood that England has produced. Look at his 

 tail-pieces, Reader, and say if you ever saw so much 



