MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 65 



along the east; and even the admonishing sun- 

 beams to keek through the shutters, laughing out 

 the candles. Be up as early as I could, I always, 

 were the morning fine, found him walking briskly 

 in his garden for exercise. His ornithic ear was 

 quick and discriminative; he one morning told 

 me he had then first caught the robin's autumnal 

 melody, and said we should have a premature fall 

 of the leaf; we had BO, after the excessively hot 

 summer of 1825. I had heard this robin as I lay 

 in bed, feeble and infrequent ; and as we walked 

 in the garden, a passerine warbler, Sylvia hortensis 

 (whom, from his profusion of hurried and gurgled 

 notes in May, I call the Ruckler), just gave a touch 

 of his late song, which the fine ear of Bewick 

 instantly caught, though in loud and laughing con- 

 versation. At meals he ate very heartily, and, after 

 a plentiful supply, often said he could have eaten 

 more. In early, and indeed late in, life he had 

 been a hardish drinker ; but was at this time ad- 

 vised by his medical friends to be more abstemious, 

 which he abode by as resolutely as he could, though 

 not without now and then what he called a marlock. 

 It has been said that Linnaeus did more in a given 

 time than ever did any one man. If the surprising 

 number of blocks of every description, for his own 

 and others' works, cut by Bewick, be considered, 

 though perhaps he may not rival our beloved natu- 

 ralist, he may be counted among the indefatigably 

 industrious. And amid all this he found ample 

 time for reading and conviviality. I have seen him 



