52 MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 



work -bench on evenings to the " Blue Bell on the 

 side," for the purpose of reading the news. To this 

 place we repaired, and readily found ourselves in 

 the presence of the great man. For my part, so 

 warm was my enthusiasm, that I could have rushed 

 into his arms, as into those of a parent or benefactor. 

 He was sitting by the fire in a large elbow-chair, 

 smoking. He received us most kindl3 T , and in a 

 very few minutes we felt as old friends. He 

 appeared a very large athletic man, then in his 

 seventy-first year, with thick, bushy, black hair, 

 retaining his sight so completely as to read aloud 

 rapidly the smallest type of a newspaper. He was 

 dressed in very plain brown clothes, but of good 

 quality, with large flaps to his waistcoat, grey 

 woollen stockings, and large buckles. In his under- 

 lip he had a prodigious large quid of tobacco, and he 

 leaned on a very thick oaken cudgel, which, I after- 

 wards learned, he cut in the woods of Hawthornden. 

 His broad, bright, and benevolent countenance at 

 one glance bespoke powerful intellect and unbounded 

 good-will, with a very visible sparkle of merry wit. 

 The discourse at first turned on politics (for the 

 paper was in his hand), on which he at once openly 

 avowed himself a warm "Whig, but clearly without 

 the slightest wish to provoke opposition. I at 

 length succeeded in turning the conversation into 

 the fields of natural history, but not till after he had 

 scattered forth a profusion of the most humorous 

 anecdotes, that would bafHe the most retentive 

 memory to enumerate, and defy the most witty to 



