70 MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 



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 hy the abuse of free- 

 will; happiness equally distributed, and in every 

 one's reach. ' Oh !' said he, c 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 collec- 

 tion 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. 



