MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 283 



strained freedom, to whistle and sing. How often 

 have I been amused at the first essays of the 

 ploughboy, and how charmed to find him so soon 

 attempt to equal his whistling and singing master, 

 at the plough stilts, and who, with avidity unceas- 

 ing, never stopped till he thought he excelled him. 

 The future painter is shown by his strong propen- 

 sity to sketch whatever objects in nature attract his 

 attention, and excite him to imitate them. The 

 poet, indeed, has more difficulties to contend with 

 at first than the others, because he must know 

 language, or be furnished with words wherewith 

 to enable him to express himself even in his first 

 essays in doggrel metre and sing-song rhymes. In 

 all the varied ways by which men of talent are 

 befitted to enlighten, to charm, and to embellish 

 society, as they advance through life, if they 

 entertain the true feeling that every production 

 they behold is created, not by chance, but by 

 design, they will find an increasing and endless 

 pleasure in the exhaustless stores which nature has 

 provided to attract the attention and promote the 

 happiness of her votaries during the time of their 

 sojourning here. 



The painter need not roam very far from his 

 home, in any part of our beautiful isles, to meet 

 with plenty of charming scenes from which to copy 

 nature either on an extended or a limited scale 

 and in which he may give full scope to his genius 

 and to his pencil, either in animate or inanimate 

 subjects. His search will be crowned with success 

 in the romantic ravine the placid holme the hol- 

 low dell or amongst the pendant foliage of the 

 richly ornamented dean ; or by the sides of burns 

 which roar or dash along, or run murmuring from 



