100 l^ifit Genius, and Personal Habits of Bemck. 



and quoted, with great ardour, the whole of Friar Laurence's 

 speech in Romeo and Jidiet, 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 Stuarfs 

 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 

 collection 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. 



One night he expressed a busy desire to see that tremendous 

 and far-famed cavern, about ten miles from Buxton, called The 

 Devil's Arse i' tN Peak; for his healthy mind was disgusted 

 with the ridiculous, squeamy, and mawkish affectation of call- 

 ing it " Peak's Hole," without, in the least, diluting the slight 

 indelicacy of the ancient name, for which the witty combin- 

 ation amply compounds. In the morning, I readily engaged a 

 vehicle and driver, wherein we comfortably sat, two and two, 

 face to face ; and were soon a-gig, by the pretty village of 

 Fairfield, jaunting merrily o'er the l3are and smooth, but 

 sunny mountains of Derbyshire. This excursion alone would 

 afford my pen more anecdotes than all I have recorded, had I 

 room to relate ; but I (somewhat reluctantly) confine myself 

 to such as illustrate the versatile mind of my imaginative and 

 n:erry companion, which I deem far more finely and firmly 

 delineated by these trifles, than by church-tables of benefac- 

 tions in golden capitals, or glaring lapidary epitaphs of his 

 virtues in cold dull marble. For his mind, like the sun in his 

 annual and diurnal rounds, was continually, and, as it were, 

 cunningly catching unthought of objects, and piercing nooks 

 and corners unnoticed ; steeping for a moment, with its mel- 

 low rays, interior walls and chilly pillars ; edges of forest 

 glens, and trees in deep groves ; marbling a chamber panel 

 through a waving willow ; or glowing on some ancient post in 

 the gloomy recess of an old hall : thus not only calling the eye 

 to what it would otherwise miss, but shedding on the most 

 common" objects, for the time, a soothing and a celestial 

 gleam. As we rumbled along by the curious "Dove-holes" of 

 that river on one side, and the " Shivering Rock^' of Mam 

 Tor on the other, I observed him silent for a short time, with 



