MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 49 
much to my satisfaction, I promised to spend the 
next evening with him, as it was to be my last at 
Newcastle for some time. 
“ On the 19th of the same month I paid him my 
last visit, at his house. When we parted, he repeat- 
ed three times, ‘God preserve you, God bless you!’ 
He must have been sensible of the emotion which I 
felt, and which he must have read in my looks, al- 
though I refrained from speaking on the occasion. 
“ A few weeks previous to the death of this fer- 
vent admirer of nature, he and his daughters paid 
me a visit to London. He looked as well as when 
I had seen him at Newcastle. Our interview was 
short but agreeable, and when he bade adieu, I was 
certainly far from thinking that it might be the last. 
But so it was, for only a very short time had elapsed 
when I saw his death announced in the newspapers. 
“ My opinion of this remarkable man is, that he 
was purely a son of nature, to whom alone he owed 
nearly all that characterized him as an artist and a 
man. Warm in his affections, of deep feeling, and 
possessed of a vigorous imagination, with correct and 
penetrating observation, he needed little extraneous 
aid to make him what he became, the first engraver 
on wood that England has produced. Look at his 
tail-pieces, Reader, and say if you ever saw so much 
D 
