52 
MEMOIR OP 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 kindly, 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 Hawtliomden. 
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 baffle the most retentive 
memory to enumerate, and defy the most witty to 
