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 by the abuse of free- 
will ; happiness equally distributed, and in every 
one’s reach. 1 Oh !’ said he, ‘ 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. 
