ecdote_, upon which and
about forty pounds a year he seems to have retired in green old age. It
was how he was a _rider_ in his youth, travelling for shops, and once
(not to baulk his employer's bargain) on a sweltering day in August,
rode foaming into Dunstable upon a _mad horse_ to the dismay and
expostulary wonderment of innkeepers, ostlers &c. who declared they
would not have bestrid the beast to win the Darby. Understand the
creature gall'd to death and desperation by gad flies, cormorants
winged, worse than beset Inachus' daughter. This he tells, this he
brindles and burnishes on a' winter's eves, 'tis his star of set glory,
his rejuvenescence to descant upon. Far from me be it (dii avertant) to
look a gift story in the mouth, or cruelly to surmise (as those who
doubt the plunge of Curtius) that the inseparate conjuncture of man and
beast, the centaur-phenomenon that staggerd all Dunstable, might have
been the effect of unromantic necessity, that the horse-part carried the
reasoning, willy nilly, that needs must when such a devil drove, that
certain spiral configurations in the frame of Thomas Westwood unfriendly
to alighting, made the alliance more forcible than voluntary. Let him
enjoy his fame for me, nor let me hint a whisper that shall dismount
Bellerophon. Put case he was an involuntary martyr, yet if in the fiery
conflict he buckled the soul of a constant haberdasher to him, and
adopted his flames, let Accident and He share the glory! You would all
like Thomas Westwood.

[Illustration: Hand drawn sketch]

How weak is painting to describe a man! Say that he stands four feet and
a nail high by his own yard measure, which like the Sceptre of Agamemnon
shall never sprout again, still you have no adequate idea, nor when I
tell you that his dear hump, which I have favord in the picture, seems
to me of the buffalo--indicative and repository of mild qualities, a
budget of kindnesses, still you have not the man. Knew you old Norris of
the Temple, 60 years ours and our father's friend, he was not more
natural to us than this old W. the acquaintance of scarce more weeks.
Under his roof now ought I to take my rest, but that back-looking
ambition tells me I might yet be a Londoner. Well, if we ever do move,
we have encumbrances the less to impede us: all our furniture has faded
under the auctioneer's hammer, going for nothing like the tarnishd
frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two left to bless
us.