, of Woodbridge, with whom I dined once, who was
more fat than bard beseems, and who seemed to me to enjoy a good dinner,
a glass of port--people could drink port in those days--and a pinch of
snuff, quite as much as any literary talk. Poor Bernard never set the
Thames on fire--he would have been shocked at the thought of doing
anything so wicked; but he was a good man, and quite competent to shine
in "Fulcher's Pocket Book," a work published yearly by Fulcher, of Bury
St. Edmund's, and much better than any of its contemporaries.

In connection with this subject let me quote from Bernard Barton a sketch
of a Suffolk yeoman, very rare in these times: "He was a hearty old
yeoman of about eighty-six, and occupied the farm in which he lived and
died, about fifty-five years. Sociable, hospitable, friendly; a liberal
master to his labourers, a kind neighbour, and a right merry companion
within the limits of becoming mirth; in politics a staunch Whig; in his
theological creed as sturdy a Dissenter; yet with no more party spirit in
him than a child. He and I belonged to the same book club for about
forty years. He entered it about fifteen years before I came into these
parts, and was really a pillar in our literary temple, not that he
greatly cared about books or was deeply read in them, but he loved to
meet his neighbours and get them round him on any occasion or no occasion
at all. As a fine specimen of the true English yeoman I have met few to
equal, hardly any to surpass him, and he looked the character as well as
he acted it, till within a very few years, when the strong man was bowed
with infirmity. About twenty-six years ago, in his dress costume of a
blue coat and yellow buckskins, a finer sample of John Bullism you would
rarely see. It was the whole study of his long life to make the few who
revolved about him in his little orbit as happy as he always seemed to be
himself; yet I was gravely queried with, when I happened to say that his
children had asked me to write a few lines to his memory, whether I could
do so in keeping with the general tenor of my poetry. The speaker
doubted if he was a decidedly pious character. He had at times been
known in his altitudes to vociferate at the top of his voice a song, the
chorus of which was not certainly teetotalish:--

Sing, old Rose, and burn the bellows,
Drink and drive dull care away."

Can anything be finer than this picture of a Suffolk yeoman? Is it not