A name next comes forward that must not briefly be glided by; that of
William Bewley; a man for whom Mr. Burney felt the most enlightened
friendship that the sympathetic magnetism of similar tastes, humours,
and feelings, could inspire.
Mr. Bewley was truly a philosopher, according to the simplest, though
highest, acceptation of that word; for his love of wisdom was of that
unsophisticated species, that regards learning, science, and knowledge,
with whatever delight they may be pursued abstractedly, to be wholly
subservient, collectively, to the duties and practice of benevolence.
To this nobleness of soul, which made the basis of his character, he
superadded a fund of wit equally rare, equally extraordinary: it was a
wit that sparkled from the vivid tints of an imagination as pure as it
was bright; untarnished by malice, uninfluenced by spleen, uninstigated
by satire. It was playful, original, eccentric: but the depth with
which it could have cut, and slashed, and pierced around him, would
never have been even surmised, from the urbanity with which he forbore
making that missile use of its power, had he not frequently darted out
its keenest edge in ridicule against himself.
And not alone in this personal severity did he resemble the
self-unsparing Scarron; his outside, though not deformed, was
peculiarly unfortunate; and his eyes, though announcing, upon
examination, something of his mind, were ill-shaped, and ill set in his
head, and singularly small; and no other feature parried this local
disproportion; for his mouth, and his under-jaw, which commonly hung
open, were displeasing to behold.
The first sight, however, which of so many is the best, was of Mr.
Bewley, not only the worst, but the only bad; for no sooner, in the
most squeamish, was the revolted eye turned away, than the attracted
ear, even of the most fastidious, brought it back, to listen to genuine
instruction conveyed through unexpected pleasantry.
This original and high character, was that of an obscure surgeon of
Massingham, a small town in the neighbourhood of Haughton Hall. He had
been brought up with no advantages, but what laborious toil had worked
out of native abilities; and he only subsisted by the ordinary process
of rigidly following up the multifarious calls to which, in its
provincial practice, his widely diversified profession is amenable.
Yet not wholly in “the desert air,” were his talents doomed to be
wasted: they were no sooner spoken of at Haughton Hall, than the gates
of that superb mansion were spontaneously flung open, and its Chief
proved at once, and permanently remained, his noble patron and kind
friend.