volume I.: A traveller drinking,--supposed to represent a sketch of his

own costume when making a tour of the Lakes in 1776,--introduced twice, at the end of the contents, page xxx. and again at page 177. A man _watering_, in a different sense to the preceding, a very natural, though not a very delicate subject, at page 42. At page 62, an old miller, lying asleep behind some bushes; he has evidently been tipsy and from the date on a stone to the left, we are led to suppose that he had been indulging too freely on the King’s birth-day, 4th June. The following is a copy of the cut. Two cows standing in a pool, under the shade of a _dyke-back_, on a warm day, page 74. In this cut Bewick has introduced a sketch of a magpie chased by a hawk, but saved from the talons of its pursuer by the timely interference of a couple of crows. Winter scene, of which the following is a copy, at page 78. Some boys have made a large snow man, which excites the special wonderment of a horse; and Bewick, to give the subject a moral application, has added “_Esto perpetua!_” at the bottom of the cut: the great work of the little men, however they may admire it, and wish for its endurance, will be dissolved on the first thaw. At page 97 the appearance of mist and rain is well expressed; and in the cut of a poacher tracking a hare, the snow is no less naturally represented. At page 157, a man riding with a _howdy_--a midwife--behind him, part of the cut appears covered with a leaf. Bewick once being asked the meaning of this, said that “it was done to indicate that the scene which was to follow required to be concealed.” At page 194 we perceive a full-fed old churl hanging his cat; at page 226, a hen attacking a dog; and at page 281, two cocks fighting,--all three excellent of their kind.

Bewick’s humour occasionally verges on positive grossness, and a _glaring_ instance of his want of delicacy presents itself in the tail-piece at page 285. After the work was printed off Bewick became aware that the nakedness of a prominent part of his subject required to be covered, and one of his apprentices was employed to blacken it over with ink. In the next edition a plug was inserted in the block, and the representation of two bars of wood engraved upon it to hide the offensive part. The cut, however, even thus amended, is still extremely indelicate.[VII-58]

[Footnote VII-58: The subject of this cut is thus explained in Brockett’s Glossary of North Country Words: “NEDDY, NETTY, a certain place that will not bear a written explanation; but which is _depicted to the very life_ in a tail-piece in the first edition of Bewick’s Land Birds, p. 285. In the second edition a bar is placed against the offending part of this broad display of native humour.”]

The following is a copy of the head-piece at the commencement of the advertisement to the second volume. It represents an old man saying grace with closed eyes, while his cat avails herself of the opportunity of making free with his porridge. The Reverend Henry Cotes, vicar of Bedlington, happening to call on Bewick when he was finishing this cut, expressed his disapprobation of the subject, as having a tendency to ridicule the practice of an act of devotion; but Bewick denied that he had any such intention, and would not consent to omit the cut. He drew a distinction between the act and the performer; and though he might approve of saying grace before meat, he could not help laughing at one of the over-righteous, who, while craving a blessing with hypocritical grimace, and with eyes closed to outward things, loses a present good. The head-piece to the contents presents an excellent sketch of an old man going to market on a windy and rainy day. The old horse on which he is mounted has become restive, and the rider has both broken his stick and lost his hat. The horse seems determined not to move till it suits his own pleasure; and it is evident that the old man dare not get down to recover his hat, for, should he do so, encumbered as he is with a heavy basket over his left arm and an egg-pannier slung over his shoulder, he will not be able to remount.

The following are the principal tail-pieces drawn and engraved by Bewick himself in the first edition of the second volume of the Birds, 1804. A shooter with a gun at his back crossing a stream on long stilts, page 5. An old wooden-legged beggar gnawing a bone near the entrance to a gentleman’s house, and a dog beside him eagerly watching for the reversion, page 27. A dog with a kettle tied to his tail, pursued by boys,--a great hulking fellow, evidently a blacksmith, standing with folded arms enjoying the sport, page 56. A man crossing a frozen stream, with a branch of a tree between his legs, to support him should the ice happen to break, page 85. A monkey basting a goose that is seen roasting, page 263. An old woman with a pitcher, driving away some geese from a well, page 291. An old beggar-woman assailed by a gander, page 313.

One of the best of the tail-pieces subsequently inserted is that which occurs at the end of the description of the Moor-buzzard, volume I. in the editions of 1816 and 1821, and at page 31 in the edition of 1832. It represents two dyers carrying a tub between them by means of a cowl-staff; and the figures, Mr. Atkinson says, are portraits of two old men belonging to Ovingham,--“the one on the right being ‘auld Tommy Dobson of the Bleach Green,’ and the other ‘Mat. Carr.’”[VII-59] The action of the men is excellent, and their expression is in perfect accordance with the business in which they are engaged--to wit, carrying their tub full of _chemmerly_--chamber-lye--to the dye-house. The olfactory organs of both are evidently affected by the pungent odour of their load. It may be necessary to observe that the dyers of Ovingham had at that time a general reservoir in the village, to which most of the cottagers were contributors; but as each family had the privilege of supplying themselves from it with as much as they required for scouring and washing, it sometimes happened that the dyers found their trough empty, and were consequently obliged to solicit a supply from such persons as kept a private stock of their own. As they were both irritable old men, the phrase, “He’s like a _raised_ [enraged] dyer begging _chemmerly_,” became proverbial in Ovingham to denote a person in a passion. This cut, as I am informed by one of Bewick’s old pupils, was copied on the block and engraved by Luke Clennell from a water-colour drawing by Robert Johnson.

[Footnote VII-59: “Mr. Atkinson must have misunderstood Bewick, as the old man’s name was George, not Matthew, Carr. He was grandfather to Edward Willis, one of Bewick’s pupils, and to George Stephenson, the celebrated engineer. Matthew Carr was a tailor, who lived and died at Righton, in Durham.”--JNO. JACKSON.]

When the second volume of the History of British Birds was published, in 1804, Bewick had reached his fiftieth year; but though his powers as a wood engraver continued for long afterwards unimpaired, yet he subsequently produced nothing to extend his fame. The retouching of the blocks for the repeated editions of the Quadrupeds and the Birds, and the engraving of new cuts for the latter work, occupied a considerable part of his time. He also engraved, by himself and pupils, several cuts for different works, but they are generally such as add nothing to his reputation. Bewick never engraved with pleasure from another person’s drawing; in large cuts, consisting chiefly of human figures, he did not excel. His excellence consisted in the representation of animals and in landscape. The Fables, which had been projected previous to 1795, also occasionally occupied his attention. This work, which first appeared in 1818, was by no means so favourably received as the Quadrupeds and the Birds; and several of Bewick’s greatest admirers, who had been led to expect something better, openly expressed their disappointment. Dr. Dibdin, speaking of the Fables, says, “It would be a species of _scandalum magnatum_ to depreciate any production connected with the name of Bewick; but I will fearlessly and honestly aver that his Æsop disappointed me; the more so, as his Birds and Beasts are volumes perfectly classical of their kind.” The disappointment, however, that was felt with respect to this work resulted perhaps rather from people expecting too much than from any deficiency in the cuts as _illustrations of Fables_. There is a great difference between representing birds and beasts in their natural character, and representing them as actors in imaginary scenes. We do not regard the cock and the fox holding an imaginary conversation, however ably represented, with the interest with which we look upon each when faithfully depicted in its proper character. The tail-piece of the bitch seeing her drowned puppies, at page 364 of the Quadrupeds, edition 1824, is far more interesting than any cut illustrative of a fable in Æsop;--we at once feel its truth, and admire it, because it is natural. Birds and beasts represented as performing human characters can never interest so much as when naturally depicted in their own. Such cuts may display great fancy and much skill on the part of the artist, but they never can excite true feeling. The martyr Cock Robin, killed by that malicious archer the Sparrow, is not so interesting as plain Robin Redbreast picking up crumbs at a cottage-door in the snow:--

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”

Whatever may be the merits or defects of the cuts in those Fables, Bewick most certainly had very little to do with them; for by far the greater number were designed by Robert Johnson, and engraved by W. W. Temple and William Harvey, while yet in their apprenticeship. In the whole volume there are not more than three of the largest cuts engraved by Bewick himself.[VII-60] The tail-pieces in this work will not bear a comparison with those in the Birds; the subjects are often both trite and tamely treated; the devil and the gallows--Bewick’s two stock-pieces--occur rather too frequently, considering that the book is chiefly intended for the improvement of young minds; and in many instances nature has been sacrificed in order that the moral might be obvious.

[Footnote VII-60: The cuts engraved by Bewick himself are: a tail-piece (a Cow standing under some bushes) to “The Two Frogs,” page 200. The fable of “The Deer and the Lion,” page 315. “Waiting for Death,” page 338. He also engraved the figure of the _Lion_ in the fable of “The Lion and the four Bulls,” page 89 (see cut at our page 480). The Man, Crow, and Sheep in the fable of the “Eagle and the Crow,” of which we give the original cut. The Man and two Birds in the fable of “The Husbandman and the Stork.”]

The letter-press was entirely selected and arranged by Bewick himself, and one or two of the fables were of his own writing. Though an excellent illustrator of Natural History, Bewick is but an indifferent fabulist.[VII-61] Though the work is professedly intended for the instruction of the young, there are certainly a few tail-pieces introduced for the _entertainment_ of the more advanced in years; and of this kind is the old beggar and his trull lying asleep, and a bull looking over a rail at them. The explanation of this subject would certainly have little tendency to improve young minds. Bewick, though very fond of introducing the devil in his cuts to frighten the wicked, does not appear to have been willing that a ranting preacher should in his discourses avail himself of the same character, though to effect the same purpose, as we learn from the following anecdote related by Mr. Atkinson. “Cant and hypocrisy he (Bewick) very much disliked. A ranter took up his abode near Cherry-burn, and used daily to horrify the country people with very familiar details of ultra-stygian proceedings. Bewick went to hear him, and after listening patiently for some time to a blasphemous recital of such horrors, at which the poor people were gaping with affright, he got behind the holder-forth, and pinching his elbow, addressed him when he turned round with great solemnity: ‘Now then thou seems to know a great deal about the devil, and has been frightening us a long while about him: can thou tell me whether he wears his own hair or a wig?’”--This is a bad joke;--the query might have been retorted with effect. The engraver, it seems, might introduce his Satanic majesty _ad libitum_ in his cuts; but when a ranting preacher takes the same liberty in his discourses, he is called upon to give proof of personal acquaintance.

[Footnote VII-61: The fable of the Ship Dog is one of those written by Bewick.]

Bewick’s morality was rather rigid than cheerful; and he was but too prone to think uncharitably of others, whose conduct and motives, when weighed in the scales of impartial justice, were perhaps as correct and as pure as his own. His good men are often represented as somewhat cold, selfish individuals, with little sympathy for the more unfortunate of their species, whose errors are as often the result of ignorance as of a positively vicious character. As a moralist, he was accustomed to look at the dark rather than the bright side of human nature, and hence his tendency to brand those with whom he might differ in opinion as fools and knaves. One of the fables, written by himself, was objected to by the printer, the late Mr. E. Walker, and at his request it was omitted. We give a copy of the cut intended for it. The world is represented as having lost its balance, and legions of his favourite devils are seen hurled about in a confused vortex. The fable, it is said, was intended as a satire on the ministerial politics of the time. A thumb-mark is seen at the upper end of what is intended to represent a piece of paper forming part of the page of a Bible pasted across the cut. A similar mark is to be found at page 175 of the Land Birds, first edition, 1797, and in the bill and receipt prefixed to the Fables, 1818-1823.

In a novel, entitled “Such is the World,” there is the following erroneous account of Bewick’s reason for affixing his thumb-mark to this bill.[VII-62] “Having completed his task to the entire satisfaction of his own mind, Mr. Bewick bethought him of engraving a frontispiece. But having some suspicion that the said frontispiece might be pirated by some of those corsairs who infest the ocean of literature, he resolved to put a mark on it, whereby all men might distinguish it as readily as a fisherman distinguishes a haddock[VII-63] from a cod-fish. Accordingly, he touched with his thumb the little black ball with which he was wont to ink his cuts, in order to take off proof impressions of his work: he then very deliberately pressed his thumb on the frontispiece which he was at that moment engraving, and cut the most beautiful image of the original, which he designated by the appropriate words ‘John Bewick, his mark.’” Had the writer looked at the “frontispiece,” as he calls it, he would have found “_Thomas_,” and not “_John_.” The conclusion of this account is a fair sample of its general accuracy. In a preliminary observation the author, with equal correctness, informs his readers that the work in which this “frontispiece” appeared was “a superb edition of _Gay’s_ Fables.”

[Footnote VII-62: Mr. Atkinson says that this account determined Bewick to write a life of himself. It appears that he actually completed such a work, but that his family at present decline to publish it. [Mr. Jackson adds, “I engraved two portraits for it: one was a portrait of the Rev. Wm. Turner, of Newcastle, the other that of an engineer or millwright, at Morpeth, named Rastack, or Raistick.”]]

[Footnote VII-63: “There is a tradition that the two black marks on the opposite sides of the haddock were occasioned by St. Peter’s thumb and fore-finger when he took the piece of money out of the fish’s mouth to give it as a tribute to Cæsar.”]

Bewick’s _mark_ is, in fact, added to this bill merely as a jest; the mode which he took to authenticate the copies that were actually issued by himself, and not pilfered by any of the workmen employed about the printing-office,[VII-64] was to print at his own work-shop, in red ink from a copper-plate, a representation of a piece of sea-weed lying above the wood-cut which had previously been printed off at a printing-office. This mode of printing a copper-plate over a wood-cut was a part of one of the plans which he had devised to prevent the forgery of bank-notes.[VII-65]

[Footnote VII-64: Bewick’s suspicions in this respect were not altogether groundless. Happening to go into a bookbinder’s shop in Newcastle in 1818, he found a copy of his Fables, which had been sent there to bind before the work had been issued to the public. He claimed the book as his property, and carried it away; but the name of the owner who had purchased it, knowing it to have been dishonestly obtained, was not publicly divulged.]

[Footnote VII-65: About 1799 Bewick frequently corresponded with Mr. Abraham Newland, cashier of the Bank of England, respecting a plan which he had devised to prevent the forgery of bank notes. He was offered a situation in the Bank to superintend the engraving and printing of the notes, but he refused to leave Newcastle. The notes of Ridley and Co.’s bank were for many years engraved and printed under the superintendence of Bewick, who, after Mr. Beilby’s retirement, still continued the business of copper-plate engraving and printing, and for this purpose always kept presses of his own.]

The first of the two following cuts, copied from his Fables, records the decease of Bewick’s mother, who died on the 20th of February 1785, aged 58; and the second that of his father, who died on the 15th of November in the same year, aged 70. The last event also marks the day on which he began to engrave the first cut intended for the Quadrupeds. This cut was the Arabian Camel, or Dromedary, and he had made very little progress with it when a messenger arrived from Cherry-burn to inform him of his father’s death.

Several years previous to his decease Bewick had devised an improvement, which consisted in printing a subject from two or more blocks,--not in the manner of chiaro-scuros, but in order to obtain a greater variety of _tint_, and a better effect than could be obtained, without great labour, in a cut printed in black ink from a single block. This improvement, which had been suggested by Papillon in 1768, Bewick proceeded to carry into effect. The subject which he made choice of to exemplify what he considered his original discovery, was an old horse waiting for death.[VII-66] He accordingly made the drawing on a large block consisting of four different pieces, and forthwith proceeded to engrave it. He however did not live to complete his intention; for even this block, which he meant merely for the first impression--the subject having to be completed by a second--remained unfinished at his decease.[VII-67] He had, however, finished it all with the exception of part of the horse’s head, and when in this state he had four impressions taken about a week before his death. It was on this occasion that he exclaimed, when the pressman handed him the proof, “I wish I was but twenty years younger!”

[Footnote VII-66: A small cut of the same subject, though with a different back-ground, occurs as a tail-piece in the Fables, 1818-1823.]

[Footnote VII-67: The last _bird_ that Bewick engraved was the Cream-coloured Plover, at page 383, vol. i. of the Birds, in the edition of 1832. Several years previous to his death he had projected a History of British Fishes, but very little progress was made in the work. A few cuts of fishes were engraved, chiefly by his pupils; that of the John Dory, an impression of which is said to have been sold for a considerable sum, is one of those not engraved by Bewick himself. As a work of art the value of an India paper impression of the John Dory may be about twopence. This cut is an early performance of Mr. Jackson’s, who also engraved, in 1823, about twenty of the additional tail-pieces in the last edition of the Birds, 1832.]

This cut, with the head said to have been finished by another person, was published by Bewick’s son, Mr. Robert Elliott Bewick, in 1832. It is the largest cut that Bewick ever engraved,[VII-68] but having been left by him in an unfinished state, it would be impossible to say what he might have effected had he lived to work out his ideas, and unfair to judge of it as if it were a finished performance. It is, however, but just to remark, that the miserable appearance of the poor, worn-out, neglected animal, is represented with great feeling and truth,--excepting the head, which is disproportionately large and heavy,--and that the landscape displays Bewick’s usual fidelity in copying nature.

[Footnote VII-68: This cut is eleven inches and five-eighths wide by eight inches and three-fourths high. It is entitled, “Waiting for Death: Bewick’s last work, left unfinished, and intended to have been completed by a series of impressions from separate blocks printed over each other.”]

Bewick’s life affords a useful lesson to all who wish to attain distinction in art, and at the same time to preserve their independence. He diligently cultivated his talents, and never trusted to booksellers or designers for employment. He did not work according to the directions of others, but struck out a path for himself; and by diligently pursuing it according to the bent of his own feelings, he acquired both a competence with respect to worldly means and an ample reward of fame. The success of his works did not render him inattentive to business; and he was never tempted by the prospect of increasing wealth to indulge in expensive pleasures, nor to live in a manner which his circumstances did not warrant. What he had honestly earned he frugally husbanded; and, like a prudent man, made a provision for his old age. “The hand of the diligent,” says Solomon, “maketh rich.” This Bewick felt, and his life may be cited in the exemplification of the truth of the proverb. He acquired not indeed great wealth, but he attained a competence, and was grateful and contented. No favoured worshipper of Mammon, though possessed of millions obtained by “watching the turn of the market,” could say more.

He was extremely regular and methodical in his habits of business: until within a few years of his death he used to come to his shop in Newcastle from his house in Gateshead at a certain hour in the morning, returning to his dinner at a certain time, and, as he used to say, _lapping up_ at night, as if he were a workman employed by the day, and subject to a loss by being absent a single hour. When any of his works were in the press, the first thing he did each morning, after calling at his own shop, was to proceed to the printer’s to see what progress they were making, and to give directions to the pressmen about printing the cuts.[VII-69] It is indeed owing to his attention in this respect that the cuts in all the editions of his works published during his life-time are so well printed. The edition of the Birds, published in 1832, displays numerous instances of the want of Bewick’s own superintendence: either through the carelessness or ignorance of the pressmen, many of the cuts are quite spoiled.

[Footnote VII-69: When Bewick removed the printing of his works from Mr. Hodgson’s office to that of Mr. E. Walker, a pressman, named Barlow, was brought from London for the purpose of printing the cuts in the second volume of the Birds in a proper manner. Bewick’s favourite pressman at Mr. Hodgson’s was John Simpson.]

The following cut represents a view of Bewick’s workshop in St. Nicholas’ Churchyard, Newcastle. The upper room, the two windows of which are seen in the roof, was that in which he worked in the latter years of his life. In this shop he engraved the cuts which will perpetuate his name; and there for upwards of fifty years was he accustomed to sit, steadily and cheerfully pursuing the labour that he loved. He used always to work with his hat on; and when any gentleman or nobleman called upon him, he only removed it for a moment on his first entering. He used frequently to whistle when at work, and he was seldom without a large quid of tobacco in his mouth. The prominence occasioned by the quid, which he kept between his under lip and his teeth, and not in his cheek, is indicated in most of his portraits.

A stick, which had been his brother John’s, was a great favourite with him, and he generally carried it in his walks, always carefully putting it in a certain place when he entered his workroom. He used to be very partial to a draught of water in the afternoon, immediately before leaving work. The water was brought fresh by one of the apprentices from the _pant_ at the head of the Side, in an earthenware jug, and the glass which Bewick used to drink the water out of, was, as soon as done with, carefully locked up in his book-case. One of his apprentices once happening to break the jug, Bewick scolded him well for his carelessness, and made him pay twopence towards buying another.

Bewick was a man of athletic make, being nearly six feet high, and proportionally stout. He possessed great personal courage, and in his younger days was not slow to repay an insult with personal chastisement. On one occasion being assaulted by two pitmen on returning from a visit to Cherry-burn, he resolutely turned upon the aggressors, and, as he said, “_paid_ them both well.” Though hard-featured, and much marked with the small-pox, the expression of Bewick’s countenance was manly and open, and his dark eyes sparkled with intelligence. There is a good bust of him by Bailey in the Library of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle, and the best engraved portrait is perhaps that of Burnet, after a painting by Ramsey.[VII-70] The portrait on page 510, engraved on wood, is another attempt to perpetuate the likeness of one to whom the art owes so much.

[Footnote VII-70: The following is a list of the principal engraved portraits of Bewick: on copper, by J. A. Kidd, from a painting by Miss Kirkley, 1798. On copper, by Thomas Ranson, after a painting by William Nicholson, 1816. On copper, by I. Summerfield, from a miniature by Murphy--that alluded to in Bewick’s letter to Mr. C. Gregson, previously quoted--1816. On copper, by John Burnet, from a painting by James Ramsey, 1817. Copies of all those portraits, engraved on wood, are given in Charnley’s edition of Select Fables, 1820; and there is also prefixed to the work a portrait excellently engraved on wood by Charlton Nesbit, one of Bewick’s earliest pupils, from a drawing made on the block by William Nicholson.--In the Memoir of Thomas Bewick, prefixed to the Natural History of Parrots, Naturalist’s Library, vol. vi., it is incorrectly stated that Ranson, the engraver of one of the above portraits, was a pupil of Bewick’s. He was a pupil of J. A. Kidd, copper-plate engraver, Newcastle.]

In the summer of 1828 Bewick visited London; but he was then evidently in a declining state of health, and he had lost much of his former energy of mind. Scarcely anything that he saw interested him, and he longed no less than in his younger years to return to the banks of the Tyne. He had ceased to feel an interest in objects which formerly afforded him great pleasure; for when his old friend, the late Mr. William Bulmer, drove him round the Regent’s Park, he declined to alight for the purpose of visiting the collection of animals in the Gardens of the Zoological Society.

On his return to Newcastle he appeared for a short time to enjoy his usual health and spirits. On the Saturday preceding his death he took the block of the Old Horse waiting for Death to the printer’s, and had it proved; on the following Monday he became unwell, and after a few days’ illness he ceased to exist. He died at his house on the Windmill-hills, Gateshead, on the 8th of November, 1828, aged seventy-five. He was buried at Ovingham, and the following cut represents a view of the place of his interment, near the west end of the church. The tablets seen in the wall are those erected to the memory of himself and his brother John.

The following are the inscriptions on the tablets:

In Memory of JOHN BEWICK, Engraver, Who died December, 5, 1795, Aged 35 years.

His Ingenuity as an Artist was excelled only by his Conduct as a Man.

The Burial Place of THOMAS BEWICK, Engraver, Newcastle. Isabella, his Wife, Died 1st February, 1826, Aged 72 years. THOMAS BEWICK, Died 8th of November, 1828, Aged 75 years.

In an excellent notice of the works of Bewick--apparently written by one of his townsmen (said to be Mr. T. Doubleday)--in Blackwood’s Magazine for July, 1825, it is stated that the final tail-piece to Bewick’s Fables, 1818-1823, is “A View of Ovingham Churchyard;” and in the Reverend William Turner’s Memoir of Thomas Bewick, in the sixth volume of the Naturalist’s Library, the same statement is repeated. It is, however, erroneous; as both the writers might have known had they thought it worth their while to pay a visit to Ovingham, and take a look at the church. The following cut, in which is introduced an imaginary representation of Bewick’s funeral, presents a correct view of the place. The following popular saying, which is well known in Northumberland, suggested the introduction of the rain-bow:

“Happy is the bride that the sun shines on, And happy is the corpse that the rain rains on,--”

meaning that sunshine at a wedding is a sign of happiness in the marriage state to the bride, and that rain at a funeral is a sign of future happiness to the person whose remains are about to be interred.

The following eloquent tribute to the merits of Bewick is from an article on Wilson’s Illustrations of Zoology in Blackwood’s Magazine for June, 1828.

“Have we forgotten, in our hurried and imperfect enumeration of wise worthies,--have we forgotten

‘The Genius that dwells on the banks of the Tyne,’[VII-71]

the Matchless, Inimitable Bewick? No. His books lie on our parlour, bed-room, dining-room, drawing-room, study table, and are never out of place or time. Happy old man! The delight of childhood, manhood, decaying age!--A moral in every tail-piece--a sermon in every vignette. Not as if from one fountain flows the stream of his inspired spirit, gurgling from the Crawley Spring so many thousand gallons of the element every minute, and feeding but one city, our own Edinburgh. But it rather oozes out from unnumbered springs. Here from one scarcely perceptible but in the vivid green of the lonesome sward, from which it trickles away into a little mountain rill--here leaping into sudden life, as from the rock--here bubbling from a silver pool, overshadowed by a birch-tree--here like a well asleep in a moss-grown cell, built by some thoughtful recluse in the old monastic day, with a few words from Scripture, or some rude engraving, religious as Scripture, OMNE BONUM DESUPER--OPERA DEI MIRIFICA.”

[Footnote VII-71: This line is adapted from Wordsworth, who, at the commencement of his verses entitled “The Two Thieves, or The Last Stage of Avarice,” thus expresses his high opinion of the talents of Bewick:

“O now that the genius of Bewick were mine, And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne! Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose, For I’d take my last leave both of verse and of prose.”

_Lyrical Ballads_, vol. ii. p. 199. Edition 1805.]

John Bewick, a younger brother of Thomas, was born at Cherry-burn in 1760, and in 1777 was apprenticed as a wood engraver to his brother and Mr. Beilby. He undoubtedly assisted his brother in the execution of the cuts for the two editions of Fables, printed by Mr. Saint in 1779 and 1784; but in those early productions it would be impossible, judging merely from the style of the engraving, to distinguish the work of the two brothers. Among the earliest cuts known to have been engraved by John Bewick, on the expiration of his apprenticeship, are those contained in a work entitled “Emblems of Mortality,” printed in 1789 for T. Hodgson, the publisher of the Hieroglyphic Bible, mentioned at page 478. Those cuts, which are very indifferently executed, are copies, occasionally altered for the worse, of the cuts in Holbein’s Dance of Death. Whether he engraved them in London, or not, I have been unable to ascertain; but it is certain that he was living in London in the following year, and that he resided there till 1795. When residing in the metropolis he drew and engraved the cuts for “The Progress of Man and Society,” compiled by Dr. Trusler, and published in 1791; the cuts for “The Looking Glass of the Mind,” 1796; and also those contained in a similar work entitled “Blossoms of Morality,” published about the same time. Though several of those cuts display considerable talent, yet the best specimens of his abilities as a designer and engraver on wood are to be found in Poems by Goldsmith and Parnell, 1795, and in Somervile’s Chase, 1796, both printed in quarto, to display the excellence of modern printing, type-founding, wood-engraving, and paper-making. Mr. Bulmer, who suggested those editions, being himself a Northumbrian, had been intimately acquainted with both Thomas and John Bewick. In the preface to the Poems by Goldsmith and Parnell, he is careful to commemorate the paper-maker, type-founder, and the engravers; but he omits to mention the name of Robert Johnson, who designed three of the principal cuts.[VII-72] The merits of this highly-talented young man appear to have been singularly overlooked by those whose more especial duty it was to notice them. In the whole of Bewick’s works he is not once mentioned. Mr. Bulmer also says, that all the cuts were engraved by Thomas and John Bewick; but though he unquestionably believed so himself, the statement is not strictly correct; for the four vignette head and tail-pieces to the Traveller and the Deserted Village were engraved by C. Nesbit. The vignettes on the title-pages, the large cut of the old woman gathering water-cresses, and the tail-piece at the end of the volume, were drawn and engraved by John Bewick; the remainder were engraved by Thomas.

[Footnote VII-72: The cut of the Hermit at his morning devotion was drawn by John Johnson, a cousin of Robert, and also one of Bewick’s pupils.]

The cuts in this book are generally executed in a free and effective style, but are not remarkable as specimens of wood engraving, unless we take into consideration the time when they were published. The best in point of execution are, The Hermit at his morning devotion, and The Angel, Hermit, and Guide, both engraved by Thomas Bewick; the manner in which the engraver has executed the foliage in these two cuts is extremely beautiful and natural. It is said that George III. thought so highly of the cuts in this book that he could not believe that they were engraved on wood; and that his bookseller, Mr. George Nicol, obtained for his Majesty a sight of the blocks in order that he might be convinced of the fact by his own inspection. This anecdote is sometimes produced as a proof of the great excellence of the cuts, though it might with greater truth be cited as a proof of his Majesty being totally unacquainted with the process of wood engraving, and of his not being able to distinguish a wood-cut from a copper-plate. If Bewick’s reputation as a wood engraver rested on those cuts, it certainly would not stand very high. Much better things of the same kind have been executed since that time by persons who are generally considered as having small claims to distinction as wood engravers.

The cuts in the Chase were all, except one, designed by John Bewick; but in consequence of the declining state of his health he was not able to engrave them. Soon after he had finished the drawings on the block he left London for the north, in the hope of deriving benefit from his native air. His disorder, however, continued to increase; and, within a few weeks from the time of his return, he died at Ovingham, on the 5th of December, 1795, aged thirty-five.

The cuts in the Chase, which were all, except one, engraved by Thomas Bewick, are, on the whole, superior in point of execution to those in the Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell. Though boldly designed, some of them display great defects in composition, and among the most objectionable in this respect are the Huntsman and three Hounds, at page 5; the conclusion of the Chase, page 31; and George III. stag-hunting, page 93. Among the best, both as respects design and execution, are: Morning, vignette on title-page, remarkably spirited; Hounds, page 25; a Stag drinking, page 27; Fox-hunting, page 63; and Otter-hunting, page 99. The final tail-piece, which has been spoiled in the engraving, was executed by one of Bewick’s pupils.

John Bewick, as a designer and engraver on wood, is much inferior to his brother. Though several of his cuts possess considerable merit with respect to design, by far the greater number are executed in a dry, harsh manner. His best cuts may be readily distinguished from his brother’s by the greater contrast of black and white in the cuts engraved by John, and by the dry and withered appearance of the foliage of the trees. The above is a reduced copy of a cut entitled the “Sad Historian,” drawn and engraved by John Bewick, in the Poems by Goldsmith and Parnell.

The most of John Bewick’s cuts are much better conceived than engraved; and this perhaps may in a great measure have arisen from their having been chiefly executed for children’s books, in which excellence of engraving was not required. His style of engraving is not good; for though some of his cuts are extremely _effective_ from the contrast of light and shade, yet the lines in almost every one are coarse and harsh, and “laid in,” to use a technical expression, in a hard and tasteless manner. Dry, stiff, parallel lines, scarcely ever deviating into a pleasing curve, are the general characteristic of most of his small cuts. As he reached the age of thirty-five without having produced any cut which displays much ability in the execution, it is not likely that he would have excelled as a wood engraver had his life been prolonged. The following is a fac-simile of one of the best of his cuts in the Blossoms of Morality, published about 1796. It exemplifies his manner of strongly contrasting positive black with pure white; and the natural attitudes of the women afford a tolerably fair specimen of his talents as a designer.

Robert Johnson, though not a wood engraver, has a claim to a brief notice here on account of the excellence of several of the tail-pieces designed by him in Bewick’s Birds, and from his having made the drawings for most of the wood-cuts in Bewick’s Fables. He was born in 1770, at Shotley, a village in Northumberland, about six miles to the south-west of Ovingham; and in 1778 was placed by his father, who at that time resided in Gateshead, as an apprentice to Beilby and Bewick to be instructed in copper-plate engraving. The plates which are generally supposed to have been executed by him during his apprenticeship possess very little merit, nor does he appear to have been desirous to excel as an engraver. His great delight consisted in sketching from nature and in painting in water-colours; and in this branch of art, while yet an apprentice, he displayed talents of very high order.[VII-73] He was frequently employed by his master in drawing and making designs, and at his leisure hours he took every opportunity of improving himself in his favourite art. The Earl of Bute happening to call at Beilby and Bewick’s shop on one occasion when passing through Newcastle, a portfolio of Johnson’s drawings, made at his leisure hours, was shown to his lordship, who was so much pleased with them that he selected as many as amounted to forty pounds. This sum Beilby and Bewick appropriated to themselves, on the ground that, as he was their apprentice, those drawings, as well as any others that he might make, were legally their property. Johnson’s friends, however, thinking differently, instituted legal proceedings for the recovery of the money, and obtained a decision in their favour. One of the pleas set up by Beilby and Bewick was, that the drawings properly belonged to them, as they taught him the art, and that the making of such drawings was part of his business. This plea, however, failed; it was elicited on the examination of one of their own apprentices, Charlton Nesbit, that neither he nor any other of his fellow apprentices was taught the art of drawing in water-colours by their masters, and that it formed no part of their necessary instruction as engravers.

[Footnote VII-73: Johnson’s water-colour drawings for most of the cuts in Bewick’s Fables, are extremely beautiful. They are the size of the cuts; and as a set are perhaps the finest small drawings of the kind that were ever made. Their finish and accuracy of drawing are admirable--they look like miniature _Paul Potters_. It is known to only a few persons that they were drawn by Johnson during his apprenticeship. Most of them were copied on the block by William Harvey, and the rest chiefly by Bewick himself.]

On the expiration of his apprenticeship Johnson gave up, in a great measure, the practice of copper-plate engraving, and applied himself almost exclusively to drawing. In 1796 he was engaged by Messrs. Morison, booksellers and publishers of Perth, to draw from the original paintings the portraits intended to be engraved in “the Scottish Gallery,” a work edited by Pinkerton, and published about 1799. When at Taymouth Castle, the seat of the Earl of Breadalbane, copying some portraits painted by Jameson, the Scottish Vandyke, he caught a severe cold, which, being neglected, increased to a fever. In the violence of the disorder he became delirious, and, from the ignorance of those who attended him, the unfortunate young artist, far from home and without a friend to console him, was bound and treated like a madman. A physician having been called in, by his order blisters were applied, and a different course of treatment adopted. Johnson recovered his senses, but it was only for a brief period; being of a delicate constitution, he sank under the disorder. He died at Kenmore on the 29th October, 1796, in the twenty-sixth year of his age.[VII-74]

[Footnote VII-74: John Johnson, a cousin of Robert, was also an apprentice of Beilby and Bewick. He was a wood engraver, and executed a few of the tail-pieces in the History of British Birds. Like Robert, he possessed a taste for drawing; and the cut of the Hermit at his morning devotion, engraved by T. Bewick, in Poems by Goldsmith and Parnell, was designed by him. He died at Newcastle about 1797, shortly after the expiration of his apprenticeship.]

The following is a copy of a cut--from a design by Johnson himself--which was drawn on the wood, and engraved by Charlton Nesbit, as a tribute of his regard for the memory of his friend and fellow-pupil.

The next cut represents a view of a monument on the south side of Ovingham church, erected to the memory of Robert Johnson by a few friends who admired his talents, and respected him on account of his amiable private character.

Charlton Nesbit, who is justly entitled to be ranked with the best wood engravers of his time, was born in 1775 at Swalwell, in the county of Durham, about five miles westward of Gateshead, and when about fourteen years of age was apprenticed to Beilby and Bewick to learn the art of wood engraving. During his apprenticeship he engraved a few of the tail-pieces in the first volume of the History of British Birds, and all the head and tail-pieces, except two, in the Poems by Goldsmith and Parnell, printed by Bulmer in 1795. Shortly after the expiration of his apprenticeship he began to engrave a large cut, containing a view of St. Nicholas Church, Newcastle-on-Tyne, from a drawing by his fellow-pupil, Robert Johnson. We here present a reduced copy of this cut, which is one of the largest ever engraved in England.[VII-75] The original was engraved on a block consisting of twelve different pieces of box, firmly cramped together, and mounted on a plate of cast iron to prevent their warping. For this cut, which was first published about 1799, Mr. Nesbit received a medal from the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures.

[Footnote VII-75: The original cut, including the border, is fifteen inches wide by about twelve inches high.]

About 1799 Mr. Nesbit came to London, where he continued to reside till 1815. During his residence there he engraved a number of cuts for various works, chiefly from the designs of the late Mr. John Thurston,[VII-76] who at that time was the principal, and indeed almost the only artist of any talent in London, who made drawings on the block for wood engravers. Some of the best of his cuts executed during this period are to be found in a History of England printed for R. Scholey, and in a work entitled Religious Emblems, published by R. Ackermann and Co. in 1808. The cuts in the latter work were engraved by Nesbit, Clennell, Branston, and Hole, from drawings by Thurston; and they are unquestionably the best of their kind which up to that time had appeared in England. Clennell’s are the most artist-like in their execution and effect, while Nesbit’s are engraved with greater care. Branston, except in one cut,--Rescued from the Floods,--does not appear to such advantage in this work as his northern rivals. There is only one cut--Seed sown--engraved by Hole. The following may be mentioned as the best of Nesbit’s cuts in this work:--The World Weighed, The Daughters of Jerusalem, Sinners hiding in the Grave, and Wounded in the Mental Eye. The best of Clennell’s are:--Call to Vigilance, the World made Captive, and Fainting for the Living Waters. These are perhaps the three best cuts of their kind that Clennell ever engraved.

[Footnote VII-76: Mr. Thurston was a native of Scarborough, and originally a copper-plate engraver. He engraved, under the late Mr. James Heath, parts of the two celebrated plates of the death of Major Peirson and the Dead Soldier. He was one of the best designers on wood of his time. He drew very beautifully, but his designs are too frequently deficient in natural character and feeling. He died in 1821.]

In 1815 Mr. Nesbit returned to his native place, where he continued to reside until 1830. While living in the country, though he did not abandon the art, yet the cuts executed by him during this period are comparatively few. In 1818, when residing in the North, he engraved a large cut of Rinaldo and Armida for Savage’s Hints on Decorative Printing: this cut and another, the Cave of Despair, in the same work and of the same size, engraved by the late Robert Branston, were expressly given to display the perfection to which modern wood engraving had been brought. The foliage, the trees, and the drapery in Nesbit’s cut are admirably engraved; but the lines in the bodies of the figures are too much broken and “_chopped up_.” This, however, was not the fault of the engraver, but of the designer, Mr. J. Thurston. The lines, which now have a dotted appearance, were originally continuous and distinct; but Mr. Thurston objecting to them as being too dark, Nesbit went over his work again, and with immense labour reduced the strength of his lines, and gave them their present dotted appearance. As a specimen of the engraver’s abilities, the first proof submitted to the designer was superior to the last.

In order to give a fictitious value to Mr. Savage’s book, most of the cuts, as soon as a certain number of impressions were taken, were sawn across, but not through, in several places, and impressions of them when thus defaced were given in the work.[VII-77] Nesbit’s cut was, however, carefully repaired, and the back part of Armida’s head having been altered, the impressions from the block thus amended were actually given in the work itself as the _best_, instead of those which were taken before it was defaced. This re-integration of the block was the work of the late Mr. G. W. Bonner, Mr. Branston’s nephew. The transverse pieces are so skilfully inserted, and engraved so much in the style of the adjacent parts, that it is difficult to discover where the defacing saw had passed.

[Footnote VII-77: The practice of thus giving a fictitious value to works of limited circulation, and which are not likely to reach a second edition during the lifetime of their authors, is less frequent now than it was a few years ago. It is little more than a trick to enhance the price of the book to subscribers, by giving them an assurance that no second edition can appear with the same embellishments. In three cases out of four where the plates and cuts of a work have been intentionally destroyed, there was little prospect of such work reaching a second edition during the writer’s life.]

In 1830 Mr. Nesbit returned to London, where he continued to reside until his death, which took place at Queen’s Elms, the 11th of November 1838, aged 63. Some of the best of his cuts are contained in the second series of Northcote’s Fables; and the following, of his execution, may be ranked among the finest productions of the art of wood engraving in modern times:--The Robin and the Sparrow, page 1; The Hare and the Bramble, page 127; The Peach and the Potatoe, page 129; and The Cock, the Dog, and the Fox, page 238. Nesbit is unquestionably the best wood engraver that has proceeded from the great northern hive of the art--the workshop of Thomas Bewick.

Luke Clennell, one of the most distinguished of Bewick’s pupils as a designer and painter, as well as an engraver on wood, was born at Ulgham, a village near Morpeth, in Northumberland, on the 8th of April, 1781. At an early age he was placed with a relation, a grocer in Morpeth, and continued with him, assisting in the shop as an apprentice, until he was sixteen. Some drawings which he made when at Morpeth having attracted attention, and he himself showing a decided predilection for the art, his friends were induced to place him as a wood engraver with Bewick, to whom he was bound apprentice for seven years on the 8th of April, 1797. He in a short time made great proficiency in wood engraving; and as he drew with great correctness and power, Bewick employed him to copy, on the block, several of Robert Johnson’s drawings, and to engrave them as tail-pieces for the second volume of the History of British Birds. Clennell for a few months after the expiration of his apprenticeship continued to work for Bewick, who chiefly employed him in engraving some of the cuts for a History of England, published by Wallis and Scholey, 46, Paternoster Row. Clennell, who was paid only two guineas apiece for each of those cuts, having learnt that Bewick received five, sent to the publisher a proof of one of them--Alfred in the Danish Camp--stating that it was of his own engraving. In the course of a few days Clennell received an answer from the publisher, inviting him to come to London, and offering him employment until all the cuts intended for the work should be finished. He accepted the offer, and shortly afterwards set out for London, where he arrived about the end of autumn, 1804.[VII-78]

[Footnote VII-78: Between the expiration of his apprenticeship and his departure for London he appears to have engraved several excellent cuts for a school-book entitled “The Hive of Ancient and Modern Literature,” printed by S. Hodgson, Newcastle.--Clennell’s fellow-pupils were Henry Hole and Edward Willis. Mr. Hole engraved the cuts in M’Creery’s Press, 1803, and in Poems by Felicia Dorothea Browne, (afterwards Mrs. Hemans) 1808. Mr. Hole gave up wood engraving several years ago on succeeding to a large estate in Derbyshire. Mr. Willis, who was a cousin of Mr. George Stephenson, the celebrated engineer, died in London, the 10th of February, 1842, aged 58; but had for some time previously entirely abandoned the art.]

Most of Clennell’s cuts are distinguished by their free and _artist-like_ execution and by their excellent effect; but though generally spirited, they are sometimes rather coarsely engraved. He was accustomed to improve Thurston’s designs by occasionally heightening the effect.[VII-79] To such alterations Thurston at first objected; but perceiving that the cuts when engraved were thus very much improved, he afterwards allowed Clennell to increase the lights and deepen the shadows according to his own judgment. An admirable specimen of Clennell’s engraving is to be found in an octavo edition of Falconer’s Shipwreck, printed for Cadell and Davies, 1808. It occurs as a vignette to the second canto at p. 43, and the subject is a ship running before the wind in a gale. The motion of the waves, and the gloomy appearance of the sky, are represented with admirable truth and feeling. The dark shadow on the waters to the right gives wonderful effect to the white crest of the wave in front; and the whole appearance of the cut is indicative of a gloomy and tempestuous day, and of an increasing storm. Perhaps no engraving of the same kind, either on copper or wood, conveys the idea of a storm at sea with greater fidelity.[VII-80] The drawing was made on the block by Thurston; but the spirit and _effect_,--the lights and shadows, the apparent seething of the waves, and the troubled appearance of the sky,--were introduced by Clennell. All the other cuts in this edition of the Shipwreck are of his engraving; but though well executed, they do not require any especial notice. Two of them, which were previously designed for another work, are certainly not _illustrations_ of Falconer’s Shipwreck.

[Footnote VII-79: He also invariably corrected the _outline_ of Thurston’s animals; “Fainting for the Living Waters” in the Religious Emblems, and a little subject in an edition of Beattie’s Minstrel, published at Alnwick, representing a shepherd and dog on the brow of a hill, were thus improved by Clennell.]

[Footnote VII-80: Mr. Jackson was in possession of the first proof of this pretty wood engraving, inscribed Twickenham, September 10, 1807, where Clennell was residing at the time.]

Clennell’s largest cut is that which he engraved for the diploma of the Highland Society, from a design by Benjamin West, President of the Royal Academy; and for this he received fifty guineas. The original drawing was made on paper, and Clennell gave Thurston fifteen pounds for copying on the block the figures within the circle: the supporters, a Highland soldier and a fisherman, he copied himself. The block on which he first began to engrave this cut consisted of several pieces of box veneered upon beech; and after he had been employed upon it for about two months, it one afternoon suddenly split when he was at tea. Clennell, hearing it crack, immediately suspected the cause; and on finding it rent in such a manner that there was no chance of repairing it, he, in a passion that the labour already bestowed on it should be lost, threw all the tea-things into the fire. In the course of a few days however, he got a new block made, consisting of solid pieces of box firmly screwed and cramped together; and having paid Thurston fifteen pounds more for re-drawing the figures within the circle, and having again copied the supporters, he proceeded with renewed spirit to complete his work. For engraving this cut he received a hundred and fifty guineas--he paying Thurston himself for the drawing on the block; and the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures presented him with their gold medal, May 30, 1809. This cut is characteristic of Clennell’s style of engraving--the lines are in some places coarse, and in others the execution is careless; the more important parts are, however, engraved with great spirit; and the cut, as a whole, is bold and effective. Cross-hatchings are freely introduced, not so much, perhaps, because they were necessary, as to show that the engraver could execute such kind of work,--the vulgar error that cross-hatchings could not be executed on wood having been at that time extremely prevalent among persons who had little knowledge of the art, and who yet vented their absurd notions on the subject as if they were undeniable truths. The preceding is a reduced copy of this cut.[VII-81] The original block, when only a very limited number of impressions had been printed off, was burnt in the fire at Mr. Bensley’s printing-office. The subject was afterwards re-engraved on a block of the same size by John Thompson.

[Footnote VII-81: The original cut is about ten inches and a half high, measured from the line below the inscription, by about thirteen inches and a half wide, measured across the centre.]

The illustrations to an edition of Rogers’s Poems, 1812, engraved from pen-and-ink drawings by Thomas Stothard, R.A., may be fairly ranked among the best of the wood-cuts engraved by Clennell. They are executed with the feeling of an artist, and are admirable representations of the original drawings.[VII-82] Stothard himself was much pleased with them; but he thought that when wood engravers attempted to express more than a copy of a pen-and-ink drawing, and introduced a variety of tints in the manner of copper-plate engravings, they exceeded the legitimate boundaries of the art. A hundred wood-cuts by Bewick, Nesbit, Clennell, and Thompson might, however, be produced to show that this opinion was not well founded.

[Footnote VII-82: Several additional cuts of the same kind, engraved with no less ability by J. Thompson, were inserted in a subsequent edition.]

Clennell, who drew beautifully in water-colours, made many of the drawings for the Border Antiquities; and the encouragement which he received as a designer and painter made him resolve to entirely abandon wood engraving. With this view he laboured diligently to improve himself in painting, and in a short time made such progress that his pictures attracted the attention of the Directors of the British Institution. In 1814, the Earl of Bridgewater employed him to paint a large picture of the entertainment given to the Allied Sovereigns in the Guildhall by the city of London. He experienced great difficulty in obtaining sketches of the numerous distinguished persons whose portraits it was necessary to give in the picture; and he lost much time, and suffered considerable anxiety, in procuring those preliminary materials for his work. Having at length completed his sketches, he began the picture, and had made considerable progress in it when, in April 1817, he suddenly became insane, and the work was interrupted.[VII-83] It has been said that his malady arose from intense application, and from anxiety respecting the success of his work. This, however, can scarcely be correct; he had surmounted his greatest difficulties, and was proceeding regularly and steadily with the painting, when he suddenly became deprived of his reason. One of his fellow-pupils when he was with Bewick, who was intimate with him, and was accustomed to see him frequently, never observed any previous symptom of insanity in his behaviour, and never heard him express any particular anxiety about the work on which he was engaged.

[Footnote VII-83: This painting was afterwards finished by E. Bird, R.A., who also became insane.]

Within a short time after Clennell had lost his reason, his wife also became insane;[VII-84] and the malady being accompanied by a fever, she after a short illness expired, leaving three young children to deplore the death of one parent and the confirmed insanity of the other. These most distressing circumstances excited the sympathy of several noblemen and gentlemen; and a committee having been appointed to consider of the best means of raising a fund for the support of Clennell’s family, it was determined to publish by subscription an engraving from one of his pictures. The subject made choice of was the Decisive Charge of the Life Guards at Waterloo, for which Clennell had received a reward from the British Institution. It was engraved by Mr. W. Bromley, and published in 1821. The sum thus raised was, after paying for the engraving, vested in trustees for the benefit of Clennell’s children, and for the purpose of providing a small annuity for himself.

[Footnote VII-84: Clennell’s wife was a daughter of the late C. Warren, one of the best copper-plate engravers of his time.]

Clennell, after having been confined for three or four years in a lunatic asylum in London, so far recovered that it was no longer necessary to keep him in a state of restraint. He was accordingly sent down to the North, and lived for several years in a state of harmless insanity with a relation in the neighbourhood of Newcastle; amusing himself with making drawings, engraving little wood-cuts, and occasionally writing _poetry_. Upwards of sixty of those drawings are now lying before me, displaying at once so much of his former genius and of his present imbecility that it is not possible to regard them, knowing whose they are, without a deep feeling of commiseration for his fate. He used occasionally to call on Bewick, and he once asked for a block to engrave. Bewick, to humour him, gave him a piece of wood, and left him to choose his own subject; and Clennell, on his next visit, brought with him the cut finished: it was like the attempt of a boy when first beginning to engrave, but he thought it one of the most successful of his productions in the art. The following specimens of his cuts and of his poetry were respectively engraved and written in 1828.

SONG.

Good morning to you, Mary, It glads me much to see thee once again; What joy, since thee I’ve heard! Heaven such beauty ever deign, Mary of the vineyard!

THE EVENING STAR.

Look! what is it, with twinkling light, That brings such joy, serenely bright, That turns the dusk again to light?-- ’Tis the Evening Star! What is it with purest ray, That brings such peace at close of day, That lights the traveller on his way?-- ’Tis the Evening Star! What is it, of purest holy ray, That brings to man the promised day, And peace?-- ’Tis the Evening Star!

COMPENDIUM POETICA.

A drop of heaven’s treasure, on an angel’s wing, Such heaven alone can bring;-- The painted hues upon the rose, In heaven’s shower reposing, Is an earthly treasure of such measure. The butterfly, in his spell, Upon the rosy prism doth dwell, And as he doth fly, in his tour From flower to flower, Is seen for a while Every care to beguile, And so doth wing his little way, A little fairy of the day!

A FLOWERET.

Where lengthened ray Gildeth the bark upon her way; Where vision is lost in space, To trace, As resting on a stile, In ascent of half a mile-- It is when the birds do sing, In the evening of the spring. The broad shadow from the tree, Falling upon the slope, You may see, O’er flowery mead, Where doth a pathway lead To the topmost ope-- The yellow butter-cup And purple crow-foot, The waving grass up, Rounding upon the but-- The spreading daisy In the clover maze, The wild rose upon the hedge-row, And the honey-suckle blow For village girl To dress her chaplet-- Or some youth, mayhap, let-- Or bind the linky trinket For some earl-- Or trim up in plaits her hair With much seeming care, As fancy may think it-- Or with spittle moisten, Or half wink it, Or to music inclined, Or to sleep in the soft wind.

St Peter’s, August 1828.

L. C.

About 1831, Clennell having become much worse, his friends were again compelled to place him under restraint. He was accordingly conveyed to a lunatic asylum near Newcastle, where he is still living. Until within this last year or two, he continued to amuse himself with drawing and writing poetry, and perhaps may do so still. It is to be hoped that, though his condition appear miserable to us, he is not miserable himself; that though deprived of the light of reason, he may yet enjoy imaginary pleasures of which we can form no conception; and that his confinement occasions to him

“Small feeling of privation, none of pain.”[VII-85]

[Footnote VII-85: Clennell died in the Lunatic Asylum, Feb. 9, 1840, in his fifty-ninth year.]

William Harvey, another distinguished pupil of Bewick, and one whose earlier engravings are only surpassed by his more recent productions as a designer on wood, was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, 13th of July 1796. Having from an early age shown great fondness for drawing, he was at the age of fourteen apprenticed to Thomas Bewick to learn the art of engraving on wood.[VII-86] In conjunction with his fellow-pupil, W. W. Temple, he engraved most of the cuts in Bewick’s Fables, 1818; and as he excelled in drawing as well as in engraving, he was generally entrusted by Bewick to make the drawings on the block after Robert Johnson’s designs. One of the best cuts engraved by Harvey during his apprenticeship was a vignette for the title-page of a small work entitled “Cheviot: a Poetical Fragment,” printed at Newcastle in 1817. This cut, which was also drawn by himself, is extremely beautiful both in design and execution; the trees and the foliage are in particular excellently represented; and as a small picturesque subject it is one of the best he ever engraved.

[Footnote VII-86: Isaac Nicholson, now established as a wood engraver at Newcastle, was the apprentice immediately preceding Harvey. W. W. Temple, who abandoned the business on the expiration of his apprenticeship for that of a draper and silk-mercer, came to Bewick shortly after Harvey; and the younger apprentice was John Armstrong.]

Harvey was a great favourite of Bewick, who presented him with a copy of the History of British Birds as a new year’s gift on the 1st of January 1815, and at the same time addressed to him the following admonitory letter. Mr. Harvey is a distinguished artist, a kind son, an affectionate husband, a loving father, and in every relation of life a most amiable man: he has not, however, been exposed to any plots or conspiracies, nor been persecuted by envy and malice, as his master anticipated; but, on the contrary, his talents and his amiable character have procured for him public reputation and private esteem.

“Gateshead, 1st January, 1815.

“DEAR WILLIAM,

“I sent you last night the History of British Birds, which I beg your acceptance of as a new year’s gift, and also as a token of my respect. Don’t trouble yourself about thanking me for them; but, instead of doing so, let those books put you in mind of the duties you have to perform through life. Look at them (as long as they last) on every new year’s day, and at the same time resolve, with the help of the all-wise but unknowable God, to conduct yourself on every occasion as becomes a good man.--Be a good son, a good brother, (and when the time comes) a good husband, a good father, and a good member of society. Peace of mind will then follow you like a shadow; and when your mind grows rich in integrity, you will fear the frowns of no man, and only smile at the plots and conspiracies which it is probable will be laid against you by envy, hatred, and malice.

“To William Harvey, jun. Westgate.

[HW: Thomas Bewick].”

In September, 1817, Mr. Harvey came to London; and shortly afterwards, with a view of obtaining a correct knowledge of the principles of drawing, he became a pupil of Mr. B. R. Haydon, and he certainly could not have had a better master. While improving himself under Mr. Haydon, he drew and engraved from a picture by that eminent artist his large cut of the Death of Dentatus, which was published in 1821.[VII-87] As a large subject, this is unquestionably one of the most elaborately engraved wood-cuts that has ever appeared. It scarcely, however, can be considered a successful specimen of the art; for though the execution in many parts be superior to anything of the kind, either of earlier or more recent times, the cut, as a whole, is rather an attempt to rival copper-plate engraving than a perfect specimen of engraving on wood, displaying the peculiar advantages and excellences of the art within its own legitimate bounds. More has been attempted than can be efficiently represented by means of wood engraving. The figure of Dentatus is indeed one of the finest specimens of the art that has ever been executed, and the other figures in the fore-ground display no less talent; but the rocks are of too uniform a _tone_, and some of the more distant figures appear to _stick_ to each other. These defects, however, result from the very nature of the art, not from inability in the engraver; for all that wood engraving admits of he has effected. It is unnecessary to say more of this cut here: some observations relating to the details, illustrated with specimens of the best engraved parts, will be found in the next chapter.

[Footnote VII-87: This cut is about fifteen inches high by about eleven inches and one quarter wide. It was engraved on a block consisting of seven different pieces, the joinings of which are apparent in impressions that have not been subsequently _touched_ with Indian ink.]

About 1824 Mr. Harvey entirely gave up the practice of engraving, and has since exclusively devoted himself to designing for copper-plate and wood engravers. His designs engraved on copper are, however, few when compared with the immense number engraved on wood. The copper-plate engravings consist principally of the illustrations in a collected edition of Miss Edgeworth’s Works, 1832; in Southey’s edition of Cowper’s Works, first published in 1836, and since by Mr. Bohn in his Standard Library; and in the small edition of Dr. Lingard’s History of England.

The beautiful vignettes and tail-pieces in Dr. Henderson’s History of Ancient and Modern Wines, 1824, drawn and engraved by Mr. Harvey, may be considered the ground-work of his reputation as a designer, and by the kindness of Dr. Henderson we are enabled (in this second edition) to present impressions of seven of them. The cuts in the first and second series of Northcote’s Fables, 1828, 1833;[VII-88] in the Tower Menagerie, 1828; in the Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society, 1831; and in Latrobe’s Solace of Song, 1837, were all drawn by him. Among the smaller works illustrated with wood-cuts, and published about the same time as the preceding, the following may be mentioned as containing beautiful specimens of his talents as a designer on wood:--The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green; The Children in the Wood; A Story without an End, translated from the German by Mrs. Austin; and especially his one hundred and twenty beautiful designs for the Paradise Lost, and other poems of Milton, and his designs for Thomson’s Seasons, from which two works we select four examples with the view of exhibiting at the same time the talents of the distinguished engravers, viz., John Thompson and Charles Gray. For various other works he has also furnished, in all, between three and four thousand designs. As a designer on wood, he is decidedly superior to the majority of artists of the present day; and to his excellence in this respect, wood engraving is chiefly indebted for the very great encouragement which it has of late received in this country.

[Footnote VII-88: What may be considered the sketches for the principal cuts were supplied by Northcote himself. The following account of the manner in which he _composed_ them is extracted from a Sketch of his Life, prefixed to the second series of his Fables, 1833:--“It was by a curious process that Mr. Northcote really made the designs for these Fables the amusement of his old age, for his talent as a draftsman, excelling as he did in animals, was rarely required by this undertaking. His general practice was to collect great numbers of prints of animals, and to cut them out; he then moved such as he selected about upon the surface of a piece of paper until he had illustrated the fable by placing them to his satisfaction, and had thus composed his subject; then fixing the different figures with paste to the paper, a few pen or pencil touches rendered this singular composition complete enough to place in the hands of Mr. Harvey, by whom it was adapted or freely translated on the blocks for the engravers.”--Mr. Harvey’s work was something more than free translation. He _completed_ that which Northcote merely suggested. The tail-pieces and letters are all of Mr. Harvey’s own invention and drawing.]

The two cuts on pages 533 and 534 are also from drawings by Mr. Harvey; and both are printed from casts. The first is one of the illustrations of the Children in the Wood, published by Jennings and Chaplin, 1831; and the subject is the uncle bargaining with the two ruffians for the murder of the children. This cut is freely and effectively executed, without any display of useless labour.

The second is one of the illustrations of the Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, published by Jennings and Chaplin, in 1832. The subject represents the beggar’s daughter and her four suitors, namely,--the gentleman of good degree, the gallant young knight in disguise, the merchant of London, and her master’s son. This cut, though well engraved, is scarcely equal to the preceding. It is, however, necessary to observe that these cuts are not given as specimens of the engravers’ talents, but merely as two subjects designed by Mr. Harvey.

What has been called the “London School” of wood engraving produced nothing that would bear a comparison with the works of Bewick and his pupils until the late Robert Branston began to engrave on wood. About 1796, the best of the London engravers was J. Lee. He engraved the cuts for the “Cheap Repository,” a collection of religious and moral tracts, printed between 1794 and 1798, and sold by J. Marshall, London, and S. Hazard, Bath. Those cuts, though coarsely executed, as might be expected, considering the work for which they were intended, frequently display considerable merit in the design; and in this respect several of them are scarcely inferior to the cuts drawn and engraved by John Bewick in Dr. Trusler’s Progress of Man and Society. Mr. Lee died in March, 1804; and on his decease, his apprentice, Henry White, went to Newcastle, and served out the remainder of his time with Thomas Bewick. James Lee, a son of Mr. J. Lee, the elder, is also a wood engraver; he executed the portraits in Hansard’s Typographia, 1825.

Robert Branston, like Bewick, acquired his knowledge of wood engraving without the instructions of a master. He was born at Lynn, in Norfolk, in 1778, and died in London in 1827. He served his apprenticeship to his father, a general copper-plate engraver and heraldic painter, who seems to have carried on the same kind of miscellaneous business as Mr. Beilby, the master of Bewick. About 1802 Mr. Branston came to London, and finding that wood engraving was much encouraged, he determined to apply himself to that art. Some of his first productions were cuts for lottery bills; but as he improved in the practice of engraving on wood, he began to engrave cuts for the illustration of books. His style of engraving is peculiarly his own, and perfectly distinct from that of Bewick. He engraved human figures and in-door scenes with great clearness and precision; while Bewick’s chief excellence consisted in the natural representation of quadrupeds, birds, landscapes, and _road-side_ incidents. In the representation of trees and of natural scenery, Branston has almost uniformly failed. Some of the best of his earlier productions are to be found in the History of England, published by Scholey, 1804-1810; in Bloomfield’s Wild Flowers, 1806; and in a quarto volume entitled “Epistles in Verse,” and other poems by George Marshall, 1812.

The best specimen of Mr. Branston’s talents as a wood engraver is a large cut of the Cave of Despair, in Savage’s Hints on Decorative Printing. It was executed in rivalry with Nesbit, who engraved the cut of Rinaldo and Armida for the same work, and it would be difficult to decide which is the best. Both are good specimens of the styles of their respective schools; and the subjects are well adapted to display the peculiar excellence of the engravers. Had they exchanged subjects, neither of the cuts would have been so well executed; but in this case there call be little doubt that Nesbit would have engraved the figure and the rocks in the Cave of Despair better than Branston would have engraved the trees and the foliage in the cut of Rinaldo and Armida. The cut on the previous page is a reduced copy of a portion of that of Mr. Branston.

Mr. Branston, like many others, did not think highly of the cuts in Bewick’s Fables; and feeling persuaded that he could produce something better, he employed Mr. Thurston to make several designs, with the intention of publishing a similar work. After a few of them had been engraved, he gave up the thought of proceeding further with the work, from a doubt of its success. Bewick’s work was already in the market; and it was questionable if another of the same kind, appearing shortly after, would meet with a sale adequate to defray the expense. The three cuts in the opposite page were engraved by Mr. Branston for the proposed work. The two first are respectively illustrations of the fables of Industry and Sloth, and of the Two Crabs; the third was intended as a tail-piece. The cut of Industry and Sloth is certainly superior to that of the same subject in Bewick’s Fables; but that of the Two Crabs, though more delicately engraved, is not equal to the cut of the same subject in Bewick.

Mr. Branston also thought that Bewick’s Birds were estimated too highly; and he engraved two or three cuts to show that he could do the same things as well, or better. In this respect, however, he certainly formed a wrong estimate of his abilities; for, it is extremely doubtful if--even with the aid of the best designer he could find--he could have executed twenty cuts of birds which, for natural character, would bear a comparison with twenty of the worst engraved by Bewick himself. The great North-country man was an artist as well as a wood engraver; and in this respect his principal pupils have also been distinguished. The cut on our present page is one of those engraved by Mr. Branston to show his superiority over Bewick. The bird represented is probably the Grey Phalarope, or Scallop-toed Sand-piper, and it is unquestionably executed with considerable ability; but though Bewick’s cut of the same bird be one of his worst, it is superior to that engraved by Mr. Branston in every essential point.

Between twenty and thirty years ago, a wood engraver named Austin executed several cuts, but did nothing to promote the art. William Hughes, a native of Liverpool, who died in February 1825, at the early age of thirty-two, produced a number of wood engravings of very considerable merit. He chiefly excelled in architectural subjects. One of his best productions is a dedication cut in the first volume of Johnson’s Typographia, 1824, showing the interior of a chapel, surrounded by the arms of the members of the Roxburgh Club. Another artist of the same period, named Hugh Hughes, of whom scarcely anything is now known, executed a whole volume of singularly beautiful wood engravings, entitled “The Beauties of Cambria, consisting of Sixty Views in North and South Wales,” London, 1823. The work was published by subscription at one guinea, or on India paper at two guineas, and was beautifully printed by the same John Johnson who printed William Hughes’ cuts in the “Typographia,” and who, a few years previously, had conducted the Lee Priory Press. The annexed four examples will give an idea of the high finish and perfection of this elegant series.

John Thompson,[VII-89] one of the best English wood engravers of the present day, was a pupil of Mr. Branston. He not only excels, like his master, in the engraving of human figures, but displays equal talent in the execution of all kinds of subjects. Among the very many excellent cuts which have been engraved in England within the last twenty years, those executed by John Thompson rank foremost. As he is rarely unequal to himself, it is rather difficult to point out any which are very much superior to the others of his execution. The following, however, may be referred to as specimens of the general excellence of his cuts:--The title-page to Puckle’s Club, 1817, and the cuts of Moroso, Newsmonger, Swearer, Wiseman, and Xantippe in the same work; the Trout, the Tench, the Salmon, the Chub, and a group of small fish,[VII-90] consisting of the Minnow, the Loach, the Bull-head, and the Stickle-back, in Major’s edition of Walton’s Angler;[VII-91] many of the cuts in Butler’s Hudibras, published by Baldwyn in 1819, and reprinted by Bohn, in 1859, of which we annex an example; the portrait of Butler, prefixed to an edition of his Remains, published in 1827; and The Two Swine, The Mole become a Connoisseur, Love and Friendship, and the portrait of Northcote, in the second series of Northcote’s Fables. One of his latest cuts is the beautifully executed portrait of Milton and his daughters, after a design by Mr. Harvey, already given at page 531. The following cut--a reduced copy of one of the plates in the Rake’s Progress--by Mr. Thompson, engraved a few years ago for a projected edition of Hogarth’s Graphic Works, of which only about a dozen cuts were completed, is one of the best specimens of the art that has been executed in modern times. In the engraving of small cuts of this kind Mr. Thompson has never been surpassed; and it is beyond the power of the art to effect more than what has here been accomplished.

[Footnote VII-89: Charles Thompson, the brother of John, is also a wood engraver. He resides at Paris, and his cuts are better known in France than in this country. Miss Eliza Thompson, a daughter of John Thompson, also engraves on wood.]

[Footnote VII-90: The Salmon, Chub, and group of small fish are given on the preceding page from the actual cuts referred to.]

[Footnote VII-91: Bewick was accustomed to speak highly of the cuts of fish in this beautiful work (several of which are given on the previous pages): the Salmon, engraved by J. Thompson, and the Eel, by H. White, he especially admired. Among others scarcely less excellent are the Pike, by R. Branston; and the Carp, the Grayling, and the Ruffe, by H. White. Major, in his second edition, went to great expense in substituting other engravings for most of these, with the intention of surpassing all that, by the aid of artists, he had done before--in which he to some extent succeeded. In this second edition, the Salmon is engraved by John Jackson. All Mr. Major’s wood-cuts, as well as many of Bewick’s, having passed into the hands of Henry G. Bohn (the present publisher), his edition of Walton’s Angler is extensively enriched by them.]

The English wood engravers, who next to Charlton Nesbit and John Thompson seem best entitled to honourable mention, are:--Samuel Williams;* Thomas Williams; Ebenezer Landells; John Orrin Smith;* George Baxter; Robert Branston; Frederick W. Branston; Henry White, senior, and Henry White, junior; Thomas Mosses;* Charles Gorway; Samuel Slader;* W. T. Green; W. J. Linton; John Martin; J. W. Whimper; John Wright; W. A. Folkard; Charles Gray;* George Vasey; John Byfield;* John Jackson;* Daniel Dodd, and John Dodd, brothers.--William Henry Powis, who died in 1836, aged 28, was one of the best wood engravers of his time. Several beautiful cuts executed by him are to be found in Martin and Westall’s Pictorial Illustrations of the Bible, 1833, and in an edition of Scott’s Bible, 1834; both works now published by Mr. Bohn. The following examples, principally taken from Martin and Westall’s Illustrations, will exemplify the talents of a few of the distinguished artists above mentioned. It would swell the book beyond its limits to give more, otherwise we might select from the same work, which contains one hundred and forty engravings, by all the principal wood engravers of the day.

[Footnote *: All the engravers to whose names an asterisk is added are now deceased.]

The above cut was engraved by Mr. John Jackson in 1833. Abundant evidences of the versatility of his xylographic talent, are scattered throughout the present volume, of which, though not the author in a literary sense, he was at least the conductor and proprietor. Among the subjects pointed out by Mr. Chatto as engraved by Mr. Jackson, those on pages 473, 495, 496, 512, 605, 614, deserve to be mentioned.

Mr. F. W. Branston, brother of Mr. Robert Branston, has long been known as one of our best engravers, as the annexed Specimen will shew.

MR. EBENEZER LANDELLS, the engraver of this beautiful cut, has quite recently been lost to us. He was projector, and for a long time proprietor, of The Ladies’ Illustrated Newspaper, and has engraved an immense number of subjects of all classes.

The talented engraver of the present subject has already been named, with commendation, at page 544. We learn that the sum paid him for engraving it was fifteen guineas, being three guineas more than the average price. Mr. Wm. Bagg, now a successful draftsman of anatomical subjects, made this and all the other drawings on the blocks at the rate of five guineas each, and Mr. John Martin had ten guineas each for the designs. As the volume contains 144 subjects it must have cost the projectors, Messrs. Bull and Churton, upwards of four thousand guineas: it may now be bought for a dozen shillings.

MR. THOMAS WILLIAMS ranks high as an engraver on wood, and the illustrated works of the last twenty years teem with his performances. Some of the engravings in the Merrie Days of England, 1859, are by him.

The only other Illustration which we shall take from Martin and Westall’s Bible Prints is the above, engraved by Mr. W. T. Green, who continues to exercise his burin with great skill, and has recently engraved one of the plates in Merrie Days of England, and Favourite English Poems, and several of Maclise’s designs for Tennyson’s Princess. To this is added, as a vignette finish to the chapter, an engraving recently executed by him for an illustrated edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost, now published in Bohn’s Library, and already mentioned at page 531.

One of the principal wood engravers in Germany, about the time that Bewick began to practise the art in England, was Unger. In 1779 he published a tract, containing five cuts of his own engraving, discussing the question whether Albert Durer actually engraved on wood: his decision is in the negative. In the same year, his son also published a dissertation, illustrated with wood-cuts, on the progress of wood engraving in Brandenburg, with an account of the principal books containing wood-cuts printed in that part of Prussia. They jointly executed some chiaro-scuros, and a number of trifling book-illustrations such as are to be found in Heineken’s Idée Générale d’une Collection complette d’Estampes. These cuts are of a very inferior character. Gubitz, a German wood engraver, who flourished about thirty years ago, executed several cuts which are much superior to any I have seen by the Ungers. Several of those engraved by Gubitz, bear considerable resemblance to the cuts of Bewick. The principal French wood engravers in the eighteenth century, subsequent to Papillon, were Gritner and Beugnet; but neither of them produced anything superior to the worst of the cuts to be found in the work of Papillon. With them wood engraving in France rather declined than advanced. Of late years the art has made great progress both in Germany and France; and should the taste for wood-cuts continue to increase in those countries, their engravers may regain for the art that popularity which it enjoyed in former times, when Nuremberg and Lyons were the great marts for works illustrated with wood engravings.