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font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; +text-align: right; text-indent: 0;} + +/* Transcriber's Note */ +.mynote {font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 92%;} +div.mynote {margin: 1em 5%; padding: .5em 1em 1em;} +div.mynote a {text-decoration: none;} + +@media print { + .screenstyle {display: none;} + body {margin-left: 2%; margin-right: 2%;} + a {text-decoration: none; color: inherit;} + div.maintext {page-break-before: always;} + div.verse, p.synopsis {page-break-inside: avoid;} + h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {page-break-after: avoid;} + p.caption, p.leftside, p.rightside {page-break-before: avoid;} + span.pagenum {position: static; float: right; width: auto; + margin-right: -10%;} + ins.correction {background-color: #CCC; border-bottom: none;} +} + +@media screen { + span.pagenum {position: absolute; right: 2%;} + .mynote ins.correction {border-bottom: 1px dotted red;} +} +</style> + +</head> + +<body> +<div class = "mynote"> +<p class = "center"> +<a href = "WoodEngraving.html">Introduction</a> (separate file)<br> +<a href = "WoodEngraving.html#illus">List of Illustrations</a> (separate +file)</p> + +<p class = "center"> +<a href = "WoodEngraving1.html">Chapter I</a> (separate file)<br> +<a href = "WoodEngraving1.html#chap_II">Chapter II</a> (separate +file)<br> +<a href = "WoodEngraving1.html#chap_III">Chapter III</a> (separate +file)<br> +<a href = "WoodEngraving4.html">Chapter IV</a> (separate file)<br> +<a href = "WoodEngraving4.html#chap_V">Chapter V</a> (separate file)<br> +<a href = "WoodEngraving6.html">Chapter VI</a> (separate file)<br> +Chapter VII<br> +<a href = "WoodEngraving8.html">Chapter VIII</a> (separate file)<br> +<a href = "WoodEngraving9.html">Chapter IX</a> (separate file)</p> + +<p class = "center"> +<a href = "WoodEngraving.html#index">Index</a> (separate file)</p> +</div> + +<div class = "titlepage"> + +<h2><span class = "smallest">ON</span><br> +WOOD ENGRAVING.</h2> + +</div> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page446" id = "page446"> +446</a></span> +<h3><a name = "chap_VII" id = "chap_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">REVIVAL OF WOOD ENGRAVING.</span></h3> + +<p class = "synopsis"> +English wood-cuts in 1712—howel’s medulla historiæ +anglicanæ—maittaire’s classics +1713—e. kirkall—his chiaro-scuros—cuts in +croxall’s æsop, 1722—j. b. jackson—chiaro-scuros +engraved by him at venice, 1738-1742—french wood engravers, +1710-1768; j. m. papillon, m. le sueur, and p. s. +fournier—english wood-cuts, 1760-1772—cuts in sir john +hawkins’s history of music, 1776—thomas bewick—his first +wood-cuts, in hutton’s mensuration, 1768-1770—cuts by him in a +hieroglyphic bible—in fables, 1779-1784—his cut of the +chillingham bull—his quadrupeds, british birds, and +fables—john bewick—cuts by him in emblems of mortality, and +other books—poems by goldsmith and parnell—somerviles’s +chase—robert johnson, designer of several of the tail-pieces in +bewick’s works—charlton nesbit—luke clennell—william +harvey—robert branston—john thompson, and others.</p> + +<div class = "maintext"> + +<p class = "first"><span class = "firstword"><span class = "dropcap"> +<a name = "illus_446" id = "illus_446"><img src = "images/illus_446.png" +width = "188" height = "188" alt = "A"></a></span>lthough</span> +wood engraving had fallen into almost utter neglect by the end of the +seventeenth century, and continued in a languishing state for many years +afterward, yet the art was never lost, as some persons have stated; for +both in England and in France a regular succession of wood engravers can +be traced from 1700 to the time of Thomas Bewick. The cuts which appear +in books printed in Germany, Holland, and Italy during the same period, +though of very inferior execution, sufficiently prove that the art +continued to be practised in those countries.</p> + +<p>The first English book of this period which requires notice is an +edition of Howel’s Medulla Historiæ Anglicanæ, octavo, printed at London +in 1712.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII1" id = "tagVII1" href = +"#noteVII1">VII.1</a> There are upwards of sixty wood-cuts in this work, +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page447" id = "page447"> +447</a></span> +and the manner in which they are executed sufficiently indicates that +the engraver must have either been self-taught or the pupil of a master +who did not understand the art. The blocks have, for the most part, been +engraved in the manner of copper-plates; most of the lines, which a +regular wood engraver would have left in relief, are cut in +<i>intaglio</i>, and hence in the impression they appear white where +they ought to be black. The bookseller, in an address to the reader, +thus proceeds to show the advantages of those cuts, and to answer any +objection that might be urged against them on account of their being +engraved on wood. “The cuts added in this edition are intended more for +use than show. The utility consists in these two particulars. 1. To +make the better impression on the memory. 2. To show more readily +when the notable passages in our history were transacted; which, without +the knowledge of the names of the persons, are not to be found out, by +even the best indexes. As for example: In what reign was it that a +rebellious rout, headed by a vile fellow, made great ravage, and +appearing in the King’s presence with insolence, their captain was +stabbed upon the spot by the Lord-Mayor? Here, without knowing the names +of some of the parties, which a world of people are ignorant of, the +story is not to be found by an index; but by the help of the cut, which +catches the eye, is soon discovered. We all have heard of the piety of +one of our queens who sucked the poison out of her husband’s wound, but +very few remember which of them it was, which the cut presently shows. +The same is to be said of all the rest, since we have chosen only such +things as are <span class = "smallroman">NOTABILIA</span> in the history +to describe in our sculptures.—And if it be objected that the +graving is in wood, and not in copper, which would be more beautiful; we +answer, that such would be much more expensive too. And we were willing +to save the buyer’s purse; especially since even the best engraving +would not better serve the purposes above-said.”</p> + +<p>Though no mark is to be found on any of those cuts, I am inclined to +think that they were executed by Edward Kirkall, whose name appears as +the engraver of the copper-plate frontispiece to the book. The accounts +which we have of Kirkall are extremely unsatisfactory. Strutt says that +he was born at Sheffield in 1695; and that, visiting London in search of +improvement, he was for some time employed in graving arms, stamps, and +ornaments for books. It is, however, likely that he was born previous to +1695; for the frontispiece to Howel’s +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page448" id = "page448"> +448</a></span> +Medulla is dated 1712, when, if Strutt be correct, Kirkall would be only +seventeen. That he engraved on wood, as well as on copper, is +unquestionable; and I am inclined to think that he either occasionally +engraved small ornaments and head-pieces on type-metal for the use of +printers, or that casts in this kind of metal were taken from some of +his small cuts.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII2" id = "tagVII2" href = +"#noteVII2">VII.2</a></p> + +<p>The head-pieces and ornaments in Maittaire’s Latin Classics, +duodecimo, published by Tonson and Watts, 1713, were probably engraved +on wood by Kirkall, as his initials, E. K., are to be found on one +of the tail-pieces. Papillon speaks rather favourably of those small +cuts, though he objects to the uniformity of the tint and the want of +precision in the more delicate parts of the figures, such as the faces +and hands. He notices the tail-piece with the mark E. K. as one of +the best executed; and he suspects that these letters were intended for +the name of an English painter—called <i>Ekwits</i>, to the best +of his recollection,—who “taught the arts of painting and of +engraving on wood to J. B. Jackson, so well known to the printers +of Paris about 1730 from his having supplied them with so large a stock +of indifferent cuts.”<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII3" id = "tagVII3" +href = "#noteVII3">VII.3</a></p> + +<p>The cuts in Croxall’s edition of Æsop’s Fables, first published by +J. and R. Tonson and J. Watts, in 1722, were, in all +probability, executed by the same person who engraved the head-pieces +and other ornaments in Maittaire’s Latin Classics, printed for the same +publishers about nine years before; and there is reason to believe that +this person, as has been previously observed, was E. Kirkall. +Bewick, in the introduction prefixed to his “Fables of Æsop and others,” +first printed in 1818, says that the cuts in Croxall’s edition were “on +metal, in the manner of wood.” He, however, gives no reason for this +opinion, and I very much question its correctness. After a careful +inspection I have not been able to discover any peculiar mark which +should induce me to suppose that they had been engraved on metal; and +without some such mark indicating that the engraved surface had been +fastened to the block to raise it to the height of the type, +I consider it impossible for any person to decide merely from the +appearance of the impressions that those cuts were printed from a +metallic surface. The difference, in point of impression, between a +wood-cut and an engraving on type-metal in the same manner, or a cast in +type-metal from a wood-cut, is not to be distinguished. A wood +engraver of the present day, when casts +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page449" id = "page449"> +449</a></span> +from wood-cuts are so frequently used instead of the original engraved +block, decides that a certain impression has been from a cast, not in +consequence of any peculiarity in its appearance denoting that it is +printed from a metallic surface, but from certain marks—little +flaws in the lines and minute “picks”—which he knows are +characteristic of a “cast.” When a cast, however, has been well taken, +and afterwards carefully cleared out with the graver, it is frequently +impossible to decide that the impression has been taken from it, unless +the examiner have also before him an impression from the original block +with which it may be compared; and even then, a person not very +well acquainted with the practice of wood engraving and the method of +taking casts from engraved wood-blocks, will be extremely liable to +decide erroneously.</p> + +<p>Though it is by no means improbable that a person like Kirkall, who +had been accustomed to engrave on copper, might attempt to engrave on +type-metal in the same manner as on wood, and that he might thus execute +a few small head-pieces and flowered ornaments, yet I consider it very +unlikely that he should <i>continue to prefer metal</i> for the purpose +of relief engraving after he had made a few experiments. The advantages +of wood over type-metal are indeed so great, both as regards clearness +of line and facility of execution, that it seems incredible that any +person who had tried both materials should hesitate to give the +preference to wood. If, however, the cuts in Croxall’s Æsop were really +engraved on metal in the manner of wood, they are, as a series, the most +extraordinary specimens of relief engraving for the purpose of printing, +that have ever been executed. When Bewick stated that those cuts were +engraved on metal, I am inclined to think that he founded his +opinion rather on popular report than on close and impartial examination +of the cuts themselves; and it is further to be observed that Thomas +Bewick, with all his merits as a wood engraver, was not without his +weaknesses as a man; he was not unwilling that people should believe +that the art of wood engraving was lost in this country, and that the +honour of its re-discovery, as well as of its subsequent advancement, +was due to him. Though he was no doubt sincere in the opinion which he +gave, yet those who know him are well aware that he would not have felt +any pleasure in calling the attention of his readers to a series of +wood-cuts executed in England upwards of thirty years before he was +born, and which are not much inferior—except as regards the +animals—to the cuts of fables engraved by himself and his brother +previous to 1780.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII4" id = "tagVII4" href = +"#noteVII4">VII.4</a> The cuts in Croxall’s Æsop not only +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page450" id = "page450"> +450</a></span> +display great improvement in the engraver, supposing him to be the same +person that executed the head-pieces and ornaments in Maittaire’s Latin +Classics printed in 1713, but are very much superior to any cuts +contained in works of the same kind printed in France between 1700 and +1760.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII5" id = "tagVII5" href = +"#noteVII5">VII.5</a></p> + +<div class = "picture"> +<div class = "picblock w300"> +<p><a name = "illus_450a" id = "illus_450a"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_450a.png" width = "285" height = "225" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +FROM A COPPER-PLATE BY S. LE CLERC.</p> +</div> + +<div class = "picblock w300"> +<p><a name = "illus_450b" id = "illus_450b"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_450b.png" width = "275" height = "213" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +FROM A WOOD-CUT IN CROXALL’S ÆSOP.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Many of the subjects in Croxall are merely reversed copies of +engravings on copper by S. Le Clerc, illustrative of a French +edition +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page451" id = "page451"> +451</a></span> +of Æsop’s Fables published about 1694. The first of the preceding cuts +is a fac-simile of one of Le Clerc’s engravings; and the second is a +copy of the same subject as it appears in Croxall. The fable to which +they both relate is the Fox and the Goat.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_451" id = "illus_451"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_451.png" width = "318" height = "231" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>The above cut is by no means one of the best in Croxall: it has not +been selected as a specimen of the manner in which those cuts are +executed, but as an instance of the closeness with which the English +wood-cuts have been copied from the French copper-plates. In several of +the cuts in Bewick’s Fables of Æsop and others, the arrangement and +composition appear to have been suggested by those in Croxall; but in +every instance of this kind the modern artist has made the subject his +own by the superior manner in which it is treated: he restores to the +animals their proper forms, represents them <i>acting</i> their parts as +described in the fable, and frequently introduces an incident or sketch +of landscape which gives to the whole subject a natural character. The +following copy of the Fox and Goat, in the Fables of Æsop and others, +1818-1823, will serve to show how little the modern artist has borrowed +in such instances from the cuts in Croxall, and how much has been +supplied by himself.</p> + +<p>Between 1722 and 1724, Kirkall published by subscription twelve +chiaro-scuros engraved by himself, chiefly after designs by old Italian +masters. In those chiaro-scuros the outlines and the darker parts of the +figures are printed from copper-plates, and the sepia-coloured tints +afterwards impressed from wood-blocks; though they possess considerable +merit, they are deficient in spirit, and will not bear a comparison with +the chiaro-scuros executed by Ugo da Carpi and other early +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page452" id = "page452"> +452</a></span> +Italian wood engravers. Most of them are too smooth, and want the bold +outline and vigorous character which distinguish the old chiaro-scuros: +what Kirkall gained in delicacy and precision by the introduction of +mezzotint, he lost through the inefficient engraving of the wood-blocks. +One of the largest of those chiaro-scuros is a copy of one of Ugo da +Carpi’s—Æneas carrying his father on his shoulders—after a +design by Raffaele. In Walpole’s Catalogue of Engravers, a notice +of Kirkall’s “new method of printing, composed of etching, mezzotinto, +and wooden stamps,” concludes with the following passage: “He performed +several prints in this manner, and did great justice to the drawing and +expression of the masters he imitated. This invention, for one may call +it so, had much success, much applause, no imitators.—I suppose it +is too laborious and too tedious. In an opulent country where there is +great facility of getting money, it is seldom got by merit. Our artists +are in too much hurry to gain it, or deserve it.”</p> + +<p>About 1724 Kirkall published seventeen views of shipping, from +designs by W. Vandevelde, which he also called “prints in +chiaro-scuro.” They have, however, no just pretensions to the name as it +is usually understood when applied to prints, for they are merely tinted +engravings worked off in a greenish-blue ink. These so-called +chiaro-scuros are decided failures.</p> + +<p>Kirkall engraved, on copper, the plates in Rowe’s translation of +Lucan’s Pharsalia, folio, published by Tonson, 1718; the plates for an +edition of Inigo Jones’s Stonehenge, 1725; and a frontispiece to the +works of Mrs. Eliza Haywood, which is thus alluded to in the +Dunciad:</p> + +<div class = "verse"> +<p class = "open">“See in the circle next Eliza placed,</p> +<p>Two babes of love close clinging to her waist;</p> +<p>Fair as before her works she stands confest,</p> +<p>In flowers and pearls by bounteous Kirkall drest.”</p> +</div> + +<p>A considerable number of rude and tasteless ornaments and +head-pieces, with the mark F. H., engraved on wood, are to be found +in English books printed between 1720 and 1740. Several of them have +been cast in type-metal,<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII6" id = "tagVII6" +href = "#noteVII6">VII.6</a> as is evident from the marks of the pins, +in the impressions, by which they have been fastened to the blocks; the +same head-piece or ornament is also frequently found in books printed in +the same year by different printers. Some of the best headings and +tail-pieces of this period occur in a volume of “Miscellaneous Poems, +original and translated, by several hands. Published +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page453" id = "page453"> +453</a></span> +by Mr. Concanen,” London, printed for J. Peele, octavo, 1724. The +subjects are, Apollo with a lyre; Minerva with a spear and shield; two +men sifting corn; Hercules destroying the hydra; and a man with a large +lantern. They are much superior to any cuts of the same kind with the +mark F. H.; and from the manner in which they are executed, +I am inclined to think that they are the work of the person who +engraved the cuts in Croxall’s Æsop. The following is a fac-simile of +one of the best of the cuts that I have ever seen with the mark +F. H. It occurs as a tail-piece at the end of the preface to +“Strephon’s Revenge: A Satire on the Oxford Toasts,” octavo, +London, 1724.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII7" id = "tagVII7" href = +"#noteVII7">VII.7</a></p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_453" id = "illus_453"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_453.png" width = "286" height = "199" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>John Baptist Jackson, an English wood engraver, was, according to +Papillon, a pupil of the person who engraved the small head-pieces +and ornaments in Maittaire’s Latin Classics, published by Tonson and +Watts in 1713; and as the cuts in Croxall’s Æsop were probably engraved +by the same person, as has been previously observed, it is not unlikely +that Jackson, as his apprentice, might have some share in their +execution. Though these cuts were much superior to any that had appeared +in England for about a hundred years previously, wood engraving seems to +have received but little encouragement. Probably from want of employment +in his own country, Jackson proceeded to Paris, where he remained +several years, chiefly employed in engraving head-pieces and ornaments +for the booksellers. Papillon, who seems to have borne no good-will +towards Jackson, thus speaks of him in the first volume of his “Traité +de la Gravure en Bois.”</p> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page454" id = "page454"> +454</a></span> +<p>“J. Jackson, an Englishman, who resided several years in Paris, might +have perfected himself in wood engraving, which he had learnt of an +English painter, as I have previously mentioned, if he had been willing +to follow the advice which it was in my power to give him. Having called +on me, as soon as he arrived in Paris, to ask for work, I for +several months gave him a few things to execute in order to afford him +the means of subsistence. He, however, repaid me with ingratitude; he +made a duplicate of a flowered ornament of my drawing, which he offered, +before delivering to me the block, to the person for whom it was to be +engraved. From the reproaches that I received, on the matter being +discovered, I naturally declined to employ him any longer. He then +went the round of the printing-offices in Paris, and was obliged to +engrave his cuts without order, and to offer them for almost nothing; +and many of the printers, profiting by his distress, supplied themselves +amply with his cuts. He had acquired a certain insipid taste which was +not above the little mosaics on snuff-boxes; and with ornaments of this +kind, after the manner of several other inferior engravers, he +surcharged his works. His mosaics, however delicately engraved, are +always deficient in effect, and display the engraver’s patience rather +than his talent; for the other parts of the cut, consisting of delicate +lines without tints or a gradation of light and shade, want that force +which is necessary to render the whole striking. Such wood engravings, +however deficient in this respect, are yet admired by printers of vulgar +taste, who foolishly pretend that they most resemble copper-plates, and +that they print better than cuts of a picturesque character, and +containing a variety of tints.</p> + +<p>“Jackson, being obliged, through destitution, to leave Paris, where +he could get nothing more to do, travelled in France; and afterwards, +being disgusted with his profession, he accompanied a painter to Rome, +from whence he went to Venice, where, as I am informed, he married, and +subsequently returned to England, his native country.”<a class = "tag" +name = "tagVII8" id = "tagVII8" href = "#noteVII8">VII.8</a></p> + +<p>Though Papillon speaks disparagingly of Jackson, the latter was at +least as good an engraver as himself. Jackson appears to have visited +Paris not later than 1726, for Papillon mentions a vignette and a large +letter engraved by him in that year for a Latin and French dictionary, +printed in 1727 by the brothers Barbou; and it is likely that he +remained there till about 1731. In an Italian translation of the Lives +of the Twelve Cæsars, printed there in quarto 1738, there is a large +ornamental title-page of his engraving; and in the same year he engraved +a chiaro-scuro of Christ taken down from the cross, from a +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page455" id = "page455"> +455</a></span> +painting by Rembrandt,<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII9" id = "tagVII9" +href = "#noteVII9">VII.9</a> in the possession of Joseph Smith, Esq. the +British consul at Venice, a well-known collector of pictures and +other works of art. Between 1738 and 1742, when residing at Venice, he +also engraved twenty-seven large chiaro-scuros,—chiefly after +pictures by Titian, G. Bassano, Tintoret, and +P. Veronese,—which were published in a large folio volume in +the latter year. They are very unequal in point of merit; some of them +appearing harsh and crude, and others flat and spiritless, when compared +with similar productions of the old Italian wood engravers. One of the +best is the Martyrdom of St. Peter Dominicanus, after Titian, with the +date 1739; the manner in which the foliage of the trees is represented +is particularly good. On his return to England he seems to have totally +abandoned the practice of wood engraving in the ordinary manner for the +purpose of illustrating or ornamenting books; for I have not been able +to discover any English wood-cut of the period that either contains his +mark, or seems, from its comparative excellence, to have been of his +engraving. Finding no demand in this country for wood-cuts, he appears +to have tried to render his knowledge of engraving in chiaro-scuro +available for the purpose of printing paper-hangings. In an “Essay on +the Invention of Engraving and Printing in Chiaro Oscuro,”<a class = +"tag" name = "tagVII10" id = "tagVII10" href = "#noteVII10">VII.10</a> +published in his name in 1754, we learn that he was then engaged in a +manufacture of this kind at Battersea. The account given in this essay +of the origin and progress of chiaro-scuro engraving is frequently +incorrect; and from several of the statements which it contains, it +would seem that the writer was very imperfectly acquainted with the +works of his predecessors and contemporaries in the same department of +wood engraving. From the following passage, which is to be found in the +fifth page, it is evident that the writer was either ignorant of what +had been done in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and even in +his own age, or that he was wishful to enhance the merit of Mr. +Jackson’s process by concealing what had recently been done in the same +manner by others. “After having said all this, it may seem highly +improper to give to Mr. Jackson the merit of inventing this art; but let +me be permitted to say, that an art recovered is less little than an art +invented. The works of the former artists remain indeed; but the manner +in which they were done is entirely lost: the inventing then the manner +is really due to this latter undertaker, since no writings, or other +remains, are to be found by +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page456" id = "page456"> +456</a></span> +which the method of former artists can be discovered, or in what manner +they executed their works; nor, in truth, has the Italian method since +the beginning of the sixteenth century been attempted by any one except +Mr. Jackson.” What is here called the “Italian method,” that is, the +method of executing chiaro-scuros entirely on wood, was practised in +France at the end of the seventeenth century: and Nicholas Le Sueur had +engraved several cuts in this manner about 1730, the very time when +Jackson was living in Paris. The principles of the art had also been +applied in France to the execution of paper-hangings upwards of fifty +years before Jackson attempted to establish the same kind of manufacture +in England. Not a word is said of the chiaro-scuros of Kirkall,<a class += "tag" name = "tagVII11" id = "tagVII11" href = "#noteVII11">VII.11</a> +from whom it is likely that Jackson first acquired his knowledge of +chiaro-scuro engraving: with the exception of the outlines and some +other parts in these chiaro-scuros being executed in mezzotint, the +printing of the rest from wood-blocks is precisely the same as in the +Italian method.</p> + +<p>The Essay contains eight prints illustrative of Mr. Jackson’s method; +four are chiaro-scuros, and four are printed in “proper colours,” as is +expressed in the title, in imitation of drawings. They are very poorly +executed, and are very much inferior to the chiaro-scuros engraved by +Jackson when residing at Venice. The prints in “proper colours” are +egregious failures. The following notices respecting Mr. Jackson are +extracted from the Essay in question.</p> + +<p>“Certainly Mr. Jackson, the person of whom we speak, has not spent +less time and pains, applied less assiduity, or travelled to fewer +distant countries in search of perfecting his art, than other men; +having passed twenty years in France and Italy to complete himself in +drawing after the best masters in the best schools, and to see what +antiquity had most worthy the attention of a student in his particular +pursuits. After all this time spent in perfecting himself in his +discoveries, like a true lover of his native country, he is returned +with a design to communicate all the means which his endeavours can +contribute to enrich the land where he drew his first breath, by adding +to its commerce, and employing its inhabitants; and yet, like a citizen +of it, he would willingly enjoy some little share of those advantages +before he leaves this world, which he must leave behind him to his +countrymen when he shall be no more.”</p> + +<p>“During his residence at Venice, where he made himself perfect +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page457" id = "page457"> +457</a></span> +in the art which he professes, he finished many works well known to the +nobility and gentry who travelled to that city whilst he lived in +it.—Mr. Frederick, Mr. Lethuillier, and Mr. Smith, the English +consul at Venice, encouraged Mr. Jackson to undertake to engrave in +chiaro-oscuro, blocks after the most capital pictures of Titian, +Tintoret, Giacomo Bassano, and Paul Veronese, which are to be found in +Venice, and to this end procured him a subscription. In this work may be +seen what engraving on wood will effectuate, and how truly the spirit +and genius of every one of those celebrated masters are preserved in the +prints.</p> + +<p>“During his executing this work he was honoured with the +encouragement of the Right Honourable the Marquis of Hartington, Sir +Roger Newdigate, Sir Bouchier Wrey, and other English gentlemen on their +travels at Venice, who saw Mr. Jackson drawing on the blocks for the +print after the famous picture of the Crucifixion painted by Tintoret in +the albergo of St. Roche. Those prints may now be seen at his house at +Battersea.—Not content with having brought his works in +chiaro-oscuro to such perfection, he attempted to print landscapes in +all their original colours; not only to give to the world all the +outline light and shade, which is to be found in the paintings of the +best masters, but in a great degree their very manner and taste of +colouring. With this intent he published six landscapes,<a class = "tag" +name = "tagVII12" id = "tagVII12" href = "#noteVII12">VII.12</a> which +are his first attempt in this nature, in imitation of painting in +<i>aquarillo</i> or water-colours; which work was taken notice of by the +Earl of Holderness, then ambassador extraordinary to the republic of +Venice; and his excellency was pleased to permit the dedication of those +prints to him, and to encourage this new attempt of printing pictures +with a very particular and very favourable regard, and to express his +approbation of the merit of the inventor.”</p> + +<p>John Michael Papillon, one of the best French wood engravers of his +age, was born in 1698. His grandfather and his father, as has been +previously observed, were both wood engravers. In 1706, when only eight +years old, he secretly made his first essay in wood engraving; and when +only nine, his father, who had become aware of his amusing himself in +this manner, gave him a large block to engrave, which he appears to have +executed to his father’s satisfaction, though he had previously received +no instructions in the art.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII13" id = +"tagVII13" href = "#noteVII13">VII.13</a> The block was intended +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page458" id = "page458"> +458</a></span> +for printing paper-hangings, the manufacture of which was his father’s +principal business. Though until the time of his father’s death, which +happened in 1723, Papillon appears to have been chiefly employed in such +works, and in hanging the papers which he had previously engraved, he +yet executed several vignettes and ornaments for the booksellers, and +sedulously endeavoured to improve himself in this higher department of +his business.</p> + +<p>Shortly after the death of his father he married; and, having given +up the business of engraving paper-hangings, he laboured so hard to +perfect himself in the art of designing and engraving vignettes and +ornaments for books, that his head became affected; and he sometimes +displayed such absence of mind that his wife became alarmed, fancying +that “he no longer loved her.” On his assuring her that his behaviour +was the result of his anxiety to improve himself in drawing and +engraving on wood, and to write something about the art, she encouraged +him in his purpose, and aided him with her advice, for, as she was the +daughter of a clever man, M. Chaveau, a sculptor, and had +herself made many pretty drawings on fans, she had some knowledge of +design. Papillon’s fits of absence, however, though they may have been +proximately induced by close application and anxiety about his success +in the line to which he intended to apply himself in future, appear to +have originated in a tendency to insanity, which at a later period +displayed itself in a more decided manner. In 1759, in consequence of a +determination of blood to the head, as he says, through excessive joy at +seeing his only daughter, who had lived from the age of four years with +her uncle, combined with a recollection of his former sorrows, his mind +became so much disordered that it was necessary to send him to an +hospital, where, through repeated bleedings and other remedies, he seems +to have speedily recovered. He mentions that in the same year, four +other engravers were attacked by the same malady, and that only one of +them regained his senses.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII14" id = +"tagVII14" href = "#noteVII14">VII.14</a></p> + +<p>Papillon’s endeavours to improve himself were not unsuccessful; the +cuts which he engraved about 1724, though mostly small, possess +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page459" id = "page459"> +459</a></span> +considerable merit; they are not only designed with much more feeling +than the generality of those executed by other French engravers of the +period, but are also much more effective, displaying a variety of tint +and a contrast of light and shade which are not to be found in the works +of his contemporaries. In 1726, in order to divert his anxiety and to +bring his cuts into notice, he projected <i>Le petit Almanach de +Paris</i>, which subsequently was generally known as “Le Papillon.” The +first that he published was for the year 1727; and the wood-cuts which +it contained equally attracted the attention of the public and of +connoisseurs. Monsieur Colombat, the editor of the Court Calendar, spoke +highly of the cut for the mouth of January; the cross-hatchings, he +said, were executed in the first style of wood engraving, and he kindly +predicted to Papillon that he would one day excel in his art. From this +time he seems to have no longer had any doubt of his own abilities, but, +on the contrary, to have entertained a very high opinion of them. He +appears to have considered wood engraving as the highest of all the +graphic arts, and himself as the greatest of all its professors, either +ancient or modern.</p> + +<p>From this, to him, memorable epoch,—the publication of “Le +petit Almanach de Paris,” with cuts by <span class = +"smallcaps">Papillon</span>,—he appears to have been seldom +without employment, for in the Supplement to the “Traité de la Gravure +en Bois,” he mentions that in 1768, the “Collection of the Works of the +Papillons,” presented by him to the Royal Library, contained upwards of +<i>five thousand</i> pieces of his own engraving. This “Recueil des +Papillons,” which he seems to have considered as a family monument “ære +perennius,” is perpetually referred to in the course of his work. It +consisted of four large folio volumes containing specimens of wood +engravings executed by the different members of the Papillon family for +three generations—his grandfather, his father, his uncle, his +brother, and himself.</p> + +<p>Papillon was employed not only by the booksellers of his own country, +but also by those of Holland. A book, entitled “Historische School +en Huis-Bybel,” printed at Amsterdam in 1743, contains two hundred and +seventeen cuts, all of which appear to have been either engraved by +Papillon himself, or under his superintendence. His name appears on +several of them, and they are all engraved in the same style. From a +passage in the dedication, it seems likely that they had appeared in a +similar work printed at the same place a few years previously. They are +generally executed in a coarser manner than those contained in +Papillon’s own work, but the style of engraving and general effect are +the same. The cut on the next page is a copy of the first, which is one +of the best in the work. To the left is +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page460" id = "page460"> +460</a></span> +Papillon’s name, engraved, as was customary with him, in very small +letters, with the date, 1734.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_460" id = "illus_460"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_460.png" width = "297" height = "216" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>Papillon’s History of Wood Engraving, published in 1766, in two +octavo volumes, with a Supplement,<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII15" id += "tagVII15" href = "#noteVII15">VII.15</a> under the title of “Traité +Historique et Pratique de la Gravure en Bois,” is said to have been +projected, and partly written, upwards of thirty years before it was +given to the public. Shortly after his being admitted a member of the +Society of Arts, in 1733, he read, at one of the meetings, a paper +on the history and practice of wood engraving; and in 1735 the Society +signified their approbation that a work written by him on the subject +should be printed. It appears that the first volume of such a work was +actually printed between 1736 and 1738, but never published. He does not +explain why the work was not proceeded with at that time; and it would +be useless to speculate on the possible causes of the interruption. He +mentions that a copy of this volume was preserved in the Royal Library; +and he charges Fournier the younger, who between 1758 and 1761 published +three tracts on the invention of wood engraving and printing, with +having availed himself of a portion of the historical information +contained in this volume. The public, however, according to his own +statement, gained by the delay; as he grew older he gained more +knowledge of the history of the art, and “invented” several important +improvements in his practice, all of which are embodied in his later +work. In 1758 he also discovered the memoranda which he had made at +Monsieur De Greder’s, in 1719 or 1720, relative to the interesting +twins, +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page461" id = "page461"> +461</a></span> +Alexander Alberic Cunio and his sister Isabella, who, about 1284, +between the fourteenth and sixteenth years of their age, executed a +series of wood engravings illustrative of the history of Alexander the +Great.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII16" id = "tagVII16" href = +"#noteVII16">VII.16</a> However the reader may be delighted or amused by +the romantic narrative of the Cunio, Papillon’s reputation as the +historian of his art would most likely have stood a <i>little</i> higher +had he never discovered those memoranda. They have very much the +character of ill-contrived forgeries; and even supposing that he +believed them, and printed them in good faith, his judgment must be +sacrificed to save his honesty.</p> + +<p>The first volume of Papillon’s work contains the history of the art; +it is divided into two parts, the first treating of wood engraving for +the purpose of printing in the usual manner from a single block, and the +second treating of chiaro-scuro. He does not trace the progress of the +art by pointing out the improvements introduced at different periods; he +enumerates all the principal cuts that he had seen, without reference to +their execution as compared with those of an earlier date; and, from his +desire to enhance the importance of his art, he claims almost every +eminent painter whose name or mark is to be found on a cut, as a wood +engraver. He is in this respect so extremely credulous as to assert that +Mary de Medici, Queen of Henry IV. of France, had occasionally amused +herself with engraving on wood; and in order to place the fact beyond +doubt he refers to a cut representing the bust of a female, with the +following inscription: “<span class = "smallcaps">Maria Medici. +F. m.d.lxxxvii.</span>” “The engraving,” he observes, with his +usual <i>bonhomie</i>, “is rather better than what might be reasonably +expected from a person of such quality; it contains many +cross-hatchings, somewhat unequal indeed, and occasionally imperfect, +but, notwithstanding, sufficiently well engraved to show that she had +executed several wood-cuts before she had attempted this. I know +more than one wood engraver—or at least calling himself +such—who is incapable of doing the like.” In 1587, the date of +this cut, Mary de Medici was only fourteen years old; and since its +execution, according to Papillon, shows that she was then no novice in +the art, she must have acquired her practical knowledge of wood +engraving at rather an early age,—at least for a princess. +Papillon never seems to have considered that F is the first letter of +“<span class = "smallcaps">Filia</span>” as well as of “<span class = +"smallcaps">Fecit</span>,” nor to have suspected that the cut was simply +a portrait of Mary de Medici, and not a specimen of her engraving.</p> + +<p>From the following passage in the preface, he seems to have been +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page462" id = "page462"> +462</a></span> +aware that his including the names of many eminent painters in his list +of wood engravers would be objected to. “Some persons, who entertain a +preconceived opinion that many painters whom I mention have not engraved +on wood, may perhaps dispute the works which I ascribe to them. Of such +persons I have to request that they will not condemn me before they have +acquainted themselves with my researches and examined my proofs, and +that they will judge of them without prejudice or partiality.” The +“researches” to which he alludes, appear to have consisted in searching +out the names and marks of eminent painters in old wood-cuts, and his +“proofs” are of the same kind as that which he alleges in support of his +assertion that Mary de Medici had engraved on wood,—a fact which, +as he remarks, “was unknown to Rubens.” The historical portion of +Papillon’s work is indeed little more than a confused catalogue of all +the wood-cuts which had come under his observation; it abounds in +errors, and almost every page affords an instance of his credulity.</p> + +<p>In the second volume, which is occupied with details relative to the +practice of the art, Papillon gives his instructions and enumerates his +“inventions” in a style of complacent self-conceit. The most trifling +remarks are accompanied by a reference to the “Recueil des Papillons;” +and the most obvious means of effecting certain objects,—such +means as had been regularly adopted by wood engravers for upwards of two +hundred years previously, and such as in succeeding times have suggested +themselves to persons who never received any instructions in the +art,—are spoken of as important discoveries, and credit taken for +them accordingly. One of his fancied discoveries is that of lowering the +surface of a block towards the edges in order that the engraved lines in +those parts may be less subject to the action of the <i>plattin</i> in +printing, and consequently lighter in the impression. The Lyons Dance of +Death, 1538, affords several instances of blocks lowered in this manner, +not only towards the edges, but also in the middle of the cut, whenever +it was necessary that certain delicately engraved lines should be +lightly printed, and thus have the appearance of gradually diminishing +till their extremities should scarcely be distinguishable from the paper +on which they are impressed. Numerous instances of this practice are +frequent in wood-cuts executed from 1540 to the decline of the art in +the seventeenth century. Lowering was also practised by the engraver of +the cuts in Croxall’s Æsop; by Thomas Bewick, who acquired a knowledge +of wood engraving without a master; and by the self-taught artist who +executed the cuts in Alexander’s Expedition down the Hydaspes, +a poem by Dr. Thomas Beddoes, printed in 1792, but never +published.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII17" id = "tagVII17" href = +"#noteVII17">VII.17</a> As the +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page463" id = "page463"> +463</a></span> +same practice has recently been claimed as an “invention,” it would seem +that some wood engravers are either apt to ascribe much importance to +little things, or are singularly ignorant of what has been done by their +predecessors. Such an “invention,” though unquestionably useful, surely +does not require any particular ingenuity for its discovery; such +“discoveries” every man makes for himself as soon as he feels the want +of that which the so-called invention will supply. The man who pares the +cork of a quart bottle in order to make it fit a smaller one is, with +equal justice, entitled to the name of an inventor, provided he was not +aware of the thing having been done before: such an “adaptation of means +to the end” cannot, however, be considered as an effort of genius +deserving of public commendation.</p> + +<p>In Papillon’s time it was not customary with French engravers on wood +to have the subject perfectly drawn on the block, with all the lines and +hatchings pencilled in, and the <i>effect</i> and the different tints +indicated either in pencil or in Indian ink, as is the usual practice in +the present day. The design was first drawn on paper; from this, by +means of tracing paper, the engraver made an outline copy on the block; +and, without pencilling in all the lines or washing in the tints, he +proceeded to “translate” the original, to which he constantly referred +in the progress of his work, in the same manner as a copper-plate +engraver does to the drawing or painting before him. Papillon perceived +the disadvantages which resulted from this mode of proceeding; and +though he still continued to make his first drawing on paper, he copied +it more carefully and distinctly on the block than was usual with his +contemporaries. He was thus enabled to proceed with greater certainty in +his engraving; what he had to effect was immediately before him, and it +was no longer necessary to refer so frequently to the original. To the +circumstance of the drawings being perfectly made on the block, Papillon +ascribes in a great measure the excellence of the old wood engravings of +the time of Durer and Holbein.</p> + +<p>Papillon, although always inclined to magnify little things connected +with wood engraving, and to take great credit to himself for trifling +“inventions,” was yet thoroughly acquainted with the practice of his +art. The mode of thickening the lines in certain parts of a cut, after +it has +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page464" id = "page464"> +464</a></span> +been engraved, by scraping them down, was frequently practised by him, +and he explains the manner of proceeding, and gives a cut of the tools +required in the operation.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII18" id = +"tagVII18" href = "#noteVII18">VII.18</a> As Papillon, previous to the +publication of his book, had contributed several papers on the subject +of wood engraving to the famed Encyclopédie, he avails himself of the +second volume of the Traité to propose several additions and corrections +to those articles. The following definition proposed to be inserted in +the Encyclopédie, after the article <span class = +"smallcaps">Gratuit</span>, will afford some idea of the manner in which +he is accustomed to speak of his “inventions.” The term which he +explains is “<span class = "smallcaps">Gratture</span> ou <span class = +"smallcaps">Grattage</span>,” literally, “<span class = +"smallcaps">Scraping</span>,” the practice just alluded to. “This is, +according to the new manner of engraving on wood, the operation of +skilfully and carefully scraping down parts in an engraved block which +are not sufficiently dark, in order to give them, as may be required, +greater strength, and to render the shades more effective. This +admirable plan, utterly unknown before, was accidentally discovered in +1731 by M. Papillon, by whom the art of wood engraving is advanced +to a state tending to perfection, and approaching more and more towards +the beauty of engraving on copper.” The tools used by Papillon to scrape +down the lines of an engraved block, and thus render them thicker and, +consequently, the impression darker, differ considerably in shape from +those used for the same purpose by modern wood engravers in England. +This tool now principally used is something like a copper-plate +engraver’s burnisher, and occasionally a fine and sharp file is +employed.</p> + +<p>In Papillon’s time the French wood engravers appear to have held the +graver in the manner of a pen, and in forming a line to have cut +<i>towards them</i> as in forming a down-stroke in writing, and to have +engraved on the longitudinal, and not the cross section of the wood. +Modern English wood engravers, having the rounded handle of the graver +supported against the hollow of the hand, and directing the blade by +means of the fore-finger and thumb, cut the line <i>from them</i>; and +always engrave on the cross section of the wood. Papillon mentions box, +pear-tree, apple-tree, and the wood of the service-tree, as the best for +the purposes of engraving: box was generally used for the smaller and +finer cuts intended for the illustration or ornament of books; the +larger cuts, in which delicacy was not required, were mostly engraved on +pear-tree wood. Apple-tree wood was principally used by the wood +engravers of Normandy. Next to box, Papillon prefers the wood of the +service-tree. The box brought from Turkey, though of larger size, he +considers inferior to that of Provence, Italy, or Spain.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page465" id = "page465"> +465</a></span> +<p>Although Papillon’s <i>modus operandi</i> differs considerably from +that of English wood engravers of the present day, I am not aware +of any supposed discovery in the modern practice of the art that was not +known to him. The methods of lowering a block in certain parts before +drawing the subject on it, and of thickening the lines, and thus getting +more <i>colour</i>, by scraping the surface of the cut when engraved, +were, as has been observed, known to him; he occasionally introduced +cross-hatchings in his cuts;<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII19" id = +"tagVII19" href = "#noteVII19">VII.19</a> and in one of his chapters he +gives instructions how to insert a <i>plug</i> in a block, in order to +replace a part which had either been spoiled in the course of engraving +or subsequently damaged. One of the improvements which he suggested, but +did not put in practice, was a plan for engraving the same subject on +two, three, or four blocks, in order to obtain cross-hatchings and a +variety of tints with less trouble than if the subject were entirely +engraved on the same block. Such cuts were not to be printed as +chiaro-scuros, but in the usual manner, with printer’s ink. It is worthy +of observation that Bewick in the latter part of his life had formed a +similar opinion of the advantages of engraving a subject on two or more +blocks, and thus obtaining with comparative ease such cross-lines and +varied tints as could only be executed with great difficulty on a single +block. He, however, proceeded further than Papillon, for he began to +engrave a large cut which he intended to finish in this manner; and he +was so satisfied that the experiment would be successful, that when the +pressman handed to him a proof of the first block, he exclaimed, +“I wish I was but twenty years younger!”</p> + +<p>Papillon, in his account of the practice of the art, explains the +manner of engraving and printing chiaro-scuros; and in illustration of +the process he gives a cut executed in this style, together with +separate impressions from each of the four blocks from which it is +printed. There is also another cut of the same kind prefixed to the +second part of the first volume, containing the history of engraving in +chiaro-scuro. Scarcely anything connected with the practice of wood +engraving appears to have escaped his notice. He mentions the effect of +the breath in cold weather as rendering the block damp and the drawing +less distinct; and he gives in one of his cuts the figure of a +“mentonnière,”—that is to say, a piece of quilted linen, like +the pad used by women to keep their bonnets cocked up,—which, +being placed +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page466" id = "page466"> +466</a></span> +before the mouth and nostrils, and kept in its place by strings tied +behind the head, screened the block from the direct action of the +engraver’s breath.</p> + +<p>He frequently complains of the careless manner in which wood-cuts +were printed;<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII20" id = "tagVII20" href = +"#noteVII20">VII.20</a> but from the following passage we learn that the +inferiority of the printed cuts when compared with the engraver’s proofs +did not always proceed from the negligence of the printer. “Some wood +engravers have the art of fabricating proofs of their cuts much more +excellent and delicate than they fairly ought to be; and the following +is the manner in which they contrive to obtain tolerably decent proofs +from very indifferent engravings. They first take two or three +impressions, and then, to obtain one to their liking, and with which +they may deceive their employers, they only ink the block on those +places which ought to be dark, leaving the distances and lighter parts +without any ink, except what remained after taking the previous +impressions. The proof which they now obtain appears extremely delicate +in those parts which were not properly inked; but when they come to be +printed in a page with type, the impression is quite different from the +proof which the engraver delivers with the blocks; there is no variety +of tint, all is hard, and the distance is sometimes darker than objects +in the fore-ground. I run no great risk in saying that all the +three <i>Le Sueurs</i> have been accustomed to practise this +deception.”<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII21" id = "tagVII21" href = +"#noteVII21">VII.21</a></p> + +<p>All the cuts in Papillon’s work, except the portrait prefixed to the +first volume,<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII22" id = "tagVII22" href = +"#noteVII22">VII.22</a> are his own engraving, and, for the most part, +from his own designs. The most of the blocks were lent to the author by +the different persons for whom he had engraved them long previous to the +appearance of his work.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII23" id = +"tagVII23" href = "#noteVII23">VII.23</a> They are introduced as +ornaments at the beginning and end of the chapters; but though they may +enable the reader to judge of Papillon’s abilities as a designer and +engraver on wood, beyond this they do not in the least illustrate the +progress of the art. +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page467" id = "page467"> +467</a></span> +The execution of some of the best is extremely neat; and almost all of +them display an effect—a contrast of black and white—which +is not to be found in any other wood-cuts of the period. A few of +the designs possess considerable merit, but in by far the greater number +simplicity and truth are sacrificed to ornament and French taste. +Whatever may be Papillon’s faults as a historian of the art, he deserves +great credit for the diligence with which he pursued it under +unfavourable circumstances, and for his endeavours to bring it into +notice at a time when it was greatly neglected. His labours in this +respect were, however, attended with no immediate fruit. He died in +1776, and his immediate successors do not appear to have profited by his +instructions. The wood-cuts executed in France between 1776 and 1815 are +generally much inferior to those of Papillon; and the recent progress +which wood engraving has made in that country seems rather to have been +influenced by English example than by his precepts.</p> + +<p>Nicholas Le Sueur—born 1691, died 1764,—was, next to +Papillon, the best French wood engraver of his time. His chiaro-scuros, +printed entirely from wood-blocks, are executed with great boldness and +spirit, and partake more of the character of the earlier Italian +chiaro-scuros than any other works of the same kind engraved by his +contemporaries.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII24" id = "tagVII24" href = +"#noteVII24">VII.24</a> He chiefly excelled in the execution of +chiaro-scuros and large cuts; his small cuts are of very ordinary +character; they are generally engraved in a hard and meagre style, want +variety of tint, and are deficient in effect.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_468" id = "illus_468"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_468.png" width = "235" height = "183" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>P. S. Fournier, the younger, a letter-founder of considerable +reputation,—born at Paris 1712, died 1768,—occasionally +engraved on wood. Papillon says that he was self-taught; and that he +certainly would have made greater progress in the art had he not devoted +himself almost exclusively to the business of type-founding. Monsieur +Fournier is, however, better known as a writer on the history of the art +than as a practical wood engraver. Between 1758 and 1761 he published +three tracts relating to the origin and progress of wood engraving, and +the invention of typography.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII25" id = +"tagVII25" href = "#noteVII25">VII.25</a> From these works it is evident +that, though +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page468" id = "page468"> +468</a></span> +he takes no small credit to himself for his practical knowledge of wood +engraving and printing, he was very imperfectly acquainted with his +subject. They abound in errors which it is impossible that any person +possessing the knowledge he boasts of should commit, unless he had very +superficially examined the books and cuts on which he pronounces an +opinion. He seems indeed to have thought that, from the circumstance of +his being a wood engraver and letter-founder, his decisions on all +doubtful matters in the early history of wood engraving and printing +should be received with implicit faith. Looking at the comparatively +small size of his works, no writer, not even Papillon himself, has +committed so many mistakes; and his decisions are generally most +peremptory when utterly groundless or evidently wrong. He asserts that +Faust and Scheffer’s Psalter, 1457-1459, is printed from moveable types +of wood, and that the most of the earliest specimens of typography are +printed from the same kind of types; and in the fulness of his knowledge +he also declares that the text of the Theurdank is printed not from +types, but from engraved wood-blocks. Like Papillon, he seems to have +possessed a marvellous sagacity in ferreting out old wood engravers. He +says that Andrea Mantegna engraved on wood a grand triumph in 1486; that +Sebastian Brandt engraved in 1490 the wood-cuts in the Ship of Fools,<a +class = "tag" name = "tagVII26" id = "tagVII26" href = +"#noteVII26">VII.26</a> after the designs of J. Locher; and that +Parmegiano +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page469" id = "page469"> +469</a></span> +executed several wood-cuts after designs by Raffaele. He decides +positively that Albert Durer, Lucas Cranach, Titian, and Holbein were +wood engravers, and, like Papillon, he includes Mary de Medici in the +list. Papillon appears to have had good reason to complain that Fournier +had availed himself of his volume printed in 1738. His taste appears to +have been scarcely superior to his knowledge and judgment: he mentions a +large and coarsely engraved cut of the head of Christ as one of the best +specimens of Albert Durer’s engraving; and he says that Papillon’s cuts +are for excellence of design and execution equal to those of the +greatest masters!</p> + +<p>From a passage in one of Fournier’s tracts—Remarques +Typographiques, 1761,—it is evident that wood engraving was then +greatly neglected in Germany. It relates to the following observation of +M. Bär’s, almoner of the Swedish chapel at Paris, on the length of +time necessary to engrave a number of wooden types sufficient to print +such a work as Faust and Scheffer’s Psalter: “M. Schœpflin declares +that, by the general admission of all experienced persons, it would +require upwards of six years to complete such a work in so perfect a +manner.” The following is Fournier’s rejoinder: “To understand the value +of this remark, it ought to be known that, so far from there being many +experienced wood engravers to choose from, M. Schœpflin would most +likely experience some difficulty in finding one to consult.” The +wood-cuts which occur in German books printed between 1700 and 1760 are +certainly of the most wretched kind; contemptible alike in design and +execution. Some of the best which I have seen—and they are very +bad—are to be found in a thin folio entitled “Orbis Literatus +Germanico-Europaeus,” printed at Frankfort in 1737. They are cuts of the +seals of all the principal colleges and academical foundations in +Germany. The art in Italy about the same period was almost equally +neglected. An Italian wood engraver, named Lucchesini, executed several +cuts between 1760 and 1770. Most of the head-pieces and ornaments in the +Popes’ Decretals, printed at Rome at this period, were engraved by him; +and he also engraved the cuts in a Spanish book entitled “Letania +Lauretana de la Virgen Santissima,” printed at Valencia in 1768. It is +scarcely necessary to say that these cuts are of the humblest +character.</p> + +<p>Though wood engraving did not make any progress in England from 1722 +to the time of Thomas Bewick, yet the art was certainly never lost in +this country; the old stock still continued to put forth a +branch—<i>non deficit alter</i>—although not a golden one. +Two wood-cuts tolerably well executed, and which show that the engraver +was acquainted with the practice of “lowering,” occur in a thin quarto, +London, printed for H. Payne, 1760. The book and the cuts are thus +noticed in Southey’s Life +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page470" id = "page470"> +470</a></span> +of Cowper, volume <span class = "smallroman">I.</span> page 50. The +writer is speaking of the Nonsense Club, of which Cowper was a +member.</p> + +<p>“At those meetings of</p> + +<div class = "verse"> +<p>Jest and youthful Jollity,</p> +<p>Sport that wrinkled Care derides,</p> +<p>And Laughter holding both his sides,</p> +</div> + +<p class = "continue"> +there can be little doubt that the two odes to Obscurity and Oblivion +originated, joint compositions of Lloyd and Colman, in ridicule of Gray +and Mason. They were published in a quarto pamphlet, with a vignette, in +the title-page, of an ancient poet safely seated and playing on his +harp; and at the end a tail-piece representing a modern poet in huge +boots, flung from a mountain by his Pegasus into the sea, and losing his +tie-wig in the fall.” The following is a fac-simile of the cut +representing the poet’s fall. He seems to have been tolerably confident +of himself, for, though the winged steed has no bridle, he is provided +with a pair of formidable spurs.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_470" id = "illus_470"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_470.png" width = "331" height = "296" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>The cuts in a collection of humorous pieces in verse, entitled “The +Oxford Sausage,” 1764, are evidently by the same engraver, and almost +every one of them affords an instance of “lowering.” At the foot of one +of them, at page 89, the name “Lister” is seen; the subject is a +bacchanalian figure mounted on a winged horse, which has undoubtedly +been drawn from the same model as the Pegasus in Colman and Lloyd’s +burlesque odes. In an edition of the +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page471" id = "page471"> +471</a></span> +Sausage, printed in 1772, the name of “T. Lister” occurs on the +title-page as one of the publishers, and as residing at Oxford. Although +those cuts are generally deficient in effect, their execution is +scarcely inferior to many of those in the work of Papillon; the portrait +indeed of “Mrs. Dorothy Spreadbury, Inventress of the Oxford Sausage,” +forming the frontispiece to the edition of 1772, is better executed than +Monsieur Nicholas Caron’s votive portrait of Papillon, “the restorer of +the art of wood engraving.”</p> + +<p>In 1763, a person named S. Watts engraved two or three large +wood-cuts in outline, slightly shaded, after drawings by Luca Cambiaso. +Impressions of those cuts are most frequently printed in a yellowish +kind of ink. About the same time Watts also engraved, in a bold and free +style, several small circular portraits of painters. In Sir John +Hawkins’s History of Music, published in 1776, there are four wood-cuts; +and at the bottom of the largest—Palestrini presenting his work on +Music to the Pope—is the name of the engraver thus: +<i>T. Hodgson. Sculp.</i> Dr. Dibdin, in noticing this cut, in his +Preliminary Disquisition on Early Engraving and Ornamental Printing, +prefixed to his edition of the Typographical Antiquities, says that it +was “done by Hodgson, the master of the celebrated Bewick.”<a class = +"tag" name = "tagVII27" id = "tagVII27" href = "#noteVII27">VII.27</a> +If by this it is meant that Bewick was the apprentice of Hodgson, or +that he obtained from Hodgson his knowledge of wood engraving, the +assertion is incorrect. It is, however, almost certain that Bewick, when +in London in 1776, was employed by Hodgson, as will be shown in its +proper place.</p> + +<p>Having now given some account of wood engraving in its languishing +state—occasionally showing symptoms of returning vigour, and then +almost immediately sinking into its former state of depression—we +at length arrive at an epoch from which its revival and progressive +improvement may be safely dated. The person whose productions recalled +public attention to the neglected art of wood engraving was</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_471" id = "illus_471"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_471.png" width = "423" height = "142" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page472" id = "page472"> +472</a></span> +<p>This distinguished wood engraver, whose works will be admired as long +as truth and nature shall continue to charm, was born on the 10th or +11th of August, 1753, at Cherry-burn, in the county of Northumberland, +but on the south side of the Tyne, about twelve miles westward of +Newcastle.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_472" id = "illus_472"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_472.png" width = "338" height = "259" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +THE HOUSE IN WHICH BEWICK WAS BORN.</p> + +<p>His father rented a small land-sale colliery at Mickley-bank, in the +neighbourhood of his dwelling, and it is said that when a boy the future +wood engraver sometimes worked in the pit. At a proper age he was sent +as a day-scholar to a school kept by the Rev. Christopher Gregson at +Ovingham, on the opposite side of the Tyne. The Parsonage House, in +which Mr. Gregson lived, is pleasantly situated on the edge of a sloping +bank immediately above the river; and many reminiscences of the place +are to be found in Bewick’s cuts; the gate at the entrance is +introduced, with trifling variations, in three or four different +subjects; and a person acquainted with the neighbourhood will easily +recognise in his tail-pieces several other little local sketches of a +similar kind. In the time of the Rev. James Birkett, Mr. Gregson’s +successor, Ovingham school had the character of being one of the best +private schools in the county; and several gentlemen, whose talents +reflect credit on their teacher, received their education there. In the +following cut, representing a view of Ovingham from the south-westward, +the Parsonage House, with its garden sloping down to the Tyne, is +perceived immediately to the right of the clump of large trees. The bank +on which those trees grow is known as the +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page473" id = "page473"> +473</a></span> +<i>crow-tree bank</i>. The following lines, descriptive of a view from +the Parsonage House, are from “The School Boy,” a poem, by Thomas +Maude, A.M., who received his early education at Ovingham under Mr. +Birkett.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_473" id = "illus_473"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_473.png" width = "332" height = "247" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +PARSONAGE AT OVINGHAM.</p> + +<div class = "verse"> +<p class = "open">“But can I sing thy simpler pleasures flown,</p> +<p>Loved <span class = "smallcaps">Ovingham</span>! and leave the +<i>chief</i> unknown,—</p> +<p>Thy <i>annual Fair</i>, of every joy the mart,</p> +<p>That drained my pocket, ay, and took my childish heart?</p> +<p>Blest morn! how lightly from my bed I sprung,</p> +<p>When in the blushing east thy beams were young;</p> +<p>While every blithe co-tenant of the room</p> +<p>Rose at a call, with cheeks of liveliest bloom.</p> +<p>Then from each well-packed drawer our vests we drew,</p> +<p>Each gay-frilled shirt, and jacket smartly new.</p> +<p>Brief toilet ours! yet, on a morn like this,</p> +<p>Five extra minutes were not deemed amiss.</p> +<p>Fling back the casement!—Sun, propitious shine!</p> +<p>How sweet your beams gild the clear-flowing Tyne,</p> +<p>That winds beneath our master’s garden-brae,</p> +<p>With broad bright mazes o’er its pebbly way.</p> +<div class = "bracket"> +<p class = "triplet"> </p> +<p>See Prudhoe! lovely in the morning beam:—</p> +<p>Mark, mark, the ferry-boat, with twinkling gleam,</p> +<p>Wafting fair-going folks across the stream.</p> +</div> +<p>Look out! a bed of sweetness breathes below,</p> +<p>Where many a rocket points its spire of snow;</p> +<p>And from the <i>Crow-tree Bank</i> the cawing sound</p> +<p>Of sable troops incessant poured around!</p> +<p>Well may each little bosom throb with joy!</p> +<p>On such a morn, who would not be a boy?”</p> +</div> + +<p>Bewick’s school acquirements probably did not extend beyond English +reading, writing, and arithmetic; for, though he knew a little +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page474" id = "page474"> +474</a></span> +Latin, he does not appear to have ever received any instructions in that +language. In a letter dated 18th April, 1803, addressed to Mr. +Christopher Gregson,<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII28" id = "tagVII28" +href = "#noteVII28">VII.28</a> London, a son of his old master, +introducing an artist of the name of Murphy, who had painted his +portrait, Bewick humorously alludes to his <i>beauty</i> when a boy, and +to the state of his coat-sleeve, in consequence of his using it instead +of a pocket-handkerchief. Bewick, it is to be observed, was very +hard-featured, and much marked with the small-pox. After mentioning Mr. +Murphy as “a man of worth, and a first-rate artist in the miniature +line,” he thus proceeds: “I do not imagine, at your time of life, +my dear friend, that you will be solicitous about forming new +acquaintances; but it may not, perhaps, be putting you much out of the +way to show any little civilities to Mr. Murphy during his stay in +London. He has, on his own account, taken my portrait, and I dare say +will be desirous to show you it the first opportunity: when you see it, +you will no doubt conclude that T. B. is turning <i>bonnyer</i> and +<i>bonnyer</i><a class = "tag" name = "tagVII29" id = "tagVII29" href = +"#noteVII29">VII.29</a> in his old days; but indeed you cannot <i>help +knowing this</i>, and also that there were <i>great indications</i> of +its turning out so <i>long since</i>. But if you have forgot our +earliest youth, perhaps your brother P.<a class = "tag" name = +"tagVII30" id = "tagVII30" href = "#noteVII30">VII.30</a> may help you +to remember what a <i>great beauty</i> I was at that time, when the grey +coat-sleeve was <i>glazed</i> from the cuff towards the elbows.” The +words printed in Italics are those that are underlined by Bewick +himself.</p> + +<p>Bewick, having shown a taste for drawing, was placed by his father as +an apprentice with Mr. Ralph Beilby, an engraver, living in Newcastle, +to whom on the 1st of October 1767 he was bound for a term of seven +years. Mr. Beilby was not a wood engraver; and his business in the +copper-plate line was of a kind which did not allow of much scope for +the display of artistic talent. He engraved copper-plates for books, +when any by chance were offered to him; and he also executed +brass-plates for doors, with the names of the owners handsomely filled +up, after the manner of the old “<i>niellos</i>,” with black +sealing-wax. He engraved crests and initials on steel and silver +watch-seals; also on tea-spoons, sugar-tongs, and other articles of +plate; and the engraving of numerals and ornaments, with the name of the +maker, on clock-faces,—which were not then enamelled,—seems +to have formed one of the chief branches of his very general business.<a +class = "tag" name = "tagVII31" id = "tagVII31" href = +"#noteVII31">VII.31</a></p> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page475" id = "page475"> +475</a></span> +<p>Bewick’s attention appears to have been first directed to wood +engraving in consequence of his master having been employed by the late +Dr. Charles Hutton, then a schoolmaster in Newcastle, to engrave on wood +the diagrams for his Treatise on Mensuration. The printing of this work +was commenced in 1768, and was completed in 1770. The engraving of the +diagrams was committed to Bewick, who is said to have invented a graver +with a fine groove at the point, which enabled him to cut the outlines +by a single operation.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_475" id = "illus_475"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_475.png" width = "241" height = "241" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>The above is a fac-simile of one of the earliest productions of +Bewick in the art of wood engraving. The church is intended for that of +St. Nicholas, Newcastle.</p> + +<p>Subsequently, and while he was still an apprentice, Bewick +undoubtedly endeavoured to improve himself in wood engraving; but his +progress does not appear to have been great, and his master had +certainly very little work of this kind for him to do. He appears to +have engraved a few bill-heads on wood; and it is not unlikely that the +cuts in a little book entitled “Youth’s Instructive and Entertaining +Story Teller,” first published by T. Saint, Newcastle, 1774, were +executed by him before the expiration of his apprenticeship.</p> + +<p>Bewick, at one period during his apprenticeship, paid ninepence a +week for his lodgings in Newcastle, and usually received a brown loaf +every week from Cherry-burn. “During his servitude,” says Mr. Atkinson, +“he paid weekly visits to Cherry-burn, except when the river was so much +swollen as to prevent his passage of it at Eltringham, when he +vociferated his inquiries across the stream, and then returned to +Newcastle.” This account of his being accustomed to <i>shout</i> his +enquiries +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page476" id = "page476"> +476</a></span> +across the Tyne first appeared in a Memoir prefixed to the Select +Fables, published by E. Charnley, 1820. Mr. William Bedlington, an +old friend of Bewick, once asked him if it were true? “Babbles and +nonsense!” was the reply. “It never happened but once, and that was when +the river had suddenly swelled before I could reach the top of the +<i>allers</i>,<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII32" id = "tagVII32" href = +"#noteVII32">VII.32</a> and yet folks are made to believe that I was in +the habit of doing it.”</p> + +<p>On the expiration of his apprenticeship he returned to his father’s +house at Cherry-burn, but still continued to work for Mr. Beilby. About +this time he seems to have formed the resolution of applying himself +exclusively in future to wood engraving, and with this view to have +executed several cuts as specimens of his ability. In 1775 he received a +premium of seven guineas from the Society of Arts for a cut of the +Huntsman and the Old Hound, which he probably engraved when living at +Cherry-burn after leaving Mr. Beilby.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII33" +id = "tagVII33" href = "#noteVII33">VII.33</a> The following is a +fac-simile of this cut, which was first printed in an edition of Gay’s +Fables, published by T. Saint, Newcastle, 1779. Mr. Henry Bohn, the +publisher of the present edition, happening to be in possession of the +original cut, it is annexed on the opposite page.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_476" id = "illus_476"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_476.png" width = "267" height = "209" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>In 1776, when on a visit to some of his relations in Cumberland,<a +class = "tag" name = "tagVII34" id = "tagVII34" href = +"#noteVII34">VII.34</a> he availed himself of the opportunity of +visiting the Lakes; and in after-life +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page477" id = "page477"> +477</a></span> +he used frequently to speak in terms of admiration of the beauty of the +scenery, and of the neat appearance of the white-washed, slate-covered +cottages on the banks of some of the lakes. His tour was made on foot, +with a stick in his hand and a wallet at his back; and it has been +supposed that in a tail-piece, to be found at page 177 of the first +volume of his British Birds, first edition, 1797, he has introduced a +sketch of himself in his travelling costume, drinking out of what he +himself would have called the <i>flipe</i> of his hat. The figure has +been copied in our ornamental letter T at <a href = "#illus_471">page +471</a>.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_477" id = "illus_477"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_477.png" width = "272" height = "207" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>In the same year, 1776, he went to London, where he arrived on the +1st of October. He certainly did not remain more than a twelvemonth in +London,<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII35" id = "tagVII35" href = +"#noteVII35">VII.35</a> for in 1777 he returned to Newcastle, and +entered into partnership with his former master, Mr. Ralph Beilby. +Bewick—who does not appear to have been wishful to undeceive those +who fancied that he was the person who rediscovered the “long-lost art +of engraving on wood”<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII36" id = "tagVII36" +href = "#noteVII36">VII.36</a>—would never inform any of the +good-natured friends, who fished for intelligence with the view of +writing his life, of the works on which he was employed when in London. +The faith of a believer in the story of Bewick’s re-discovering “the +long-lost art” would have received too great a shock had he been told by +Bewick himself that +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page478" id = "page478"> +478</a></span> +on his arrival in London he found professors of the “long-lost art” +regularly exercising their calling, and that with one of them he found +employment.</p> + +<p>There is every reason to believe that Bewick, when in London, was +chiefly employed by T. Hodgson, most likely the person who engraved +the four cuts in Sir John Hawkins’s History of Music. It is at any rate +certain that several cuts engraved by Bewick appeared in a little work +entitled “A curious Hieroglyphick Bible,” printed by and for +T. Hodgson, in George’s Court, St. John’s Lane, Clerkenwell.<a +class = "tag" name = "tagVII37" id = "tagVII37" href = +"#noteVII37">VII.37</a> Proofs of three of the principal cuts are now +lying before me. The subjects are: Adam and Eve, with the Deity seen in +the clouds, forming the frontispiece; the Resurrection; and a cut +representing a gentleman seated in an arm-chair, with four boys beside +him: the border of this cut is of the same kind as that of the large cut +of the Chillingham Bull engraved by Bewick in 1789. These proofs appear +to have been presented by Bewick to an eminent painter, now dead, with +whom either then, or at a subsequent period, he had become acquainted. +Not one of Bewick’s biographers mentions those cuts, nor seems to have +been aware of their existence. The two memoirs of Bewick, written by his +“friends” G. C. Atkinson and John F. M. Dovaston,<a class = +"tag" name = "tagVII38" id = "tagVII38" href = "#noteVII38">VII.38</a> +sufficiently demonstrate that neither of them had enjoyed his confidence +in matters relative to his progress in the art of wood engraving.</p> + +<p>Mr. Atkinson, in his Sketch of the Life and Works of Bewick, says +that when in London he worked with a person of the name of Cole. Of this +person, as a wood engraver, I have not been able to discover any +trace. Bewick did not like London; and he always advised his former +pupils and north-country friends to leave the “province covered with +houses” as soon as they could, and return to the country to there enjoy +the beauties of Nature, fresh air, and +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page479" id = "page479"> +479</a></span> +content. In the letter to his old schoolfellow, Mr. Christopher Gregson, +previously quoted, he thus expresses his opinion of London life. “Ever +since you paid your last visit to the north, I have often been +thinking upon you, and wishing that you would <i>lap up</i>, and leave +the metropolis, to enjoy the fruits of your hard-earned industry on the +banks of the Tyne, where you are so much respected, both on your own +account and on that of those who are gone. Indeed, I wonder how you +can think of turmoiling yourself to the end of the chapter, and let the +opportunity slip of contemplating at your ease the beauties of Nature, +so bountifully spread out to enlighten, to captivate, and to cheer the +heart of man. For my part, I am still of the same mind that I was +in when in London, and that is, <i>I would rather be herding sheep +on Mickley bank top than remain in London, although for doing so I was +to be made the premier of England</i>.” Bewick was truly a +<i>country</i> man; he felt that it was better “to hear the lark sing +than the mouse cheep;” for, though no person was capable of closer +application to his art when within doors, he loved to spend his hours of +relaxation in the open air, studying the character of beasts and birds +in their natural state; and diligently noting those little incidents and +traits of country life which give so great an interest to many of his +tail-pieces. When a young man, he was fond of angling; and, like Roger +Ascham, he “dearly loved a main of cocks.” When annoyed by +street-walkers in London, he used to assume the air of a stupid +countryman, and, in reply to their importunity, would ask, with an +expression of stolid gravity, if they knew “Tommy Hummel o’ +Prudhoe, Willy Eltringham o’ Hall-Yards, or Auld Laird +Newton o’ Mickley?”<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII39" id = +"tagVII39" href = "#noteVII39">VII.39</a> He thus, without losing his +temper, or showing any feeling of annoyance, soon got quit of those who +wished to engage his attention, though sometimes not until he had +received a hearty malediction for his stupidity.</p> + +<p>In 1777, on his return to Newcastle, he entered into partnership with +Mr. Beilby; and his younger brother, John Bewick, who was then about +seventeen years old, became their apprentice. From this time Bewick, +though he continued to assist his partner in the other branches of their +business,<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII40" id = "tagVII40" href = +"#noteVII40">VII.40</a> applied himself chiefly to engraving on +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page480" id = "page480"> +480</a></span> +wood. The cuts in an edition of Gay’s Fables, 1779,<a class = "tag" name += "tagVII41" id = "tagVII41" href = "#noteVII41">VII.41</a> and in an +edition of Select Fables, 1784, both printed by T. Saint, +Newcastle, were engraved by Bewick, who was probably assisted by his +brother. Several of those cuts are well engraved, though by no means to +be compared to his later works, executed when he had acquired greater +knowledge of the art, and more confidence in his own powers. He +evidently improved as his talents were exercised; for the cuts in the +Select Fables, 1784, are generally much superior to those in Gay’s +Fables, 1779; the animals are better drawn and engraved; the sketches of +landscape in the back-grounds are more natural; and the engraving of the +foliage of the trees and bushes is, not unfrequently, scarce inferior to +that of his later productions. Such an attention to nature in this +respect is not to be found in any wood-cuts of an earlier date. The +following impressions from two of the original cuts in the Select Fables +are fair specimens; one is interesting, as being Bewick’s first idea of +a favourite vignette in his British Land +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page481" id = "page481"> +481</a></span> +Birds; the other as his first treatment of the lion and the four bulls, +afterwards repeated in his Quadrupeds. In the best cuts of the time of +Durer and Holbein the foliage is generally neglected; the artists of +that period merely give general forms of trees, without ever attending +to that which contributes so much to their beauty. The merit of +introducing this great improvement in wood engraving, and of depicting +quadrupeds and birds in their natural forms, and with their +characteristic expression, is undoubtedly due to Bewick. Though he was +not the discoverer of the art of wood engraving, he certainly was the +first who applied it with success to the delineation of animals, and to +the natural representation of landscape and woodland scenery. He found +for himself a path which no previous wood engraver had trodden, and in +which none of his successors have gone beyond him. For several of the +cuts in the Select Fables, Bewick was paid only nine shillings each.</p> + +<div class = "picture"> +<div class = "picblock w250"> +<p><a name = "illus_480a" id = "illus_480a"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_480a.png" width = "222" height = "160" +alt = "see text"></p> +</div> + +<div class = "picblock w250"> +<p><a name = "illus_480b" id = "illus_480b"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_480b.png" width = "231" height = "169" +alt = "see text"></p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>In 1789 he drew and engraved his large cut of the Chillingham Bull,<a +class = "tag" name = "tagVII42" id = "tagVII42" href = +"#noteVII42">VII.42</a> which many persons suppose to be his +master-piece; but though it is certainly well engraved, and the +character of the animal is well expressed, yet as a wood engraving it +will not bear a comparison with several of the cuts in his History of +British Birds. The grass and the foliage of the trees are most +beautifully expressed; but there is a want of variety in the more +distant trees, and the bark of that in the fore-ground to the left is +too rough. This exaggeration of the roughness of the bark of trees is +also to be perceived in many of his other cuts. The style in which the +bull is engraved is admirably adapted to express the texture of the +short white hair of the animal; the dewlap, however, is not well +represented, it appears to be stiff instead of flaccid and pendulous; +and the lines intended for the hairs on its margin are too <i>wiry</i>. +On a stone in the fore-ground he has introduced a <i>bit</i> of +cross-hatching, but not with good effect, for it causes the stone to +look very much like an old scrubbing-brush. Bewick was not partial to +cross-hatching, and it is seldom to be found in cuts of his engraving. +He seems to have introduced it in this cut rather to show to those who +knew anything of the matter that he could engrave such lines, than from +an opinion that they were necessary, or in the slightest degree improved +the cut. This is almost the only instance in which Bewick has introduced +black lines crossing each other, and thus forming what is usually called +“cross-hatchings.” From the commencement of his career as a wood +engraver, he adopted a much more simple method of obtaining colour. He +very justly considered, that, as impressions of wood-cuts are printed +from lines engraved in <i>relief</i>, the unengraved +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page482" id = "page482"> +482</a></span> +surface of the block already represented the darkest colour that could +be produced; and consequently, instead of labouring to produce colour in +the same manner as the old wood engravers, he commenced upon colour or +black, and proceeded from <i>dark to light</i> by means of lines cut in +intaglio, and appearing white when in the impression, until his subject +was completed. This great simplification of the old process was the +result of his having to engrave his own drawings; for in drawing his +subject on the wood he avoided all combinations of lines which to the +designer are easy, but to the engraver difficult. In almost every one of +his cuts the effect is produced by the simplest means. The colour which +the old wood engravers obtained by means of cross-hatchings, Bewick +obtained with much greater facility by means of single lines, and masses +of black slightly intersected or broken with white.</p> + +<p>When only a few impressions of the Chillingham Bull had been taken, +and before he had added his name, the block split. The pressmen, it is +said, got tipsy over their work, and left the block lying on the +window-sill exposed to the rays of the sun, which caused it to warp and +split.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII43" id = "tagVII43" href = +"#noteVII43">VII.43</a> About six impressions were taken on thin vellum +before the accident occurred. Mr. Atkinson says that one of those +impressions, which had formerly belonged to Mr. Beilby, Bewick’s +partner, was sold in London for twenty pounds; A. Stothard, R.A., +had one, as had also Mr. C. Nesbit.</p> + +<p>Towards the latter end of 1785 Bewick began to engrave the cuts for +his General History of Quadrupeds, which was first printed in 1790.<a +class = "tag" name = "tagVII44" id = "tagVII44" href = +"#noteVII44">VII.44</a> The descriptions were written by his partner, +Mr. Beilby, and the cuts were all drawn and engraved by himself. The +comparative excellence of those cuts, which, for the correct delineation +of the animals and the natural character of the <i>incidents</i>, and +the back-grounds, are greatly superior to anything of the kind that had +previously appeared, insured a rapid sale for the work; a second +edition was published in 1791, and a third in 1792.<a class = "tag" name += "tagVII45" id = "tagVII45" href = "#noteVII45">VII.45</a></p> + +<p>The great merit of those cuts consists not so much in their execution +as in the spirited and natural manner in which they are drawn. Some of +the animals, indeed, which he had not had an opportunity of seeing, and +for which he had to depend on the previous engravings of others, are not +correctly drawn. Among the most incorrect are the Bison, the +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page483" id = "page483"> +483</a></span> +Zebu, the Buffalo, the Many-horned Sheep, the Gnu, and the Giraffe or +Cameleopard.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII46" id = "tagVII46" href = +"#noteVII46">VII.46</a> Even in some of our domestic quadrupeds he was +not successful; the Horses are not well represented; and the very +indifferent execution of the Common Bull and Cow, at page 19, edition +1790, is only redeemed by the interest of the back-grounds. In that of +the Common Bull, the action of the bull seen chasing a man is most +excellent; and in that of the Cow, the woman, with a <i>skeel</i> on her +head, and her petticoats tucked up behind, returning from milking, is +evidently a sketch from nature. The Goats and the Dogs are the best of +those cuts both in design and execution; and perhaps the very best of +all the cuts in the first edition is that of the Cur Fox at page 270. +The tail of the animal, which is too long, and is also incorrectly +marked with black near the white tip, was subsequently altered.</p> + +<p>In the first edition the characteristic tail-pieces are comparatively +few; and several of those which are merely ornamental, displaying +neither imagination nor feeling, are copies of cuts which are frequent +in books printed at Leipsic between 1770 and 1780, and which were +probably engraved by Ungher, a German wood engraver of that period. +Examples of such tasteless trifles are to be found at pages 9, 12, 18, +65, 110, 140, 201, 223, and 401. Ornaments of the same character occur +in Heineken’s “Idée Générale d’une Collection complette d’Estampes,” +Leipsic and Vienna, 1771. Bewick was unquestionably better acquainted +with the history and progress of wood engraving than those who talk +about the “long-lost art” were aware of. The first of the two following +cuts is a fac-simile of a tail-piece which occurs in an edition of “Der +Weiss Kunig,”<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII47" id = "tagVII47" href = +"#noteVII47">VII.47</a> printed at Vienna, 1775, and which Bewick has +copied at page 144 of the first edition of the +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page484" id = "page484"> +484</a></span> +Quadrupeds, 1790. The second, from one of the cuts illustrative of +Ovid’s Metamorphoses, 1569, designed by Virgil Solis,<a class = "tag" +name = "tagVII48" id = "tagVII48" href = "#noteVII48">VII.48</a> is +copied in a tail-piece in the first volume of Bewick’s Birds, page 330, +edition 1797.</p> + +<div class = "picture"> +<div class = "picblock w200"> +<p><a name = "illus_483" id = "illus_483"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_483a.png" width = "199" height = "116" +alt = "see text"></p> +</div> + +<div class = "picblock w150"> +<p><img src = "images/illus_483b.png" width = "102" height = "147" +alt = "see text"></p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>The following may be mentioned as the best of the tail-pieces in the +first edition of the Quadrupeds, and as those which most decidedly +display Bewick’s talent in depicting, without exaggeration, natural and +humorous incidents. In this respect he has been excelled by no other +artist either of past or present times. The Elephant, fore-shortened, at +page 162; the Dog and Cat, 195; the Old Man crossing a ford, mounted on +an old horse, which carries, in addition, two heavy sacks, 244; the +Bear-ward, with his wife and companion, leading Bruin, and accompanied +by his dancing-dogs,—a gallows seen in the distance, 256; +a Fox, with Magpies flying after him, indicating his course to his +pursuers, 265; Two unfeeling fellows enjoying the pleasure of hanging a +dog,—a gibbet, seen in the distance, to denote that those who +could thus quietly enjoy the dying struggles of a dog would not be +unlikely to murder a man, 274; a Man eating his dinner with his dog +sitting beside him, expecting his share, 285; Old Blind Man led by a +dog, crossing a bridge of a single plank, and with the rail broken, in a +storm of wind and rain, 320; a Mad Dog pursued by three +men,—a feeble old woman directly in the dog’s way, 324; a Man +with a bundle at his back, crossing a stream on stilts, 337; +a winter piece,—a Man travelling in the snow, 339; +a grim-visaged Old Man, accompanied by a cur-dog, driving an old +sow, 371; Two Boys and an Ass on a common, 375; a Man leaping, by +means of a pole, a stream, across which he has previously thrown +his stick and bag, 391; a Man carrying a bundle of faggots on the +ice, 395; a Wolf falling into a trap, 430; and Two Blind Fiddlers +and a Boy, the last in the book, at 456. In this cut Bewick has +represented the two blind fiddlers earnestly scraping away, although +there is no one to listen to their strains; the bare-legged +<i>tatty</i>-headed boy who leads them, and the half-starved +melancholy-looking dog at their heels, are in admirable keeping with the +principal characters.</p> + +<p>On the next page is a copy of the cut of the Two Boys and the Ass, +previously mentioned as occurring at page 375. This cut, beyond any +other of the tail-pieces in the first edition of the Quadrupeds, perhaps +affords the best specimen of Bewick’s peculiar talent of depicting such +subjects; he faithfully represents Nature, and at the same time conveys +a moral, which gives additional interest to the sketch. Though the ass +remains immoveable, in spite of the application of +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page485" id = "page485"> +485</a></span> +a branch of furze to his hind quarters, the young graceless who is +mounted evidently enjoys his seat. The pleasure of the twain consists as +much in having <i>caught</i> an ass as in the prospect of a <ins class = +"correction" title = ". missing">ride.</ins> To such characters the +stubborn ass frequently affords more <i>amusement</i> than a willing +goer; they like to flog and thump a thing well, though it be but a +gate-post. The gallows in the distance—a favourite <i>in +terrorem</i> object with Bewick—suggests their ultimate destiny; +and the cut, in the first edition, derives additional <i>point</i> from +its situation among the animals found in <i>New South +Wales</i>,—the first shipment of convicts to Botany Bay having +taken place about two years previous to the publication of the work. +This cut, as well as many others in the book, affords an instance of +lowering,—the light appearance of the distance is entirely +effected by that process.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_485" id = "illus_485"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_485.png" width = "296" height = "123" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>The subsequent editions of the Quadrupeds were enlarged by the +addition of new matter and the insertion of several new cuts. Of these, +with the exception of the Kyloe Ox,<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII49" id += "tagVII49" href = "#noteVII49">VII.49</a> the tail-pieces are by far +the best. The following are the principal cuts of animals that have been +added since the first publication of the work; the pages annexed refer +to the edition of 1824, the last that was published in Bewick’s +life-time: the Arabian Horse, page 4,—the stallion, seen in the +back-ground, has suffered a dismemberment since its first appearance;<a +class = "tag" name = "tagVII50" id = "tagVII50" href = +"#noteVII50">VII.50</a> the Old English Road Horse, 9; the Improved Cart +Horse, 14; the Kyloe Ox, 36; the Musk Bull, 49; the Black-faced, or +Heath Ram, 56; Heath Ram of the Improved Breed, 57; The Cheviot Ram, 58; +Tees-water Ram of the Old Breed, 60; Tees-water Ram, Improved Breed, 61; +the American Elk, 125; Sow of the Improved Breed, 164; Sow +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page486" id = "page486"> +486</a></span> +of the Chinese Breed, 166; Head of a Hippopotamus, (engraved by +W. W. Temple,) 185; Indian Bear, 293; Polar, or Great White Bear, +substituted for another cut of the same animal, 295; the Spotted Hyena, +substituted for another cut of the same animal, 301; the Ban-dog, 338; +the Irish Greyhound, 340; the Harrier, 347; Spotted Bavy, substituted +for another cut of the same animal, 379; the Grey Squirrel, 387; the +Long-tailed Squirrel, 396; the Jerboa, substituted for another cut of +the same animal, 397; the Musquash, or Musk Beaver, 416; the Mouse, +substituted for another cut of the same animal, 424; the Short-eared +Bat, 513; the Long-eared Bat, 515; the Ternate Bat, 518; the Wombach, +523; and the Ornithorhynchus Paradoxicus, 525. The cut of the animal +called the Thick-nosed Tapiir, at page 139 of the first edition, is +transposed to page 381 of the last edition, and there described under +the name of the Capibara: it is probably intended for the Coypu rat, +a specimen of which is at present in the Gardens of the Zoological +Society, Regent’s Park. Bewick was a regular visitor of all the +wild-beast shows that came to Newcastle, and availed himself of every +opportunity to obtain drawings from living animals.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_486" id = "illus_486"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_486.png" width = "317" height = "154" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>The tail-pieces introduced in subsequent editions of the Quadrupeds +generally display more humour and not less talent in representing +natural objects than those contained in the first. In the annexed cut of +a sour-visaged old fellow going with corn to the mill, we have an +exemplification of cruelty not unworthy of Hogarth.<a class = "tag" name += "tagVII51" id = "tagVII51" href = "#noteVII51">VII.51</a> The +over-laden, +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page487" id = "page487"> +487</a></span> +half-starved old horse,—broken-kneed, greasy-heeled, and evidently +troubled with the string-halt, as is indicated by the action of the +<i>off</i> hind-leg,—hesitates to descend the brae, at the foot of +which there is a stream, and the old brute on his back urges him forward +by <i>working</i> him, as jockeys say, with the halter, and beating him +with his stick. In the distance, Bewick, as is usual with him when he +gives a sketch of cruelty or knavery, has introduced a gallows. The +miserable appearance of the poor animal is not a little increased by the +nakedness of his hind quarters; his stump of a tail is so short that it +will not even serve as a <i>catch</i> for the crupper or +<i>tail-band</i>.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_487" id = "illus_487"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_487.png" width = "318" height = "167" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>In the cut of the child, unconscious of its danger, pulling at the +long tail of a young unbroken colt, the story is most admirably told. +The nurse, who is seen engaged with her sweetheart by the side of the +hedge, has left the child to wander at will, and thus expose itself to +destruction; while the mother, who has accidentally perceived the danger +of her darling, is seen hastening over the stile, regardless of the +steps, in an agony of fear. The backward glance of the horse’s eye, and +the heel raised ready to strike, most forcibly suggest the danger to +which the unthinking infant is exposed.</p> + +<p>Though the subject of the following cut be simple, yet the +<i>sentiment</i> which it displays is the genuine offspring of true +genius. Near to a ruined cottage, while all around is covered with snow, +a lean and hungry ewe is seen nibbling at an old broom, while her +young and +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page488" id = "page488"> +488</a></span> +weakly lamb is sucking her milkless teats. Such a picture of animal +want—conceived with so much feeling, and so well +expressed,—has perhaps never been represented by any artist except +Bewick.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_488a" id = "illus_488a"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_488a.png" width = "304" height = "168" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>The original of the following cut forms the tail-piece to the last +page of the edition of 1824. An old man, wearing a parson’s cast-off +beaver and wig, is seen carrying his young wife and child across a +stream. The complacent look of the cock-nosed wife shows that she enjoys +the treat, while the old drudge patiently bears his burden, and with his +right hand keeps a firm <i>grip</i> of the nether end of his better +part. This cut is an excellent satire on those old men who marry young +wives and become dotingly uxorious in the decline of life; submitting to +every indignity to please their youthful spouses and reconcile them to +their state. It is a <i>new reading</i> of January and May,—he an +old travelling beggar, and she a young slut with her heels peeping, or +rather staring, through her stockings.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_488b" id = "illus_488b"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_488b.png" width = "312" height = "135" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>Mr. Solomon Hodgson, the printer of the first four editions of the +Quadrupeds, had an interest in the work; he died in 1800; and in +consequence of a misunderstanding between his widow and Bewick, the +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page489" id = "page489"> +489</a></span> +latter had the subsequent editions printed at the office of Mr. Edward +Walker. Mrs. Hodgson having asserted, in a letter printed in the Monthly +Magazine for July 1805, that Bewick was neither the author nor the +projector of the History of Quadrupeds, but “was employed merely as the +engraver or wood-cutter,” he, in justification of his own claims, gave +the following account of the origin of the work.<a class = "tag" name = +"tagVII52" id = "tagVII52" href = "#noteVII52">VII.52</a> “From my first +reading, when a boy at school, a sixpenny History of Birds and +Beasts, and a then wretched composition called the History of Three +Hundred Animals, to the time I became acquainted with works on Natural +History written for the perusal of men, I never was without the +design of attempting something of this kind myself; but my principal +object was (and still is) directed to the mental pleasure and +improvement of youth; to engage their attention, to direct their steps +aright, and to lead them on till they become enamoured of this innocent +and delightful pursuit. Some time after my partnership with Mr. Beilby +commenced, I communicated my wishes to him, who, after many +conversations, came into my plan of publishing a History of Quadrupeds, +and I then immediately began to draw the animals, to design the +vignettes, and to cut them on wood, and this, to avoid interruption, +frequently till very late in the night; my partner at the same time +undertaking to compile and draw up the descriptions and history at his +leisure hours and evenings at home. With the accounts of the foreign +animals I did not much interfere; the sources whence I had drawn the +little knowledge I possessed were open to my coadjutor, and he used +them; but to those of the animals of our own country, as my partner +before this time had paid little attention to natural history, +I lent a helping hand. This help was given in daily conversations, +and in occasional notes and memoranda, which were used in their proper +places. As the cuts were engraved, we employed the late Mr. Thomas +Angus, of this town, printer, to take off a certain number of +impressions of each, many of which are still in my possession. At Mr. +Angus’s death the charge for this business was not made in his books, +and at the request of his widow and ourselves, the late Mr. Solomon +Hodgson fixed the price; and yet the widow and executrix of Mr. Hodgson +asserts in your Magazine, that I was ‘merely employed as the engraver or +wood-cutter,’ (I suppose) by her husband! Had this been the case, +is it probable that Mr. Hodgson would have had the cuts printed in any +other office than his own? The fact is the reverse of Mrs. Hodgson’s +statement; and although I have never, either ‘insidiously’ or otherwise, +used any means to cause the reviewers, or others, to hold me up as the +‘first and sole mover of the concern,’ I am now dragged forth by +her to declare that <i>I am the man</i>.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page490" id = "page490"> +490</a></span> +<p>“But to return to my story:—while we were in the progress of +our work, prudence suggested that it might be necessary to inquire how +our labours were to be ushered to the world, and, as we were +unacquainted with the printing and publishing of books, what mode was +the most likely to insure success. Upon this subject Mr. Hodgson was +consulted, and made fully acquainted with our plan. He entered into the +undertaking with uncommon ardour, and urged us strenuously not to retain +our first humble notions of ‘making it like a school-book,’ but pressed +us to let it ‘assume a more respectable form.’ From this warmth of our +friend we had no hesitation in offering him a share in the work, and a +copartnership deed was entered into between us, for that purpose, on the +10th of April 1790. What Mr. Hodgson did in correcting the press, beyond +what falls to the duty of every printer, I know not; but I am +certain that he was extremely desirous that it should have justice done +it. In this <i>weaving of words</i> I did not interfere, as I believed +it to be in hands much fitter than my own, only I took the liberty of +blotting out whatever I knew not to be truth.”</p> + +<p>The favourable manner in which the History of Quadrupeds was received +determined Bewick to commence without delay his History of British +Birds. He began to draw and engrave the cuts in 1791, and in 1797 the +first volume of the work, containing the Land Birds, was published.<a +class = "tag" name = "tagVII53" id = "tagVII53" href = +"#noteVII53">VII.53</a> The letter-press, as in the Quadrupeds, was +written by his partner, Mr. Beilby, who certainly deserves great praise +for the manner in which he has performed his task. The descriptions +generally have the great merit of being simple, intelligible, and +correct. There are no trifling details about system, no confused +arguments about classification, which more frequently bewilder than +inform the reader who is uninitiated in the piebald jargon of what is +called “Systematic nomenclature.” He describes the quadruped or bird in +a manner which enables even the most unlearned to recognize it when he +sees it; and, like one who is rather wishful to inform his readers than +to display his own acquaintance with the scientific vocabulary, he +carefully avoids the use of all terms which are not generally +understood. Mr. Beilby, though in a different manner and in a less +degree, is fairly entitled to share with Bewick in the honour of having +rendered popular in this country the study of the most interesting and +useful branches of Zoology—Quadrupeds and Birds—by giving +the descriptions in simple and intelligible language, and presenting to +the eye the very form and character of the living animals. As a +copper-plate engraver, Mr. Beilby has certainly no just pretensions +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page491" id = "page491"> +491</a></span> +to fame; but as a compiler, and as an able coadjutor of Bewick in +simplifying the study of Natural History, and rendering its most +interesting portions easy of attainment to the young, and to those +unacquainted with the “science,” he deserves higher praise than he has +hitherto generally received. Roger Thornton’s Monument, and the Plan of +Newcastle, in the Reverend John Brand’s History of that town, were +engraved by Mr. Beilby. Mr. Brand’s book-plate was also engraved by him. +It is to be found in most of the books that formerly belonged to that +celebrated antiquary, who is well known to all collectors from the +extent of his purchases at stalls, and the number of curious old books +which he thus occasionally obtained.—The Reverend William Turner, +of Newcastle, in a letter printed in the Monthly Magazine for June 1801, +vindicates the character of Mr. Beilby from what he considers the +detractions of Dr. Gleig, in an article on Wood-cuts in the Supplement +to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Mr. Beilby was a native of the city of +Durham, and was brought up as a silversmith and seal-engraver under his +father. He died at Newcastle on the 4th of January 1817, in the +seventy-fourth year of his age.</p> + +<p>The partnership between Beilby and Bewick having been dissolved in +1797, shortly after the publication of the first volume of the Birds, +the descriptions in the second, which did not appear till 1804, were +written by Bewick himself, but revised by the Reverend Henry Cotes, +vicar of Bedlington. The publication of this volume formed the key-stone +of Bewick’s fame as a designer and engraver on wood; for though the cuts +are not superior to those of the first, they are not excelled, nor +indeed equalled, by any that he afterwards executed. The subsequent +additions, whether as cuts of birds or tail-pieces, are not so excellent +as numerous—in this respect the reverse of the additions to the +Quadrupeds. Though all the birds were designed, and nearly all of them +engraved by Bewick himself, there are yet living witnesses who can +testify that both in the drawing and the engraving of the tail-pieces he +received very considerable assistance from his pupils, more especially +from Robert Johnson as a draftsman, and Luke Clennell as a wood +engraver.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII54" id = "tagVII54" href = +"#noteVII54">VII.54</a> Before saying anything further on this subject, +it seems +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page492" id = "page492"> +492</a></span> +necessary to give the following passage from Mr. Atkinson’s Sketch of +the Life and Works of Bewick. “With regard to the circumstance that the +<i>British Birds</i>, with very few exceptions, were finished by his own +hand, I have it in my power to pledge myself. I had been a +good deal surprised one day by hearing a gentleman assert that very few +of them were his own work, all the easy parts being executed by his +pupils. I saw him the same day, and, talking of his art, inquired +if he permitted the assistance of his apprentices in many cases? He +said, ‘No; it had seldom happened, and then they had injured the cuts +very much.’ I inquired if he could remember any of them in which he +had received assistance? He said, ‘Aye: I can soon tell you them;’ +and, after a few minutes’ consideration, he made out, with his +daughter’s assistance, <i>the Whimbrel</i>, <i>Tufted Duck</i>, and +<i>Lesser Tern</i>:<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII55" id = "tagVII55" +href = "#noteVII55">VII.55</a> he tried to recollect more, and turning +to his daughter, said, ‘Jane, honey, dost thou remember any more?’ She +considered a little, and said, ‘No: she did not; but that certainly +there were not half a dozen in all:’ those we both pressed him to do +over again. ‘He intended it,’ he said; but, alas! this intention was +prevented. In some cases, I am informed, he made his pupils block +out for him; that is, furnished them with an outline, and let them cut +away the edges of the block to that line; but as, in this case, the +assistance rendered is much the same as that afforded by a turner’s +apprentice when he rounds off the heavy mass of wood in readiness for a +more experienced hand, but not a line of whose performance remains in +the beautiful toy it becomes, it does not materially shake the +authenticity of the work in question.”</p> + +<p>Though it is evident that Bewick meant here simply to assert that all +the <i>figures</i> of the <i>birds</i>, except the few which he +mentions, were entirely engraved by himself, yet his biographer always +speaks as if <i>every one</i> of the cuts in the work—both birds +and tail-pieces—were exclusively engraved by Bewick himself; and +in consequence of this erroneous opinion he refers to seven cuts<a class += "tag" name = "tagVII56" id = "tagVII56" href = "#noteVII56">VII.56</a> +as affording favourable +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page493" id = "page493"> +493</a></span> +instances of Bewick’s manner of representing water, although <i>not +one</i> of them was engraved by him, but by Luke Clennell, from drawings +by himself or by Robert Johnson. Mr. Atkinson, in his admiration of +Bewick, and in his desire to exaggerate his fame, entirely overlooks the +merits of those by whom he was assisted. Charlton Nesbit and Luke +Clennell rendered him more assistance, though not in the cuts of birds, +than such as that “afforded by a turner’s apprentice when he rounds off +the heavy mass of wood;” and Robert Johnson, who designed many of the +best of the tail-pieces, drew the human figure more correctly than +Bewick himself, and in landscape-drawing was at least his equal. These +observations are not intended in the least to detract from Bewick’s just +and deservedly great reputation, but to correct the erroneous opinions +which have been promulgated on this subject by persons who knew nothing +of the very considerable assistance which he received from his pupils in +the drawing and engraving of the tail-pieces in his history of British +Birds.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_493" id = "illus_493"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_493.png" width = "258" height = "136" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>Though three of the best specimens of Bewick’s talents as a designer +and engraver on wood—the Bittern, the Wood-cock, and the Common +Duck<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII57" id = "tagVII57" href = +"#noteVII57">VII.57</a>—are to be found in the second volume, +containing the water-birds, yet the land-birds in the first volume, from +his being more familiar with their habits, and in consequence of their +allowing more scope for the display of Bewick’s excellence in the +representation of +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page494" id = "page494"> +494</a></span> +foliage, are, on the whole, superior both in design and execution to the +others; their characteristic attitude and expression are represented +with the greatest truth, while, from the propriety of the back-grounds, +and the beauty of the trees and foliage, almost every cut forms a +perfect little picture. Bewick’s talent in pourtraying the form and +character of birds is seen to great advantage in the hawks and the owls; +but his excellence, both as a designer and engraver on wood, is yet more +strikingly displayed in several of the other cuts contained in the same +volume, and among these the following are perhaps the best. The numbers +refer to the pages of the first edition of the Land Birds, 1797. The +Field-fare, page 98; the Yellow Bunting, a most exquisite cut, and +considered by Bewick as the best that he ever engraved, 143; the +Goldfinch, 165; the Skylark, 178; the Woodlark, 183; the Lesser and the +Winter Fauvette, 212, 213; the Willow Wren, 222; the Wren, 227; the +White-rump, 229; the Cole Titmouse, 241; the Night-Jar, 262; the +Domestic Cock, 276; the Turkey, 286; the Pintado, 293; the Red Grouse, +301; the Partridge, 305; the Quail, 308; and the Corncrake, +311.—Among the Birds in the second volume, first edition, 1804, +the following may be instanced as the most excellent. The Water Crake, +page 10; the Water Rail, 13; the Bittern, 47; the Woodcock, 60; the +Common Snipe, 68; the Judcock, or Jack Snipe, 73; the Dunlin, 117; the +Dun Diver, 257; the Grey Lag Goose, 292; and the Common Duck, 333.</p> + +<p>Nothing of the same kind that wood engraving has produced since the +time of Bewick can for a moment bear a comparison with these cuts. They +are not to be equalled till a designer and engraver shall arise +possessed of Bewick’s knowledge of nature, and endowed with his happy +talent of expressing it. Bewick has in this respect effected more by +himself than has been produced by one of our best wood engravers when +working from drawings made by a professional designer, but who knows +nothing of birds, of their habits, or the places which they frequent; +and has not the slightest feeling for natural incident or picturesque +beauty.—No mere fac-simile engraver of a drawing ready made to his +hand, should venture to speak slightingly of Bewick’s talents until he +has both <i>drawn and engraved</i> a cut which may justly challenge a +comparison with the Kyloe Ox, the Yellow-hammer, the Partridge, the +Wood-cock, or the Tame Duck.</p> + +<p>Bewick’s style of engraving, as displayed in the Birds, is +exclusively his own. He adopts no conventional mode of representing +texture or producing an effect, but skilfully avails himself of the most +simple and effective means which his art affords of faithfully and +efficiently representing his subject. He never wastes his time in +laborious trifling to display his skill in execution;—he works +with a higher aim, to represent +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page495" id = "page495"> +495</a></span> +nature; and, consequently, he never bestows his pains except to express +a meaning. The manner in which he has represented the feathers in many +of his birds, is as admirable as it is perfectly original. His feeling +for his subject, and his knowledge of his art, suggest the best means of +effecting his end, and the manner in which he has employed them entitle +him to rank as a wood engraver—without reference to his merits as +a designer—among the very best that have practised the art.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_495" id = "illus_495"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_495.png" width = "298" height = "188" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>Our copy of his cut of the Partridge, though not equal to the +original, will perhaps to a certain extent serve to exemplify his +practice. Every line that is to be perceived in this bird is the best +that could have been devised to express the engraver’s perfect idea of +his subject. The soft downy plumage of the breast is represented by +delicate black lines crossed horizontally by white ones, and in order +that they may appear comparatively light in the impression, the block +has in this part been lowered. The texture of the skin of the legs, and +the marks of the toes, are expressed with the greatest accuracy; and the +varied tints of the plumage of the rump, back, wings, and head, are +indicated with no less fidelity.—Such a cut as this Bewick would +execute in less time than a modern French wood engraver would require to +cut the delicate cross-hatchings necessary, according to French taste, +to denote the grey colour of a soldier’s great coat.</p> + +<p>The cut of the Wood-cock, of which that on the next page is a copy, +is another instance of the able manner in which Bewick has availed +himself of the capabilities of his art. He has here produced the most +perfect likeness of the bird that ever was engraved, and at the same +time given to his subject an effect, by the skilful management of light +and shade, which it is impossible to obtain by means of copper-plate +engraving. Bewick thoroughly understood the advantages of his art in +this +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page496" id = "page496"> +496</a></span> +respect, and no wood engraver or designer, either ancient or modern, has +employed them with greater success, without sacrificing nature to mere +effect.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_496" id = "illus_496"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_496.png" width = "310" height = "243" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>Among the very best of Bewick’s cuts, as a specimen of wood +engraving, is, as we have already said, the Common Duck. The round, full +form of the bird, is represented with the greatest fidelity; the plumage +in all its downy, smooth, and glossy variety,—on the sides, the +rump, the back, the wings, and the head,—is singularly true to +nature; while the legs and toes, and even the webs between the toes, are +engraved in a manner which proves the great attention that Bewick, when +necessary, paid to the minutest points of detail. The effect of the +whole is excellent, and the back-ground, both in character and +execution, is worthy of this master-piece of Bewick as a designer and +engraver on wood.</p> + +<p>The tail-pieces in the first editions of the Birds are, taken all +together, the best that are to be found in any of Bewick’s works; but, +though it is not unlikely that he suggested the subjects, there is +reason to believe that many of them were drawn by Robert Johnson, and +there cannot be a doubt that the greater number of those contained in +the second volume were engraved by Luke Clennell. Before saying anything +more about them, it seems necessary to give a list of those which were +either not drawn or not engraved by Bewick himself; it has been +furnished by one of his early pupils who saw most of Johnson’s drawings, +and worked in the same room with Clennell when he was engraving those +which are here ascribed to him. The pages show where those cuts are to +be found in the edition of 1797 and in that of 1821.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page497" id = "page497"> +497</a></span> + +<table class = "editions"> +<tr> +<td></td> +<td class = "center smallest" colspan = "2">EDITIONS</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "center">VOLUME I</td> +<td>1797</td> +<td>1821</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td></td> +<td class = "smallest">PAGE</td> +<td class = "smallest">PAGE</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Boughs and Bird’s-nest, drawn and engraved by Charlton Nesbit, +preface</td> +<td class = "item">i</td><td class = "item">i</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Sportsman and Old Shepherd, drawn by Robert Johnson, engraved by +Bewick, preface (transferred to Vol. ii. preface, page vi. in the +edition of 1821)</td> +<td class = "item">vi</td><td class = "item">—</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Old Man breaking stones, drawn by R. Johnson, engraved by +Bewick</td> +<td class = "item">26</td><td class = "item">xxviii</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Horse running away with boys in the cart, drawn by R. Johnson, +engraved by Bewick</td> +<td class = "item">82</td><td class = "item">146</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Fox and Bird, drawn by R. Johnson, engraved by Bewick</td> +<td class = "item">159</td><td class = "item">140</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Winter piece, the <i>geldard</i>, drawn by R. Johnson, engraved by +Bewick</td> +<td class = "item">162</td><td class = "item">160</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<table class = "editions"> +<tr> +<td></td> +<td class = "center smallest" colspan = "2">EDITIONS</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "center">VOLUME II</td> +<td>1804</td> +<td>1821</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td></td> +<td class = "smallest">PAGE</td> +<td class = "smallest">PAGE</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Two Old Soldiers, “the Honours of War,” drawn by R. Johnson, +engraved by Bewick, introduction</td> +<td class = "item">v</td><td class = "item">vii</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Man creeping along the branch of a tree to cross a stream, drawn by +R. Johnson, engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">3</td><td class = "item">63</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Old Fisherman, with a leister, drawn by R. Johnson, engraved by L. +Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">23</td><td class = "item">38</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>The Broken Branch, drawn by R. Johnson, engraved by Bewick</td> +<td class = "item">31</td><td class = "item">41</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Old Man watching his fishing-lines in the rain, drawn by R. Johnson, +engraved by Bewick</td> +<td class = "item">41</td><td class = "item">48</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Man angling, his coat-skirts pinned up, engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">46</td><td class = "item">57</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Old Angler <i>fettling</i> his hooks, engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">50</td><td class = "item">97</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Partridge shooting, drawn by R. Johnson, engraved by L. +Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">82</td><td class = "item">105</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Woman hanging out clothes, engraved by L. Clennell (transferred to +vol. i. page 164, edition of 1821)</td> +<td class = "item">106</td><td class = "item">—</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Man fallen into the water, engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">94</td><td class = "item">262</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>River scene, engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">107</td><td class = "item">132</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Coast scene, engraved by H. Hole</td> +<td class = "item">123</td><td class = "item">124</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Coast scene, moonlight, drawn by R. Johnson, engraved by L. +Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">125</td><td class = "item">122</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Coast scene, drawn by R. Johnson, engraved by H. Hole</td> +<td class = "item">144</td><td class = "item">142</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Beggar and Mastiff, engraved L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">160</td><td class = "item">207</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Coast scene, drawn by R. Johnson, engraved by Bewick</td> +<td class = "item">161</td><td class = "item">151</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Burying-ground, drawn and engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">166</td><td class = "item">237</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Man and Cow, drawn by R. Johnson, engraved by Bewick</td> +<td class = "item">173</td><td class = "item">161</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Tinker and his Wife, windy day, drawn by R. Johnson, engraved by H. +Hole</td> +<td class = "item">176</td><td class = "item">148</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Winter piece, skating, drawn by R. Johnson engraved by Bewick</td> +<td class = "item">180</td><td class = "item">202</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Man on a rock, drawn by R. Johnson, engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">182</td><td class = "item">177</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Icebergs, Ship frozen up, drawn and engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">188</td><td class = "item">156</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Sea piece, moonlight, engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">194</td><td class = "item">190</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Tired Sportsman, engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">202</td><td class = "item">245</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>The Glutton, engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">211</td><td class = "item">195</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Sea piece, engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">215</td><td class = "item">197</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Runic Pillar, drawn by R. Johnson, engraved by John Johnson</td> +<td class = "item">220</td><td class = "item">342</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Esquimaux and Canoe, drawn and engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">230</td><td class = "item">211</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Sea piece, drawn and engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">238</td><td class = "item">306</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Coast scene, drawn by R. Johnson, engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">240</td><td class = "item">218</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Coast scene, drawn by R. Johnson, engraved by Bewick</td> +<td class = "item">245</td><td class = "item">220</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Man and Dog, engraved by H. Hole</td> +<td class = "item">251</td><td class = "item">228</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Geese going home, engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">271</td><td class = "item">260</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Boys sailing a Ship, engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">282</td><td class = "item">268</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Old Man and a Horse, going to market with two sacks full of +geese</td> +<td class = "item">286</td><td class = "item">247</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Boys riding on gravestones, drawn by R. Johnson, engraved by L. +Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">304</td><td class = "item">323</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td> +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page498" id = "page498"> +498</a></span> +Man smoking, engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">337</td><td class = "item">303</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Pumping water on a weak leg, engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">348</td><td class = "item">304</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Sea piece, drawn and engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">359</td><td class = "item">314</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Sea piece, drawn and engraved by L. Clennell</td> +<td class = "item">366</td><td class = "item">242</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Sea piece, drawn and engraved by L. Clennell (in Supplement to vol. +ii. p. 20)</td> +<td class = "item">380</td><td class = "item">—</td> +</tr></table> + + +<p>This list might be considerably increased by inserting many other +tail-pieces engraved by Clennell; but this does not appear necessary, as +a sufficient number has been enumerated to show that both in the +designing and in the engraving of those cuts Bewick received very +considerable assistance from his pupils. In the additional tail-pieces +to be found in subsequent editions the greater number are not engraved +by Bewick himself. In the last edition, published in 1832, there are at +least thirty engraved by his pupils subsequent to the time of +Clennell.</p> + +<p>The head-piece at the commencement of the introduction, +volume <span class = "smallroman">I.</span> page vii. drawn and +engraved by Bewick himself, presents an excellent view of a farm-yard. +Everything is true to nature; the birds assembled near the woman seen +winnowing corn are, though on a small scale, represented with the +greatest fidelity; even among the smallest the wagtail can be +distinguished from the sparrow. The dog, feeling no interest in the +business, is seen quietly resting on the dunghill; but the chuckling of +the hens, announcing that something like eating is going forward, has +evidently excited the attention of the old sow, and brought her and her +litter into the yard in the expectation of getting a share. The season, +the latter end of autumn, is indicated by the flight of field-fares, and +the comparatively naked appearance of the trees; and we perceive that it +is a clear, bright day from the strong shadow of the ladder projected +against the wall, and on the thatched roof of the outhouse. +A heron, a crow, and a magpie are perceived nailed against the +gable end of the barn; and a couple of pigeons are seen flying above the +house. The cut forms at once an interesting picture of country life, and +a graphic summary of the contents of the work.</p> + +<p>Among the tail-pieces drawn and engraved by Bewick himself, in the +first edition of the Birds, the following appear most deserving of +notice. In volume <span class = "smallroman">I.</span>: 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 +<i>watering</i>, 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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page499" id = "page499"> +499</a></span> +he had been indulging too freely on <ins class = "correction" title = +"text reads ‘the the’">the</ins> King’s birth-day, 4th June. The +following is a copy of the cut.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_499a" id = "illus_499a"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_499a.png" width = "280" height = "121" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p class = "continue"> +Two cows standing in a pool, under the shade of a <i>dyke-back</i>, 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 “<i>Esto perpetua!</i>” 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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_499b" id = "illus_499b"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_499b.png" width = "311" height = "180" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p class = "continue"> +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 <i>howdy</i>—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.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page500" id = "page500"> +500</a></span> +<p>Bewick’s humour occasionally verges on positive grossness, and a +<i>glaring</i> 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.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII58" id = "tagVII58" href = +"#noteVII58">VII.58</a></p> + +<p>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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page501" id = "page501"> +501</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_500" id = "illus_500"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_500.png" width = "199" height = "154" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.’”<a class = +"tag" name = "tagVII59" id = "tagVII59" href = "#noteVII59">VII.59</a> +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 <i>chemmerly</i>—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 <i>raised</i> +[enraged] dyer begging <i>chemmerly</i>,” 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.</p> + +<p>When the second volume of the History of British Birds was published, +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page502" id = "page502"> +502</a></span> +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 +<i>scandalum magnatum</i> 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 +<i>illustrations of Fables</i>. 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:—</p> + +<p class = "verse"> +“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”</p> + +<p>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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page503" id = "page503"> +503</a></span> +the whole volume there are not more than three of the largest cuts +engraved by Bewick himself.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII60" id = +"tagVII60" href = "#noteVII60">VII.60</a> 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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_503" id = "illus_503"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_503.png" width = "232" height = "170" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +THE CROW AND THE LAMB.</p> + +<p>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.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII61" id = "tagVII61" href = +"#noteVII61">VII.61</a> Though the work is professedly intended for the +instruction of the young, there are certainly a few tail-pieces +introduced for the <i>entertainment</i> 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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page504" id = "page504"> +504</a></span> +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 <i>ad libitum</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page505" id = "page505"> +505</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_504" id = "illus_504"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_504.png" width = "320" height = "278" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>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.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII62" id = "tagVII62" href = +"#noteVII62">VII.62</a> “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<a class = "tag" name = +"tagVII63" id = "tagVII63" href = "#noteVII63">VII.63</a> 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 “<i>Thomas</i>,” and +not “<i>John</i>.” 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 <i>Gay’s</i> +Fables.”</p> + +<p>Bewick’s <i>mark</i> 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,<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII64" id += "tagVII64" href = "#noteVII64">VII.64</a> 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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page506" id = "page506"> +506</a></span> +one of the plans which he had devised to prevent the forgery of +bank-notes.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII65" id = "tagVII65" href = +"#noteVII65">VII.65</a></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class = "picture"> +<div class = "picblock w200"> +<p><a name = "illus_506" id = "illus_506"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_506a.png" width = "159" height = "116" +alt = "see text"></p> +</div> + +<div class = "picblock"> +<p><img src = "images/illus_506b.png" width = "152" height = "82" +alt = "see text"></p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>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 <i>tint</i>, 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.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII66" id = +"tagVII66" href = "#noteVII66">VII.66</a> 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.<a class = "tag" name = +"tagVII67" id = "tagVII67" href = "#noteVII67">VII.67</a> He had, +however, finished it all +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page507" id = "page507"> +507</a></span> +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!”</p> + +<p>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,<a class = "tag" name = +"tagVII68" id = "tagVII68" href = "#noteVII68">VII.68</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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, +<i>lapping +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page508" id = "page508"> +508</a></span> +up</i> 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.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII69" id = "tagVII69" href = +"#noteVII69">VII.69</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page509" id = "page509"> +509</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_508" id = "illus_508"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_508.png" width = "320" height = "318" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>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 <i>pant</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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, “<i>paid</i> 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.<a class = "tag" name += "tagVII70" id = "tagVII70" href = "#noteVII70">VII.70</a> The portrait +on page 510, engraved on wood, is another attempt to perpetuate the +likeness of one to whom the art owes so much.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page510" id = "page510"> +510</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_510" id = "illus_510"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_510.png" width = "336" height = "431" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +THOMAS BEWICK.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page511" id = "page511"> +511</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_511" id = "illus_511"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_511.png" width = "312" height = "272" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>The following are the inscriptions on the tablets:</p> + +<div class = "picture smaller"> +<div class = "picblock"> +<p class = "center"> +In Memory of<br> +JOHN BEWICK,<br> +Engraver,<br> +Who died December, 5, 1795,<br> +Aged 35 years.</p> +<hr class = "mid"> +<p class = "center"> +His Ingenuity as an +Artist<br> +was excelled only by<br> +his Conduct as a<br> +Man.</p> +</div> + +<div class = "picblock"> +<p class = "center"> +The<br> +Burial Place<br> +of<br> +THOMAS BEWICK,<br> +Engraver,<br> +Newcastle.<br> +Isabella, his Wife,<br> +Died 1st February, 1826,<br> +Aged 72 years.<br> +THOMAS BEWICK,<br> +Died 8th of November, 1828,<br> +Aged 75 years.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page512" id = "page512"> +512</a></span> +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:</p> + +<div class = "verse"> +<p class = "open">“Happy is the bride that the sun shines on,</p> +<p>And happy is the corpse that the rain rains on,—”</p> +</div> + +<p class = "continue"> +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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_512" id = "illus_512"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_512.png" width = "366" height = "258" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“Have we forgotten, in our hurried and imperfect enumeration of wise +worthies,—have we forgotten</p> + +<p class = "verse"> +‘The Genius that dwells on the banks of the Tyne,’<a class = "tag" name += "tagVII71" id = "tagVII71" href = "#noteVII71">VII.71</a></p> + +<p class = "continue"> +the Matchless, Inimitable Bewick? No. His books lie on our parlour, +bed-room, dining-room, drawing-room, study table, and are never out of +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page513" id = "page513"> +513</a></span> +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, <span class = "smallcaps">Omne bonum desuper—Opera +Dei mirifica</span>.”</p> + +<p>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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page514" id = "page514"> +514</a></span> +cuts.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII72" id = "tagVII72" href = +"#noteVII72">VII.72</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page515" id = "page515"> +515</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_515" id = "illus_515"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_515.png" width = "322" height = "396" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The most of John Bewick’s cuts are much better conceived than +engraved; and this perhaps may in a great measure have arisen from +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page516" id = "page516"> +516</a></span> +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 <i>effective</i> 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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_516" id = "illus_516"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_516.png" width = "233" height = "179" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>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.<a class = "tag" +name = "tagVII73" id = "tagVII73" href = "#noteVII73">VII.73</a> He +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page517" id = "page517"> +517</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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.<a class = "tag" name += "tagVII74" id = "tagVII74" href = "#noteVII74">VII.74</a></p> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page518" id = "page518"> +518</a></span> +<p>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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_518a" id = "illus_518a"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_518a.png" width = "242" height = "310" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_518b" id = "illus_518b"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_518b.png" width = "305" height = "276" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page519" id = "page519"> +519</a></span> +<p>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.<a class = "tag" name = +"tagVII75" id = "tagVII75" href = "#noteVII75">VII.75</a> 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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_519" id = "illus_519"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_519.png" width = "335" height = "252" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>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,<a +class = "tag" name = "tagVII76" id = "tagVII76" href = +"#noteVII76">VII.76</a> +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page520" id = "page520"> +520</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 “<i>chopped up</i>.” 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.</p> + +<p>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.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII77" +id = "tagVII77" href = "#noteVII77">VII.77</a> Nesbit’s cut was, +however, +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page521" id = "page521"> +521</a></span> +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 <i>best</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page522" id = "page522"> +522</a></span> +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.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII78" id = +"tagVII78" href = "#noteVII78">VII.78</a></p> + +<p>Most of Clennell’s cuts are distinguished by their free and +<i>artist-like</i> 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.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII79" id = "tagVII79" href = +"#noteVII79">VII.79</a> 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.<a class = "tag" name = +"tagVII80" id = "tagVII80" href = "#noteVII80">VII.80</a> The drawing +was made on the block by Thurston; but the spirit and +<i>effect</i>,—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 <i>illustrations</i> of Falconer’s +Shipwreck.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_523" id = "illus_523"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_523.png" width = "329" height = "317" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +DIPLOMA OF THE HIGHLAND SOCIETY<br> +<i>Reduced to one-fourth of the original size</i></p> + +<p>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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page523" id = "page523"> +523</a></span> +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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page524" id = "page524"> +524</a></span> +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.<a class = "tag" name = +"tagVII81" id = "tagVII81" href = "#noteVII81">VII.81</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII82" id = "tagVII82" +href = "#noteVII82">VII.82</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII83" +id = "tagVII83" href = "#noteVII83">VII.83</a> It has +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page525" id = "page525"> +525</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>Within a short time after Clennell had lost his reason, his wife also +became insane;<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII84" id = "tagVII84" href = +"#noteVII84">VII.84</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>poetry</i>. 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.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page526" id = "page526"> +526</a></span> + +<div class = "picture"> +<div class = "picblock w100"> +<p><a name = "illus_526" id = "illus_526"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_526a.png" width = "83" height = "156" +alt = "see text"></p> +</div> + +<div class = "picblock"> +<p><img src = "images/illus_526b.png" width = "203" height = "163" +alt = "see text"></p> +</div> +</div> + +<div class = "verse w20"> +<h5>SONG.</h5> + +<p>Good morning to you, Mary,</p> +<p class = "indent">It glads me much to see thee once again;</p> +<p>What joy, since thee I’ve heard!</p> +<p class = "indent">Heaven such beauty ever deign,</p> +<p class = "deep">Mary of the vineyard!</p> +</div> + +<div class = "verse w20"> +<h5>THE EVENING STAR.</h5> + +<p>Look! what is it, with twinkling light,</p> +<p>That brings such joy, serenely bright,</p> +<p>That turns the dusk again to light?—</p> +<p class = "indent3">’Tis the Evening Star!</p> +<p>What is it with purest ray,</p> +<p>That brings such peace at close of day,</p> +<p>That lights the traveller on his way?—</p> +<p class = "indent3">’Tis the Evening Star!</p> +<p>What is it, of purest holy ray,</p> +<p>That brings to man the promised day,</p> +<p>And peace?—</p> +<p class = "indent3">’Tis the Evening Star!</p> +</div> + +<div class = "verse w25"> +<h5>COMPENDIUM POETICA.</h5> + +<p>A drop of heaven’s treasure, on an angel’s wing,</p> +<p>Such heaven alone can bring;—</p> +<p>The painted hues upon the rose,</p> +<p>In heaven’s shower reposing,</p> +<p>Is an earthly treasure of such measure.</p> +<p>The butterfly, in his spell,</p> +<p>Upon the rosy prism doth dwell,</p> +<p>And as he doth fly, in his tour</p> +<p>From flower to flower,</p> +<p>Is seen for a while</p> +<p>Every care to beguile,</p> +<p>And so doth wing his little way,</p> +<p>A little fairy of the day!</p> +</div> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page527" id = "page527"> +527</a></span> + +<div class = "verse w18"> +<h5>A FLOWERET.</h5> + +<p>Where lengthened ray</p> +<p>Gildeth the bark upon her way;</p> +<p>Where vision is lost in space,</p> +<p class = "indent3">To trace,</p> +<p>As resting on a stile,</p> +<p>In ascent of half a mile—</p> +<p>It is when the birds do sing,</p> +<p>In the evening of the spring.</p> +<p>The broad shadow from the tree,</p> +<p class = "indent3">Falling upon the slope,</p> +<p>You may see,</p> +<p>O’er flowery mead,</p> +<p>Where doth a pathway lead</p> +<p class = "indent3">To the topmost ope—</p> +<p>The yellow butter-cup</p> +<p class = "indent3">And purple crow-foot,</p> +<p>The waving grass up,</p> +<p class = "indent3">Rounding upon the but—</p> +<p>The spreading daisy</p> +<p>In the clover maze,</p> +<p>The wild rose upon the hedge-row,</p> +<p>And the honey-suckle blow</p> +<p class = "indent3">For village girl</p> +<p>To dress her chaplet—</p> +<p>Or some youth, mayhap, let—</p> +<p>Or bind the linky trinket</p> +<p class = "indent3">For some earl—</p> +<p>Or trim up in plaits her hair</p> +<p>With much seeming care,</p> +<p>As fancy may think it—</p> +<p>Or with spittle moisten,</p> +<p>Or half wink it,</p> +<p>Or to music inclined,</p> +<p>Or to sleep in the soft wind.</p> + +<p class = "stanza right"> +St Peter’s, August 1828.<br> +L. C.</p> +</div> + +<p>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</p> + +<p class = "verse"> +“Small feeling of privation, none of pain.”<a class = "tag" name = +"tagVII85" id = "tagVII85" href = "#noteVII85">VII.85</a></p> + +<p>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.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII86" id = "tagVII86" +href = "#noteVII86">VII.86</a> 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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page528" id = "page528"> +528</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p class = "address">“Gateshead, 1st January, 1815.</p> + +<p class = "smallcaps">“Dear William,</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p class = "quotation"> +“To William Harvey, jun. Westgate.</p> + +<p class = "right"> +<img src = "images/illus_528.png" width = "161" height = "25" +alt = "signature of Thomas Bewick" title = "Thomas Bewick">.”</p> + +<p>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.<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII87" id = "tagVII87" href = +"#noteVII87">VII.87</a> +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page529" id = "page529"> +529</a></span> +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 <i>tone</i>, and some of the more distant +figures appear to <i>stick</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_530" id = "illus_530"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_530a.png" width = "437" height = "141" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +SPECIMENS OF MR. HARVEY’S WOOD-ENGRAVING.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<img src = "images/illus_530b.png" width = "419" height = "301" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +FROM DR. HENDERSON’S HISTORY OF ANCIENT AND MODERN WINES.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<img src = "images/illus_530c.png" width = "439" height = "139" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>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;<a class = "tag" name = +"tagVII88" id = "tagVII88" href = "#noteVII88">VII.88</a> in the Tower +Menagerie, +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page530" id = "page530"> +530</a></span> +1828; in the Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society, 1831; and +in Latrobe’s Solace of Song, 1837, were all drawn by him.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_531" id = "illus_531"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_531.png" width = "370" height = "469" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page531" id = "page531"> +531</a></span> + +<p class = "continue"> +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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_532a" id = "illus_532a"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_532a.png" width = "265" height = "318" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p class = "continue"> +For various other +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page532" id = "page532"> +532</a></span> +works he has also furnished, in all, between three and four thousand +designs. As a designer on wood, he is decidedly superior to the +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page533" id = "page533"> +533</a></span> +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.</p> + +<div class = "picture"> +<div class = "picblock w300"> +<p><a name = "illus_532b" id = "illus_532b"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_532b.png" width = "264" height = "327" +alt = "see text"></p> +</div> + +<div class = "picblock w200"> +<p><a name = "illus_532c" id = "illus_532c"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_532c.png" width = "180" height = "307" +alt = "see text"></p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_533" id = "illus_533"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_533.png" width = "306" height = "396" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page534" id = "page534"> +534</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_534" id = "illus_534"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_534.png" width = "299" height = "396" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page535" id = "page535"> +535</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_535" id = "illus_535"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_535.png" width = "291" height = "387" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +<i>Rob. Branston.</i></p> + +<p>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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page536" id = "page536"> +536</a></span> +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 <i>road-side</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page537" id = "page537"> +[537]</a></span> +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_537" id = "illus_537"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_537a.png" width = "316" height = "224" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +INDUSTRY AND SLOTH.—<i>Robert Branston.</i></p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<img src = "images/illus_537b.png" width = "314" height = "228" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +THE TWO CRABS.—<i>Robert Branston.</i></p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<img src = "images/illus_537c.png" width = "233" height = "178" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +TAIL-PIECE TO THE TWO CRABS.—<i>Robert Branston.</i></p> + +<p>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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page538" id = "page538"> +538</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_538" id = "illus_538"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_538.png" width = "283" height = "169" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page539" id = "page539"> +539</a></span> + +<div class = "picture w550"> +<p><a name = "illus_539a" id = "illus_539a"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_539a.png" width = "503" height = "332" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "leftside full"> +<i>Hugh Hughes, del. et sc.</i></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +PISTILL CAIN.</p> +</div> + +<div class = "picture w500"> +<p><a name = "illus_539b" id = "illus_539b"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_539b.png" width = "498" height = "331" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "leftside full"> +<i>Hugh Hughes, del. et sc.</i></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +MOLL FAMAU.</p> +</div> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page540" id = "page540"> +540</a></span> + +<div class = "picture w500"> +<p><a name = "illus_540a" id = "illus_540a"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_540a.png" width = "500" height = "326" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "leftside full"> +<i>Hugh Hughes, del. et sc.</i></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +WREXHAM CHURCH.</p> +</div> + +<div class = "picture w500"> +<p><a name = "illus_540b" id = "illus_540b"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_540b.png" width = "491" height = "326" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "leftside full"> +<i>Hugh Hughes, del. et sc.</i></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +PWLL CARADOC.</p> +</div> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page541" id = "page541"> +541</a></span> + +<p>John Thompson,<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII89" id = "tagVII89" href += "#noteVII89">VII.89</a> one of the best English wood engravers of the +present day, was a pupil of Mr. Branston. He not only excels, like his +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page542" id = "page542"> +542</a></span> +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,<a +class = "tag" name = "tagVII90" id = "tagVII90" href = +"#noteVII90">VII.90</a> consisting +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page543" id = "page543"> +543</a></span> +of the Minnow, the Loach, the Bull-head, and the Stickle-back, in +Major’s edition of Walton’s Angler;<a class = "tag" name = "tagVII91" id += "tagVII91" href = "#noteVII91">VII.91</a></p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_541" id = "illus_541"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_541a.png" width = "319" height = "187" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +GROUP OF FISH.—<i>J. Thompson.</i></p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<img src = "images/illus_541b.png" width = "313" height = "210" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +SALMON.—<i>J. Thompson.</i></p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<img src = "images/illus_541c.png" width = "306" height = "125" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +CHUB.—<i>J. Thompson.</i></p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_542a" id = "illus_542a"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_542a.png" width = "291" height = "202" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +PIKE.—<i>R. Branston.</i></p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_542b" id = "illus_542b"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_542b.png" width = "290" height = "163" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "caption"> +EEL.—<i>H. White.</i></p> + +<p class = "continue"> +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 +<a href = "#illus_531">page 531</a>. 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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page544" id = "page544"> +544</a></span> +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.</p> + +<div class = "picture w400"> +<p><a name = "illus_543" id = "illus_543"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_543.png" width = "353" height = "239" +alt = "see text and caption"></p> + +<p class = "rightside full"> +<i>John Thompson.</i></p> +</div> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_544" id = "illus_544"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_544.png" width = "293" height = "244" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class = "footnote"> +<p>* All the engravers to whose names an asterisk is added are now +deceased.</p> +</div> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page545" id = "page545"> +545</a></span> + +<div class = "picture w450"> +<p><a name = "illus_545a" id = "illus_545a"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_545a.png" width = "405" height = "258" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p class = "leftside"> +JOHN MARTIN</p> +<p class = "rightside"> +JOHN JACKSON</p> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class = "picture w400"> +<p><a name = "illus_545b" id = "illus_545b"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_545b.png" width = "395" height = "250" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p class = "leftside"> +JOHN MARTIN</p> +<p class = "rightside"> +F. W. BRANSTON</p> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page546" id = "page546"> +546</a></span> + +<div class = "picture w400"> +<p><a name = "illus_546a" id = "illus_546a"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_546a.png" width = "389" height = "248" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p class = "leftside"> +JOHN MARTIN</p> +<p class = "rightside"> +E. LANDELLS</p> +</div> + +<p><span class = "smallcaps">Mr. Ebenezer Landells</span>, 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.</p> + +<div class = "picture w400"> +<p><a name = "illus_546b" id = "illus_546b"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_546b.png" width = "398" height = "249" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p class = "leftside"> +JOHN MARTIN</p> +<p class = "rightside"> +W. H. POWIS</p> +</div> + +<p>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 +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page547" id = "page547"> +547</a></span> +the projectors, Messrs. Bull and Churton, upwards of four thousand +guineas: it may now be bought for a dozen shillings.</p> + +<div class = "picture w450"> +<p><a name = "illus_547a" id = "illus_547a"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_547a.png" width = "405" height = "264" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p class = "leftside"> +JOHN MARTIN</p> +<p class = "rightside"> +THOS. WILLIAMS</p> +</div> + +<p><span class = "smallcaps">Mr. Thomas Williams</span> 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.</p> + +<div class = "picture w450"> +<p><a name = "illus_547b" id = "illus_547b"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_547b.png" width = "426" height = "279" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p class = "leftside"> +JOHN MARTIN</p> +<p class = "rightside"> +W. T. GREEN</p> +</div> + +<p>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. +<span class = "pagenum"><a name = "page548" id = "page548"> +548</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class = "picture w350"> +<p><p class = "illustration"> +<a name = "illus_548" id = "illus_548"> </a> +<img src = "images/illus_548.png" width = "320" height = "284" +alt = "see text"></p> + +<p class = "leftside"> +W. HARVEY</p> +<p class = "rightside"> +W. T. GREEN</p> +</div> + +<div class = "footnote"> +<p><a name = "noteVII1" id = "noteVII1" href = "#tagVII1">VII.1</a> +Small wood-cuts appear to have been frequently used about this time in +newspapers, for what the Americans call a “caption” to advertisements. +“The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out a proper +method to catch the reader’s eye, without which many a good thing may +pass over unobserved, or be lost among commissions of bankrupts. +Asterisks and hands were formerly of great use for this purpose. Of late +years the N.B. has been much in fashion, as also <i>little cuts and +figures</i>, the invention of which we must ascribe to the author of +spring trusses.”—Tatler, No. 224, 14th September 1710. The +practice is not yet obsolete. Cuts of this kind are still to be found in +country newspapers prefixed to advertisements of quack medicines, +horse-races, coach and steam-boat departures, sales of ships, and the +services of <i>equi admissorii</i>.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII2" id = "noteVII2" href = "#tagVII2">VII.2</a> +Some of the cuts in an edition of Dryden’s plays, 6 vols. 12mo. +published by Tonson and Watts in 1717, have evidently been either +engraved on some kind of soft metal or been casts from a wood block. In +the corner of such cuts, the marks of the pins, which have fastened the +engraved metal-plate to a piece of wood below, are quite apparent.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII3" id = "noteVII3" href = "#tagVII3">VII.3</a> +Papillon, Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 323.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII4" id = "noteVII4" href = "#tagVII4">VII.4</a> +“The Fables of Mr. John Gay,” with cuts by Thomas and John Bewick, was +published in 1779. “Select Fables, a new edition improved,” with +cuts by the same, appeared in 1784; both in duodecimo, printed by +T. Saint, Newcastle-on-Tyne. The cuts in the latter work are +considerably better than those in the former. Several of the cuts which +originally appeared in those two works are to be found in “Select +Fables; with cuts designed and engraved by Thomas and John Bewick, and +others,” octavo, printed for Emerson Charnely, Newcastle-on-Tyne, +1820.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII5" id = "noteVII5" href = "#tagVII5">VII.5</a> +The cuts in two different editions of Æsop’s Fables, published at +Paris,—the one by Charles Le Clerc in 1731, and the other by +J. Barbou in 1758,—are most wretchedly executed. The mark of +Vincent Le Sueur appears on the frontispiece to Le Clerc’s edition.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII6" id = "noteVII6" href = "#tagVII6">VII.6</a> +It is not unlikely that the frequency of such casts has induced many +persons to suppose that most of the cuts of this period were +“<i>engraved</i> on metal in the manner of wood.”</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII7" id = "noteVII7" href = "#tagVII7">VII.7</a> +Two cuts, with the same mark, are to be found in Thoresby’s Vicaria +Leodinensis, 8vo. London, 1724; one at the commencement of the preface, +and the other at the end of the work.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII8" id = "noteVII8" href = "#tagVII8">VII.8</a> +Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. pp. 327, 328.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII9" id = "noteVII9" href = "#tagVII9">VII.9</a> +This painting, which is wholly in chiaro-scuro, is now in the National +Gallery, to which it was presented by the late Sir George Beaumont.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII10" id = "noteVII10" href = "#tagVII10">VII.10</a> +The title at length is as follows: “An Essay on the Invention of +Engraving and Printing in Chiaro Oscuro, as practised by Albert Durer, +Hugo di Carpi, &c., and the Application of it to the making Paper +Hangings of taste, duration, and elegance, by Mr. Jackson of Battersea. +Illustrated with Prints in proper colours.” 4to. London, 1754.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII11" id = "noteVII11" href = "#tagVII11">VII.11</a> +There can be no doubt that the mention of Kirkall’s name is purposely +avoided. The “attempts” of Count Caylus, who executed several +chiaro-scuros by means of copper-plates and wood-blocks subsequent to +Kirkall, are noticed; but the name of Nicholas Le Sueur, who assisted +the Count and engraved the wood-blocks, is never mentioned. It is also +stated in the Essay, page 6, that some of the subjects begun by Count +Caylus were finished by Mr. Jackson, and “approved by the lovers and +promoters of that art in Paris.”</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII12" id = "noteVII12" href = "#tagVII12">VII.12</a> +I have only seen one of these landscapes; and from it I form no very +high opinion of the others. It is scarcely superior in point of +execution to the prints in “proper colours” contained in the Essay.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII13" id = "noteVII13" href = "#tagVII13">VII.13</a> +Papillon, in the Supplement to his “Traité de la Gravure en Bois,” page +6, gives a small cut—a copy of a figure in a copper-plate by +Callot—engraved by himself when nine years old. If the cut be +genuine, the engraver had improved but little as he grew older.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII14" id = "noteVII14" href = "#tagVII14">VII.14</a> +Traité de la Gravure en Bois, Supplement, tom. iii. p. 39. In the +first volume, page 335, he alludes to the disorder as “un accident et +une fatalité commune à plusieurs graveurs, aussi bien que moi.” Has the +practice of engraving on wood or on copper a tendency to induce +insanity? Three distinguished engravers, all from the same town, have in +recent times lost their reason; and several others, from various parts +of the country, have been afflicted with the same distressing malady. +These facts deserve the consideration of parents who design to send +their sons as pupils to engravers. When there is the least reason to +suspect a hereditary taint of insanity in the constitution of the youth, +it perhaps would be safest to put him to some other business or +profession where close attention to minute objects is less required.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII15" id = "noteVII15" href = "#tagVII15">VII.15</a> +The Supplement, or “Tome troisième,” as it is also called, though dated +1766, was not printed until 1768, as is evident from a “Discours +Nuptial,” at page 97, pronounced on 13th June 1768. Two of the cuts also +contain the date 1768.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII16" id = "noteVII16" href = "#tagVII16">VII.16</a> +Papillon’s account of the Cunio, with an examination of its credibility, +will be found in chapter i. pp. 26-39.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII17" id = "noteVII17" href = "#tagVII17">VII.17</a> +This poem was privately printed and never published. It was written +expressly in imitation of Dr. Darwin, some of whose friends had +contended that his style was inimitable, but were deceived into a belief +that this poem was written by him, until the real author avowed himself. +In the Advertisement prefixed to it Dr. Beddoes speaks thus of the +engraver of the cuts: “The engravings in the following pages will be +praised or excused when it is known that they are the performance of an +uneducated and uninstructed artist, if such an application be not a +profanation of the term, in a remote village. All the assistance he +received was from the example of Mr. Bewick’s most masterly engravings +on wood.” The name of this self-taught artist was Edward Dyas, who was +parish-clerk at Madeley, Shropshire, where the book was printed. The +<i>compositor</i>, as is stated in the same Advertisement, was a young +woman.—See <i>Bibliotheca Parriana</i>, p. 513.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII18" id = "noteVII18" href = "#tagVII18">VII.18</a> +“Manière de Gratter les tailles déjà gravées pour les rendre plus +fortes, afin de les faire ombrer davantage.”—Supplément du Traité +de la Gravure en Bois, p. 50.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII19" id = "noteVII19" href = "#tagVII19">VII.19</a> +Several cuts in which cross-hatching is introduced occur in the “Traité +de la Gravure en Bois;” and the author refers to several others in the +“Recueil des Papillons” as displaying the same kind of work. He +considers the execution of such hatchings as the test of excellence in +wood engraving; “for,” he observes, “when a person has learnt to execute +them he may boast of having mastered one of the most difficult parts of +the art, and may justly assume the name of a wood engraver.”—Tom. +ii. p. 90.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII20" id = "noteVII20" href = "#tagVII20">VII.20</a> +He complains in another part of the work that many printers, both +compositors and pressmen, by pretending to engrave on wood, had brought +the art into disrepute. They not only spoiled the work of regular +engravers, but <i>dared</i> to engrave wood-cuts themselves.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII21" id = "noteVII21" href = "#tagVII21">VII.21</a> +Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. ii. p. 365.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII22" id = "noteVII22" href = "#tagVII22">VII.22</a> +The portrait was engraved “<i>in venerationis testimonium</i>,” and +presented to Papillon by Nicholas Caron, a bookseller and wood +engraver of Besançon. The following complimentary verses are engraved +below the portrait:</p> + +<div class = "verse"> +<p class = "open">“Tu vois ici les traits d’un Artiste fameux</p> +<p class = "indent">Dont la savante main enfanta des merveilles;</p> +<p class = "indent">Par ses travaux et par ses veilles</p> +<p>Il resuscita l’Art qui le trace à tes yeux.” +</div> + +<p>Papillon speaks favourably of Caron as a wood engraver; he says that +“he is much superior to Nioul, Jackson, Contat, Lefevre, and others his +contemporaries, and would at least have equalled the Le Sueurs had he +applied himself to drawing the figure.”</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII23" id = "noteVII23" href = "#tagVII23">VII.23</a> +From several of those blocks not less than sixty thousand impressions +had been previously taken, and from one of them four hundred and +fifty-six thousand had been printed.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII24" id = "noteVII24" href = "#tagVII24">VII.24</a> +In the chiaro-scuros from original drawings in the collection of +Monsieur Crozat, with the figures etched by Count Caylus, the +wood-blocks from which the sepia-coloured tints were printed were +engraved by Nicholas Le Sueur.—About the same period Arthur Pond +and George Knapton in England, and Count M. A. Zanetti in Italy, +executed in the same manner several chiaro-scuros in imitation of +drawings and sketches by eminent painters. The taste for chiaro-scuros +seems to have been revived in France by the Regent-Duke of Orleans, who +declared that Ugo da Carpi’s chiaro-scuros afforded him more pleasure +than any other kind of prints.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII25" id = "noteVII25" href = "#tagVII25">VII.25</a> +The following are the titles of those tracts, which are rather scarce. +They are all of small octavo size, and printed by J. Barbou. +1. Dissertation sur l’Origine et les Progrès de l’Art de Graver en +Bois, pour éclaircir quelques traits de l’Histoire de l’Imprimerie, et +prouver que Guttemberg n’en est pas l’Inventeur. Par Mr. Fournier le +Jeune, Graveur et Fondeur de Caractères d’Imprimerie, 1758. 2. De +l’Origine et des productions de l’Imprimerie primitive en taille en +Bois, 1759. 3. Remarques sur un Ouvrage intitulé, Lettre sur +l’Origine de l’Imprimerie, &c. 1761. This last was an answer to a +letter written by M. Bär, almoner of the Swedish chapel in Paris, +in which the two former tracts of Fournier were severely +criticised.—Fournier was also the author of a work in two small +volumes, entitled “Manuel Typographique, utile aux Gens de lettres, et à +ceux qui exercent les differentes parties de l’Art de l’Imprimerie.”</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII26" id = "noteVII26" href = "#tagVII26">VII.26</a> +The cut here introduced is the first in the <i>Stultifera Navis</i>, or +“Ship of Fools,” and is copied from Pyason’s edition of 1509. The +following lines accompany it:</p> + +<div class = "verse"> +<p class = "open">“——this is my mynde, this one pleasoure +have I,</p> +<p>Of bokes to have great plenty and aparayle.</p> +<p>I take no wysdome by them; nor yet avayle</p> +<p>Nor them perceyve not: And then I them despyse.</p> +<p>Thus am I a foole and all that serve that guyse.”</p> +</div> + +<p><a name = "noteVII27" id = "noteVII27" href = "#tagVII27">VII.27</a> +Dr. Dibdin adds: “Mr. Douce informs me that Sir John Hawkins told him of +the artist’s obtaining the prize for it from the Society for the +Encouragement of Arts.”</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII28" id = "noteVII28" href = "#tagVII28">VII.28</a> +Mr. Christopher Gregson, who was an apothecary, lived in Blackfriars. He +died about the year 1813. As long as he lived, Bewick maintained a +friendly correspondence with him.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII29" id = "noteVII29" href = "#tagVII29">VII.29</a> +<i>Prettier</i> and <i>prettier</i>.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII30" id = "noteVII30" href = "#tagVII30">VII.30</a> +Philip.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII31" id = "noteVII31" href = "#tagVII31">VII.31</a> +“While with <span class = "smallcaps">Beilby</span> he was employed in +engraving clock-faces, which, I have heard him say, made his hands +as hard as a blacksmith’s, and almost disgusted him with +engraving.”—Sketch of the Life and Works of the late Thomas +Bewick, by George C. Atkinson. Printed in the Transactions of the +Natural History Society, Newcastle, 1830.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII32" id = "noteVII32" href = "#tagVII32">VII.32</a> +Alders—the name of a small plantation above Ovingham, which Bewick +had to pass through on his way to Eltringham ferry-boat.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII33" id = "noteVII33" href = "#tagVII33">VII.33</a> +The Reverend William Turner, of Newcastle, in a letter printed in the +Monthly Magazine for June 1801, says that Bewick obtained this premium +“<i>during his apprenticeship</i>.” This must be a mistake; as his +apprenticeship expired in October 1774, and he obtained the premium in +1775. It is possible, however, that the engraving may have been executed +during that period.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII34" id = "noteVII34" href = "#tagVII34">VII.34</a> +Bewick’s mother, Jane Wilson, was a daughter of Thomas Wilson of +Ainstable in Cumberland, about five miles north-north-west of Kirk-<ins +class = "correction" title = ". missing">Oswald.</ins></p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII35" id = "noteVII35" href = "#tagVII35">VII.35</a> +Bewick, in London, in 1828, observed to one of his former pupils, that +it was then fifty-one years since he left London, on his first visit, to +return to Newcastle.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII36" id = "noteVII36" href = "#tagVII36">VII.36</a> +Mr. Atkinson talks about wood engraving having taken a nap for a century +or two “after the time of Durer and Holbein,” and of Bewick being the +restorer of the “long-lost art;” and yet, with singular inconsistency, +in another part of his Sketch, he refers to Papillon, whose work, +containing a minute account of the art as then practised, was published +about two years before Bewick began to engrave on wood.—The +Reverend William Turner, who ought to have known better, also speaks of +the “long-lost art,” in his Memoir of Thomas Bewick.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII37" id = "noteVII37" href = "#tagVII37">VII.37</a> +I have not been able to discover the date of the first edition of this +work. The third edition is dated 1785.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII38" id = "noteVII38" href = "#tagVII38">VII.38</a> +“Some Account of the Life, Genius, and Personal Habits of the late +Thomas Bewick, the celebrated Artist and Engraver on Wood. By his Friend +John F. M. Dovaston, Esq. A.M.,” was published in Loudon’s Magazine +of Natural History, 1829-1830. Mr. Dovaston seems to have caught a +knowledge of Bewick’s personal habits at a glance; and a considerable +number of his observations on other matters appear to have been the +result of a peculiar quickness of apprehension. What he says about the +church of Ovingham not being “parted into proud pews,” when Bewick was a +boy, is incorrect. It had, in fact, been pewed from an early period; +for, on the 2nd of September, 1763, Dr. Sharp, Archdeacon of +Northumberland, on visiting the church, notices the pews as being “very +bad and irregular;” and on a board over the vestry-door is the following +inscription: “This Church was new pewed, A. D. 1766.” No boards +from this church containing specimens of Bewick’s early drawing were +ever in the possession of the Duke of Northumberland. Mr. Dovaston is +frequently imaginative, but seldom correct. His personal sketch of +Bewick is a ridiculous caricature.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII39" id = "noteVII39" href = "#tagVII39">VII.39</a> +Humble, Eltringham, and Newton were the names of three of his country +acquaintances; Prudhoe, Hall-Yards, and Mickley are places near +Ovingham.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII40" id = "noteVII40" href = "#tagVII40">VII.40</a> +Bewick could engrave on copper, but did not excel in this branch of +engraving. The following are the principal copper-plates which are known +to be of his engraving. Plates in Consett’s Tour through Sweden, Swedish +Lapland, Finland, and Denmark, 4to. Stockton, 1789; The Whitley large +Ox, 1789; and the remarkable Kyloe Ox, bred in the Mull, Argyleshire, +1790—A set of silver buttons, containing sporting devices, +engraved by Bewick for the late H. U. Reay, Esq. of Killingworth, +which passed into the possession of Mr. Reay’s son-in-law, Matthew Bell, +Esq. of Wolsingham.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII41" id = "noteVII41" href = "#tagVII41">VII.41</a> +Mr. Atkinson says that “about the same time he executed the cuts +[sixty-two in number] for a small child’s book, entitled ‘A pretty +Book of Pictures for little Masters and Misses, or Tommy Trip’s History +of Beasts and Birds.’”—An edition of the Select Fables, with very +bad wood-cuts, was printed by Mr. Saint in 1776. The person by whom they +were engraved is unknown. Bewick always denied that any of them were of +his engraving.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII42" id = "noteVII42" href = "#tagVII42">VII.42</a> +This cut was executed for Marmaduke Tunstall, Esq. of Wycliffe, near +Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII43" id = "noteVII43" href = "#tagVII43">VII.43</a> +The block remained in several pieces until 1817, when they were firmly +united by means of cramps, and a number of impressions printed off. +These impressions are without the border, which distinguishes the +earlier ones. The border, which was engraved on separate pieces, +enclosed the principal cut in the manner of a frame.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII44" id = "noteVII44" href = "#tagVII44">VII.44</a> +A Prospectus containing specimens of the cuts was printed in 1787.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII45" id = "noteVII45" href = "#tagVII45">VII.45</a> +The first edition consisted of fifteen hundred copies in demy octavo at +8<i>s.</i>, and one hundred royal at 12<i>s.</i> The price of the demy +copies of the <i>eighth</i> edition, published in 1825, was £1 +1<i>s.</i> A proof of the estimation in which the work continued to be +held.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII46" id = "noteVII46" href = "#tagVII46">VII.46</a> +The cut of the Giraffe in the edition of 1824 is not the original one +engraved by Bewick. In the later cut, which was chiefly engraved by +W. W. Temple, one of Bewick’s pupils, the marks on the body of the +animal appear like so many white-coloured lines crossing each other, and +enclosing large irregular spots.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII47" id = "noteVII47" href = "#tagVII47">VII.47</a> +Some account of this work is previously given at page 287.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII48" id = "noteVII48" href = "#tagVII48">VII.48</a> +This work is noticed at page 407.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII49" id = "noteVII49" href = "#tagVII49">VII.49</a> +The Kyloe Ox, which occurs at page 36 of the edition of 1824, the last +that was published in Bewick’s life-time, is one of the very best cuts +of a quadruped that he ever engraved. The drawing is excellent, and the +characteristic form and general appearance of the animal are represented +in a manner that has never been excelled.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII50" id = "noteVII50" href = "#tagVII50">VII.50</a> +The Lancashire <i>Bull</i>, of the first edition, by a similar process +has been converted into the Lancashire <i>Ox</i>.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII51" id = "noteVII51" href = "#tagVII51">VII.51</a> +The originals of this and the three following cuts occur respectively at +pages 13, 15, 69, and 526 of the edition of 1824. The other principal +tail-pieces in this edition are: Greyhound-coursing, (originally +engraved on a silver cup for a person at Northallerton,) drawn by Bewick +on the block, but engraved by W. W. Temple, page x, at the end of +the Index; the Old Coachman and the Young Squire, 12; Tinker’s Children +in a pair of panniers on the back of an Ass, 21; a Cow drinking, +28; Winter scene, 34; Two Men digging, (engraved by H. White, who +also engraved the cut of the Musk Bull at page 49,) 37; Dog +worrying a Sheep, 62; Old Soldier travelling in the rain, 117; Smelling, +tail-piece to the Genet, a <i>strong bit</i>, 269; Drunken Man +making his Dam, 378; and Seals on a large piece of floating ice, +510.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII52" id = "noteVII52" href = "#tagVII52">VII.52</a> +This account is extracted from a letter written by Bewick, and printed +in the Monthly Magazine for November 1805.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII53" id = "noteVII53" href = "#tagVII53">VII.53</a> +Of this edition, 1,874 copies were printed,—one thousand demy +octavo, at 10<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>; eight hundred and fifty thin and +thick royal, at 13<i>s.</i>, and 15<i>s.</i>; and twenty-four imperial +at £1 1<i>s.</i> The first edition of the second volume, 1804, consisted +of the same number of copies as the first, but the prices were +respectively 12<i>s.</i>, 15<i>s.</i>, 18<i>s.</i> and £1 4<i>s.</i></p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII54" id = "noteVII54" href = "#tagVII54">VII.54</a> +Pinkerton having stated in his Scottish Gallery, on the authority of +Messrs. Morison, printers, of Perth, that Bewick, “observing the +uncommon genius of his late apprentice, Robert Johnson, employed him to +trace the figures on the wood in the History of Quadrupeds,” Bewick, in +his letter, printed in the Monthly Magazine for November 1805, +previously quoted, thus denies the assertion: “It is only necessary for +me to declare, and this will be attested by my partner Mr. Beilby, who +compiled the History of Quadrupeds, and was a proprietor of the work, +that neither Robert Johnson, nor any person but myself, made the +drawings, or traced or cut them on the wood.”—Robert Johnson was +employed by Messrs. Morison to copy for the Scottish Gallery several +portraits at Taymouth Castle, the seat of the Earl of Breadalbane. +Bewick in this letter carefully avoids pleading to that with which he +was not charged; he does not deny that several of the drawings of the +tail-pieces in the History of British Birds were made by Robert Johnson. +A pupil of Bewick’s, now living, saw many of Johnson’s drawings for +these cuts, and sat beside Clennell when he was engraving them.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII55" id = "noteVII55" href = "#tagVII55">VII.55</a> +These three cuts were engraved by one of Bewick’s pupils, named Henry +Hole. Neither Bewick’s memory nor his daughter’s had been accurate on +this occasion; but not one of the other cuts which they failed to +recollect can be compared with those engraved by Bewick himself. In +addition to those three, the following, not engraved by Bewick himself, +had appeared at the time the above conversation took place—some +time between 1825 and 1826:—the Brent Goose, the Lesser Imber, and +the Cormorant, engraved by L. Clennell; the Velvet Duck, the +Red-breasted Merganser, and the Crested Cormorant, by H. Hole; the +Rough-legged Falcon, the Pigmy Sand-piper, the Red Sand-piper, and the +Eared Grebe, by W. W. Temple.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII56" id = "noteVII56" href = "#tagVII56">VII.56</a> +“He never could, he said, please himself in his representations of water +in a state of motion, and a horse galloping: his taste must have been +fastidious indeed, if that beautiful moonlight scene at sea, page 120, +vol. ii. [edition 1816]; the river scene at page 126; the sea breaking +among the rocks at page 168, or 177, or 200, or 216; or the rippling of +the water as it leaves the feet of the old fisherman, at page 95, did +not satisfy him.” In scarcely one of the cuts engraved by Bewick himself +is water in a state of motion well represented. He knew his own +deficiency in this respect; though Mr. Atkinson, not being able to +distinguish the cuts engraved by Bewick himself from those engraved by +his pupils, cannot perceive it.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII57" id = "noteVII57" href = "#tagVII57">VII.57</a> +The cut here given is engraved by Bewick at a somewhat earlier date, for +a once popular work entitled the History of Three Hundred Animals, since +incorporated in Mrs. Loudon’s “Entertaining Naturalist.”</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII58" id = "noteVII58" href = "#tagVII58">VII.58</a> +The subject of this cut is thus explained in Brockett’s Glossary of +North Country Words: “<span class = "smallcaps">Neddy, Netty</span>, a +certain place that will not bear a written explanation; but which is +<i>depicted to the very life</i> 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.”</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII59" id = "noteVII59" href = "#tagVII59">VII.59</a> +“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.”—<span class = "smallcaps">Jno. Jackson.</span></p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII60" id = "noteVII60" href = "#tagVII60">VII.60</a> +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 <i>Lion</i> 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.”</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII61" id = "noteVII61" href = "#tagVII61">VII.61</a> +The fable of the Ship Dog is one of those written by Bewick.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII62" id = "noteVII62" href = "#tagVII62">VII.62</a> +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<ins class = "correction" title = +"close quote missing">.”</ins></p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII63" id = "noteVII63" href = "#tagVII63">VII.63</a> +“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.”</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII64" id = "noteVII64" href = "#tagVII64">VII.64</a> +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.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII65" id = "noteVII65" href = "#tagVII65">VII.65</a> +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 <ins class = "correction" title = ". missing">Mr.</ins> +Beilby’s retirement, still continued the business of copper-plate +engraving and printing, and for this purpose always kept presses of his +own.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII66" id = "noteVII66" href = "#tagVII66">VII.66</a> +A small cut of the same subject, though with a different back-ground, +occurs as a tail-piece in the Fables, 1818-1823.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII67" id = "noteVII67" href = "#tagVII67">VII.67</a> +The last <i>bird</i> 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.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII68" id = "noteVII68" href = "#tagVII68">VII.68</a> +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.”</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII69" id = "noteVII69" href = "#tagVII69">VII.69</a> +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.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII70" id = "noteVII70" href = "#tagVII70">VII.70</a> +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.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII71" id = "noteVII71" href = "#tagVII71">VII.71</a> +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:</p> + +<div class = "verse"> +<p class = "open">“O now that the genius of Bewick were mine,</p> +<p>And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne!</p> +<p>Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose,</p> +<p>For I’d take my last leave both of verse and of prose.”</p> + +<p class = "author"><i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, vol. ii. p. 199. Edition +1805.</p> +</div> + +<p><a name = "noteVII72" id = "noteVII72" href = "#tagVII72">VII.72</a> +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.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII73" id = "noteVII73" href = "#tagVII73">VII.73</a> +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 <i>Paul Potters</i>. 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.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII74" id = "noteVII74" href = "#tagVII74">VII.74</a> +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.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII75" id = "noteVII75" href = "#tagVII75">VII.75</a> +The original cut, including the border, is fifteen inches wide by about +twelve inches high.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII76" id = "noteVII76" href = "#tagVII76">VII.76</a> +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.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII77" id = "noteVII77" href = "#tagVII77">VII.77</a> +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.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII78" id = "noteVII78" href = "#tagVII78">VII.78</a> +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.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII79" id = "noteVII79" href = "#tagVII79">VII.79</a> +He also invariably corrected the <i>outline</i> 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.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII80" id = "noteVII80" href = "#tagVII80">VII.80</a> +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.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII81" id = "noteVII81" href = "#tagVII81">VII.81</a> +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.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII82" id = "noteVII82" href = "#tagVII82">VII.82</a> +Several additional cuts of the same kind, engraved with no less ability +by J. Thompson, were inserted in a subsequent edition.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII83" id = "noteVII83" href = "#tagVII83">VII.83</a> +This painting was afterwards finished by E. Bird, R.A., who also +became insane.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII84" id = "noteVII84" href = "#tagVII84">VII.84</a> +Clennell’s wife was a daughter of the late C. Warren, one of the +best copper-plate engravers of his time.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII85" id = "noteVII85" href = "#tagVII85">VII.85</a> +Clennell died in the Lunatic Asylum, Feb. 9, 1840, in his fifty-ninth +year.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII86" id = "noteVII86" href = "#tagVII86">VII.86</a> +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.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII87" id = "noteVII87" href = "#tagVII87">VII.87</a> +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 <i>touched</i> with Indian ink.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII88" id = "noteVII88" href = "#tagVII88">VII.88</a> +What may be considered the sketches for the principal cuts were supplied +by Northcote himself. The following account of the manner in which he +<i>composed</i> 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 <i>completed</i> that which Northcote +merely suggested. The tail-pieces and letters are all of Mr. Harvey’s +own invention and drawing.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII89" id = "noteVII89" href = "#tagVII89">VII.89</a> +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.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII90" id = "noteVII90" href = "#tagVII90">VII.90</a> +The Salmon, Chub, and group of small fish are given on the preceding +page from the actual cuts referred to.</p> + +<p><a name = "noteVII91" id = "noteVII91" href = "#tagVII91">VII.91</a> +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.</p> + +</div> +</div> + +<div class = "correction"> +<h5>Errors in Chapter VII</h5> + +<p><span class = "citation"> +as much in having <i>caught</i> an ass as in the prospect of a +ride.</span><br> +<i>final . missing</i></p> +<p><span class = "citation"> +we are led to suppose that he had been indulging too freely on the +King’s birth-day</span><br> +on the the</p> + +<p>Footnote VII.34</p> +<p class = "continue"> +<span class = "citation">about five miles north-north-west of +Kirk-Oswald.</span><br> +<i>final . missing</i></p> +<p>Footnote VII.62</p> +<p class = "continue"> +<span class = "citation">at Morpeth, named Rastack, or +Raistick.”</span><br> +<i>close quote missing</i></p> +<p>Footnote VII.65</p> +<p class = "continue"> +<span class = "citation">under the superintendence of Bewick, who, after +Mr. Beilby’s retirement</span><br> +Mr Beilby’s</p> +</div> + +<div class = "mynote"> +<p class = "center"> +<a href = "WoodEngraving.html">Introduction</a> (separate file)<br> +<a href = "WoodEngraving.html#illus">List of Illustrations</a> (separate +file)</p> + +<p class = "center"> +<a href = "WoodEngraving1.html">Chapter I</a> (separate file)<br> +<a href = "WoodEngraving1.html#chap_II">Chapter II</a> (separate +file)<br> +<a href = "WoodEngraving1.html#chap_III">Chapter III</a> (separate +file)<br> +<a href = "WoodEngraving4.html">Chapter IV</a> (separate file)<br> +<a href = "WoodEngraving4.html#chap_V">Chapter V</a> (separate file)<br> +<a href = "WoodEngraving6.html">Chapter VI</a> (separate file)<br> +<a href = "#chap_VII">Chapter VII</a><br> +<a href = "WoodEngraving8.html">Chapter VIII</a> (separate file)<br> +<a href = "WoodEngraving9.html">Chapter IX</a> (separate file)</p> + +<p class = "center"> +<a href = "WoodEngraving.html#index">Index</a> (separate file)</p> +</div> + +</body> +</html> |