Chapter 41

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”Whatever may be the merits or defects of the cuts in those Fables, Bewick most certainly had very little to do with them; for by far the greater number were designed by Robert Johnson, and engraved by W. W. Temple and William Harvey, while yet in their apprenticeship. In503the whole volume there are not more than three of the largest cuts engraved by Bewick himself.VII.60The 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.see text and captionTHE CROW AND THE LAMB.The letter-press was entirely selected and arranged by Bewick himself, and one or two of the fables were of his own writing. Though an excellent illustrator of Natural History, Bewick is but an indifferent fabulist.VII.61Though the work is professedly intended for the instruction of the young, there are certainly a few tail-pieces introduced for theentertainmentof 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 to504a 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 majestyad libitumin his cuts; but when a ranting preacher takes the same liberty in his discourses, he is called upon to give proof of personal acquaintance.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 on505the 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.see textIn a novel, entitled “Such is the World,” there is the following erroneous account of Bewick’s reason for affixing his thumb-mark to this bill.VII.62“Having completed his task to the entire satisfaction of his own mind, Mr. Bewick bethought him of engraving a frontispiece. But having some suspicion that the said frontispiece might be pirated by some of those corsairs who infest the ocean of literature, he resolved to put a mark on it, whereby all men might distinguish it as readily as a fisherman distinguishes a haddockVII.63from a cod-fish. Accordingly, he touched with his thumb the little black ball with which he was wont to ink his cuts, in order to take off proof impressions of his work: he then very deliberately pressed his thumb on the frontispiece which he was at that moment engraving, and cut the most beautiful image of the original, which he designated by the appropriate words ‘John Bewick, his mark.’” Had the writer looked at the “frontispiece,” as he calls it, he would have found “Thomas,” and not “John.” The conclusion of this account is a fair sample of its general accuracy. In a preliminary observation the author, with equal correctness, informs his readers that the work in which this “frontispiece” appeared was “a superb edition ofGay’sFables.”Bewick’smarkis, in fact, added to this bill merely as a jest; the mode which he took to authenticate the copies that were actually issued by himself, and not pilfered by any of the workmen employed about the printing-office,VII.64was 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 of506one of the plans which he had devised to prevent the forgery of bank-notes.VII.65The 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.see textsee textSeveral 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 oftint, and a better effect than could be obtained, without great labour, in a cut printed in black ink from a single block. This improvement, which had been suggested by Papillon in 1768, Bewick proceeded to carry into effect. The subject which he made choice of to exemplify what he considered his original discovery, was an old horse waiting for death.VII.66He accordingly made the drawing on a large block consisting of four different pieces, and forthwith proceeded to engrave it. He however did not live to complete his intention; for even this block, which he meant merely for the first impression—the subject having to be completed by a second—remained unfinished at his decease.VII.67He had, however, finished it all507with 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!”This cut, with the head said to have been finished by another person, was published by Bewick’s son, Mr. Robert Elliott Bewick, in 1832. It is the largest cut that Bewick ever engraved,VII.68but 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.Bewick’s life affords a useful lesson to all who wish to attain distinction in art, and at the same time to preserve their independence. He diligently cultivated his talents, and never trusted to booksellers or designers for employment. He did not work according to the directions of others, but struck out a path for himself; and by diligently pursuing it according to the bent of his own feelings, he acquired both a competence with respect to worldly means and an ample reward of fame. The success of his works did not render him inattentive to business; and he was never tempted by the prospect of increasing wealth to indulge in expensive pleasures, nor to live in a manner which his circumstances did not warrant. What he had honestly earned he frugally husbanded; and, like a prudent man, made a provision for his old age. “The hand of the diligent,” says Solomon, “maketh rich.” This Bewick felt, and his life may be cited in the exemplification of the truth of the proverb. He acquired not indeed great wealth, but he attained a competence, and was grateful and contented. No favoured worshipper of Mammon, though possessed of millions obtained by “watching the turn of the market,” could say more.He was extremely regular and methodical in his habits of business: until within a few years of his death he used to come to his shop in Newcastle from his house in Gateshead at a certain hour in the morning, returning to his dinner at a certain time, and, as he used to say,lapping508upat night, as if he were a workman employed by the day, and subject to a loss by being absent a single hour. When any of his works were in the press, the first thing he did each morning, after calling at his own shop, was to proceed to the printer’s to see what progress they were making, and to give directions to the pressmen about printing the cuts.VII.69It 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.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 nobleman509called 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.see textA 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 thepantat the head of the Side, in an earthenware jug, and the glass which Bewick used to drink the water out of, was, as soon as done with, carefully locked up in his book-case. One of his apprentices once happening to break the jug, Bewick scolded him well for his carelessness, and made him pay twopence towards buying another.Bewick was a man of athletic make, being nearly six feet high, and proportionally stout. He possessed great personal courage, and in his younger days was not slow to repay an insult with personal chastisement. On one occasion being assaulted by two pitmen on returning from a visit to Cherry-burn, he resolutely turned upon the aggressors, and, as he said, “paidthem both well.” Though hard-featured, and much marked with the small-pox, the expression of Bewick’s countenance was manly and open, and his dark eyes sparkled with intelligence. There is a good bust of him by Bailey in the Library of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle, and the best engraved portrait is perhaps that of Burnet, after a painting by Ramsey.VII.70The portrait on page 510, engraved on wood, is another attempt to perpetuate the likeness of one to whom the art owes so much.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 of510the 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.see text and captionTHOMAS BEWICK.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 the511place 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.see textThe following are the inscriptions on the tablets:In Memory ofJOHN BEWICK,Engraver,Who died December, 5, 1795,Aged 35 years.His Ingenuity as an Artistwas excelled only byhis Conduct as aMan.TheBurial PlaceofTHOMAS BEWICK,Engraver,Newcastle.Isabella, his Wife,Died 1st February, 1826,Aged 72 years.THOMAS BEWICK,Died 8th of November, 1828,Aged 75 years.In an excellent notice of the works of Bewick—apparently written by one of his townsmen (said to be Mr. T. Doubleday)—in Blackwood’s Magazine for July, 1825, it is stated that the final tail-piece to Bewick’s Fables, 1818-1823, is “A View of Ovingham Churchyard;” and in the Reverend William Turner’s Memoir of Thomas Bewick, in the sixth volume of the Naturalist’s Library, the same statement is repeated. It is, however, erroneous; as both the writers might have known had they thought it worth their while to pay a visit to Ovingham, and take a look512at the church. The following cut, in which is introduced an imaginary representation of Bewick’s funeral, presents a correct view of the place. The following popular saying, which is well known in Northumberland, suggested the introduction of the rain-bow:“Happy is the bride that the sun shines on,And happy is the corpse that the rain rains on,—”meaning that sunshine at a wedding is a sign of happiness in the marriage state to the bride, and that rain at a funeral is a sign of future happiness to the person whose remains are about to be interred.see textThe following eloquent tribute to the merits of Bewick is from an article on Wilson’s Illustrations of Zoology in Blackwood’s Magazine for June, 1828.“Have we forgotten, in our hurried and imperfect enumeration of wise worthies,—have we forgotten‘The Genius that dwells on the banks of the Tyne,’VII.71the Matchless, Inimitable Bewick? No. His books lie on our parlour, bed-room, dining-room, drawing-room, study table, and are never out of513place or time. Happy old man! The delight of childhood, manhood, decaying age!—A moral in every tail-piece—a sermon in every vignette. Not as if from one fountain flows the stream of his inspired spirit, gurgling from the Crawley Spring so many thousand gallons of the element every minute, and feeding but one city, our own Edinburgh. But it rather oozes out from unnumbered springs. Here from one scarcely perceptible but in the vivid green of the lonesome sward, from which it trickles away into a little mountain rill—here leaping into sudden life, as from the rock—here bubbling from a silver pool, overshadowed by a birch-tree—here like a well asleep in a moss-grown cell, built by some thoughtful recluse in the old monastic day, with a few words from Scripture, or some rude engraving, religious as Scripture,Omne bonum desuper—Opera Dei mirifica.”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 principal514cuts.VII.72The 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.The cuts in this book are generally executed in a free and effective style, but are not remarkable as specimens of wood engraving, unless we take into consideration the time when they were published. The best in point of execution are, The Hermit at his morning devotion, and The Angel, Hermit, and Guide, both engraved by Thomas Bewick; the manner in which the engraver has executed the foliage in these two cuts is extremely beautiful and natural. It is said that George III. thought so highly of the cuts in this book that he could not believe that they were engraved on wood; and that his bookseller, Mr. George Nicol, obtained for his Majesty a sight of the blocks in order that he might be convinced of the fact by his own inspection. This anecdote is sometimes produced as a proof of the great excellence of the cuts, though it might with greater truth be cited as a proof of his Majesty being totally unacquainted with the process of wood engraving, and of his not being able to distinguish a wood-cut from a copper-plate. If Bewick’s reputation as a wood engraver rested on those cuts, it certainly would not stand very high. Much better things of the same kind have been executed since that time by persons who are generally considered as having small claims to distinction as wood engravers.The cuts in the Chase were all, except one, designed by John Bewick; but in consequence of the declining state of his health he was not able to engrave them. Soon after he had finished the drawings on the block he left London for the north, in the hope of deriving benefit from his native air. His disorder, however, continued to increase; and, within a few weeks from the time of his return, he died at Ovingham, on the 5th of December, 1795, aged thirty-five.The cuts in the Chase, which were all, except one, engraved by Thomas Bewick, are, on the whole, superior in point of execution to those in the Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell. Though boldly designed, some of them display great defects in composition, and among the most objectionable in this respect are the Huntsman and three Hounds, at515page 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.see textJohn Bewick, as a designer and engraver on wood, is much inferior to his brother. Though several of his cuts possess considerable merit with respect to design, by far the greater number are executed in a dry, harsh manner. His best cuts may be readily distinguished from his brother’s by the greater contrast of black and white in the cuts engraved by John, and by the dry and withered appearance of the foliage of the trees. The above is a reduced copy of a cut entitled the “Sad Historian,” drawn and engraved by John Bewick, in the Poems by Goldsmith and Parnell.The most of John Bewick’s cuts are much better conceived than engraved; and this perhaps may in a great measure have arisen from516their 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 extremelyeffectivefrom 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.see textRobert Johnson, though not a wood engraver, has a claim to a brief notice here on account of the excellence of several of the tail-pieces designed by him in Bewick’s Birds, and from his having made the drawings for most of the wood-cuts in Bewick’s Fables. He was born in 1770, at Shotley, a village in Northumberland, about six miles to the south-west of Ovingham; and in 1778 was placed by his father, who at that time resided in Gateshead, as an apprentice to Beilby and Bewick to be instructed in copper-plate engraving. The plates which are generally supposed to have been executed by him during his apprenticeship possess very little merit, nor does he appear to have been desirous to excel as an engraver. His great delight consisted in sketching from nature and in painting in water-colours; and in this branch of art, while yet an apprentice, he displayed talents of very high order.VII.73He517was 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.On the expiration of his apprenticeship Johnson gave up, in a great measure, the practice of copper-plate engraving, and applied himself almost exclusively to drawing. In 1796 he was engaged by Messrs. Morison, booksellers and publishers of Perth, to draw from the original paintings the portraits intended to be engraved in “the Scottish Gallery,” a work edited by Pinkerton, and published about 1799. When at Taymouth Castle, the seat of the Earl of Breadalbane, copying some portraits painted by Jameson, the Scottish Vandyke, he caught a severe cold, which, being neglected, increased to a fever. In the violence of the disorder he became delirious, and, from the ignorance of those who attended him, the unfortunate young artist, far from home and without a friend to console him, was bound and treated like a madman. A physician having been called in, by his order blisters were applied, and a different course of treatment adopted. Johnson recovered his senses, but it was only for a brief period; being of a delicate constitution, he sank under the disorder. He died at Kenmore on the 29th October, 1796, in the twenty-sixth year of his age.VII.74518The 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.see textThe 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.see text519Charlton Nesbit, who is justly entitled to be ranked with the best wood engravers of his time, was born in 1775 at Swalwell, in the county of Durham, about five miles westward of Gateshead, and when about fourteen years of age was apprenticed to Beilby and Bewick to learn the art of wood engraving. During his apprenticeship he engraved a few of the tail-pieces in the first volume of the History of British Birds, and all the head and tail-pieces, except two, in the Poems by Goldsmith and Parnell, printed by Bulmer in 1795. Shortly after the expiration of his apprenticeship he began to engrave a large cut, containing a view of St. Nicholas Church, Newcastle-on-Tyne, from a drawing by his fellow-pupil, Robert Johnson. We here present a reduced copy of this cut, which is one of the largest ever engraved in England.VII.75The 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.see textAbout 1799 Mr. Nesbit came to London, where he continued to reside till 1815. During his residence there he engraved a number of cuts for various works, chiefly from the designs of the late Mr. John Thurston,VII.76520who 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.In 1815 Mr. Nesbit returned to his native place, where he continued to reside until 1830. While living in the country, though he did not abandon the art, yet the cuts executed by him during this period are comparatively few. In 1818, when residing in the North, he engraved a large cut of Rinaldo and Armida for Savage’s Hints on Decorative Printing: this cut and another, the Cave of Despair, in the same work and of the same size, engraved by the late Robert Branston, were expressly given to display the perfection to which modern wood engraving had been brought. The foliage, the trees, and the drapery in Nesbit’s cut are admirably engraved; but the lines in the bodies of the figures are too much broken and “chopped up.” This, however, was not the fault of the engraver, but of the designer, Mr. J. Thurston. The lines, which now have a dotted appearance, were originally continuous and distinct; but Mr. Thurston objecting to them as being too dark, Nesbit went over his work again, and with immense labour reduced the strength of his lines, and gave them their present dotted appearance. As a specimen of the engraver’s abilities, the first proof submitted to the designer was superior to the last.In order to give a fictitious value to Mr. Savage’s book, most of the cuts, as soon as a certain number of impressions were taken, were sawn across, but not through, in several places, and impressions of them when thus defaced were given in the work.VII.77Nesbit’s cut was, however,521carefully 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 thebest, 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.In 1830 Mr. Nesbit returned to London, where he continued to reside until his death, which took place at Queen’s Elms, the 11th of November 1838, aged 63. Some of the best of his cuts are contained in the second series of Northcote’s Fables; and the following, of his execution, may be ranked among the finest productions of the art of wood engraving in modern times:—The Robin and the Sparrow, page 1; The Hare and the Bramble, page 127; The Peach and the Potatoe, page 129; and The Cock, the Dog, and the Fox, page 238. Nesbit is unquestionably the best wood engraver that has proceeded from the great northern hive of the art—the workshop of Thomas Bewick.Luke Clennell, one of the most distinguished of Bewick’s pupils as a designer and painter, as well as an engraver on wood, was born at Ulgham, a village near Morpeth, in Northumberland, on the 8th of April, 1781. At an early age he was placed with a relation, a grocer in Morpeth, and continued with him, assisting in the shop as an apprentice, until he was sixteen. Some drawings which he made when at Morpeth having attracted attention, and he himself showing a decided predilection for the art, his friends were induced to place him as a wood engraver with Bewick, to whom he was bound apprentice for seven years on the 8th of April, 1797. He in a short time made great proficiency in wood engraving; and as he drew with great correctness and power, Bewick employed him to copy, on the block, several of Robert Johnson’s drawings, and to engrave them as tail-pieces for the second volume of the History of British Birds. Clennell for a few months after the expiration of his apprenticeship continued to work for Bewick, who chiefly employed him in engraving some of the cuts for a History of England, published by Wallis and Scholey, 46, Paternoster Row. Clennell, who was paid only two guineas apiece for each of those cuts, having learnt that Bewick received five, sent to the publisher a proof of one of them—Alfred in the Danish Camp—stating that it was of his own engraving. In the course of a few days Clennell received an answer from the publisher, inviting him to come to London, and offering him employment522until all the cuts intended for the work should be finished. He accepted the offer, and shortly afterwards set out for London, where he arrived about the end of autumn, 1804.VII.78Most of Clennell’s cuts are distinguished by their free andartist-likeexecution and by their excellent effect; but though generally spirited, they are sometimes rather coarsely engraved. He was accustomed to improve Thurston’s designs by occasionally heightening the effect.VII.79To such alterations Thurston at first objected; but perceiving that the cuts when engraved were thus very much improved, he afterwards allowed Clennell to increase the lights and deepen the shadows according to his own judgment. An admirable specimen of Clennell’s engraving is to be found in an octavo edition of Falconer’s Shipwreck, printed for Cadell and Davies, 1808. It occurs as a vignette to the second canto at p. 43, and the subject is a ship running before the wind in a gale. The motion of the waves, and the gloomy appearance of the sky, are represented with admirable truth and feeling. The dark shadow on the waters to the right gives wonderful effect to the white crest of the wave in front; and the whole appearance of the cut is indicative of a gloomy and tempestuous day, and of an increasing storm. Perhaps no engraving of the same kind, either on copper or wood, conveys the idea of a storm at sea with greater fidelity.VII.80The drawing was made on the block by Thurston; but the spirit andeffect,—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 notillustrationsof Falconer’s Shipwreck.see text and captionDIPLOMA OF THE HIGHLAND SOCIETYReduced to one-fourth of the original sizeClennell’s largest cut is that which he engraved for the diploma of the Highland Society, from a design by Benjamin West, President of the523Royal 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 in524others the execution is careless; the more important parts are, however, engraved with great spirit; and the cut, as a whole, is bold and effective. Cross-hatchings are freely introduced, not so much, perhaps, because they were necessary, as to show that the engraver could execute such kind of work,—the vulgar error that cross-hatchings could not be executed on wood having been at that time extremely prevalent among persons who had little knowledge of the art, and who yet vented their absurd notions on the subject as if they were undeniable truths. The preceding is a reduced copy of this cut.VII.81The 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.The illustrations to an edition of Rogers’s Poems, 1812, engraved from pen-and-ink drawings by Thomas Stothard, R.A., may be fairly ranked among the best of the wood-cuts engraved by Clennell. They are executed with the feeling of an artist, and are admirable representations of the original drawings.VII.82Stothard 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.Clennell, who drew beautifully in water-colours, made many of the drawings for the Border Antiquities; and the encouragement which he received as a designer and painter made him resolve to entirely abandon wood engraving. With this view he laboured diligently to improve himself in painting, and in a short time made such progress that his pictures attracted the attention of the Directors of the British Institution. In 1814, the Earl of Bridgewater employed him to paint a large picture of the entertainment given to the Allied Sovereigns in the Guildhall by the city of London. He experienced great difficulty in obtaining sketches of the numerous distinguished persons whose portraits it was necessary to give in the picture; and he lost much time, and suffered considerable anxiety, in procuring those preliminary materials for his work. Having at length completed his sketches, he began the picture, and had made considerable progress in it when, in April 1817, he suddenly became insane, and the work was interrupted.VII.83It has525been 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.Within a short time after Clennell had lost his reason, his wife also became insane;VII.84and 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.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 writingpoetry. 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 1828.526

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

Whatever may be the merits or defects of the cuts in those Fables, Bewick most certainly had very little to do with them; for by far the greater number were designed by Robert Johnson, and engraved by W. W. Temple and William Harvey, while yet in their apprenticeship. In503the whole volume there are not more than three of the largest cuts engraved by Bewick himself.VII.60The 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.

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THE CROW AND THE LAMB.

The letter-press was entirely selected and arranged by Bewick himself, and one or two of the fables were of his own writing. Though an excellent illustrator of Natural History, Bewick is but an indifferent fabulist.VII.61Though the work is professedly intended for the instruction of the young, there are certainly a few tail-pieces introduced for theentertainmentof 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 to504a 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 majestyad libitumin his cuts; but when a ranting preacher takes the same liberty in his discourses, he is called upon to give proof of personal acquaintance.

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 on505the 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.

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

Bewick’smarkis, in fact, added to this bill merely as a jest; the mode which he took to authenticate the copies that were actually issued by himself, and not pilfered by any of the workmen employed about the printing-office,VII.64was 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 of506one of the plans which he had devised to prevent the forgery of bank-notes.VII.65

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.

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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 oftint, and a better effect than could be obtained, without great labour, in a cut printed in black ink from a single block. This improvement, which had been suggested by Papillon in 1768, Bewick proceeded to carry into effect. The subject which he made choice of to exemplify what he considered his original discovery, was an old horse waiting for death.VII.66He accordingly made the drawing on a large block consisting of four different pieces, and forthwith proceeded to engrave it. He however did not live to complete his intention; for even this block, which he meant merely for the first impression—the subject having to be completed by a second—remained unfinished at his decease.VII.67He had, however, finished it all507with 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!”

This cut, with the head said to have been finished by another person, was published by Bewick’s son, Mr. Robert Elliott Bewick, in 1832. It is the largest cut that Bewick ever engraved,VII.68but 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.

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

He was extremely regular and methodical in his habits of business: until within a few years of his death he used to come to his shop in Newcastle from his house in Gateshead at a certain hour in the morning, returning to his dinner at a certain time, and, as he used to say,lapping508upat night, as if he were a workman employed by the day, and subject to a loss by being absent a single hour. When any of his works were in the press, the first thing he did each morning, after calling at his own shop, was to proceed to the printer’s to see what progress they were making, and to give directions to the pressmen about printing the cuts.VII.69It 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.

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 nobleman509called 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.

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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 thepantat the head of the Side, in an earthenware jug, and the glass which Bewick used to drink the water out of, was, as soon as done with, carefully locked up in his book-case. One of his apprentices once happening to break the jug, Bewick scolded him well for his carelessness, and made him pay twopence towards buying another.

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

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 of510the 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.

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THOMAS BEWICK.

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 the511place 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.

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The following are the inscriptions on the tablets:

In Memory ofJOHN BEWICK,Engraver,Who died December, 5, 1795,Aged 35 years.His Ingenuity as an Artistwas excelled only byhis Conduct as aMan.TheBurial PlaceofTHOMAS BEWICK,Engraver,Newcastle.Isabella, his Wife,Died 1st February, 1826,Aged 72 years.THOMAS BEWICK,Died 8th of November, 1828,Aged 75 years.

In Memory ofJOHN BEWICK,Engraver,Who died December, 5, 1795,Aged 35 years.His Ingenuity as an Artistwas excelled only byhis Conduct as aMan.

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

His Ingenuity as an Artistwas excelled only byhis Conduct as aMan.

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

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

In an excellent notice of the works of Bewick—apparently written by one of his townsmen (said to be Mr. T. Doubleday)—in Blackwood’s Magazine for July, 1825, it is stated that the final tail-piece to Bewick’s Fables, 1818-1823, is “A View of Ovingham Churchyard;” and in the Reverend William Turner’s Memoir of Thomas Bewick, in the sixth volume of the Naturalist’s Library, the same statement is repeated. It is, however, erroneous; as both the writers might have known had they thought it worth their while to pay a visit to Ovingham, and take a look512at the church. The following cut, in which is introduced an imaginary representation of Bewick’s funeral, presents a correct view of the place. The following popular saying, which is well known in Northumberland, suggested the introduction of the rain-bow:

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

“Happy is the bride that the sun shines on,

And happy is the corpse that the rain rains on,—”

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

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

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

‘The Genius that dwells on the banks of the Tyne,’VII.71

the Matchless, Inimitable Bewick? No. His books lie on our parlour, bed-room, dining-room, drawing-room, study table, and are never out of513place or time. Happy old man! The delight of childhood, manhood, decaying age!—A moral in every tail-piece—a sermon in every vignette. Not as if from one fountain flows the stream of his inspired spirit, gurgling from the Crawley Spring so many thousand gallons of the element every minute, and feeding but one city, our own Edinburgh. But it rather oozes out from unnumbered springs. Here from one scarcely perceptible but in the vivid green of the lonesome sward, from which it trickles away into a little mountain rill—here leaping into sudden life, as from the rock—here bubbling from a silver pool, overshadowed by a birch-tree—here like a well asleep in a moss-grown cell, built by some thoughtful recluse in the old monastic day, with a few words from Scripture, or some rude engraving, religious as Scripture,Omne bonum desuper—Opera Dei mirifica.”

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 principal514cuts.VII.72The 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.

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

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

The cuts in the Chase, which were all, except one, engraved by Thomas Bewick, are, on the whole, superior in point of execution to those in the Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell. Though boldly designed, some of them display great defects in composition, and among the most objectionable in this respect are the Huntsman and three Hounds, at515page 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.

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

The most of John Bewick’s cuts are much better conceived than engraved; and this perhaps may in a great measure have arisen from516their 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 extremelyeffectivefrom 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.

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Robert Johnson, though not a wood engraver, has a claim to a brief notice here on account of the excellence of several of the tail-pieces designed by him in Bewick’s Birds, and from his having made the drawings for most of the wood-cuts in Bewick’s Fables. He was born in 1770, at Shotley, a village in Northumberland, about six miles to the south-west of Ovingham; and in 1778 was placed by his father, who at that time resided in Gateshead, as an apprentice to Beilby and Bewick to be instructed in copper-plate engraving. The plates which are generally supposed to have been executed by him during his apprenticeship possess very little merit, nor does he appear to have been desirous to excel as an engraver. His great delight consisted in sketching from nature and in painting in water-colours; and in this branch of art, while yet an apprentice, he displayed talents of very high order.VII.73He517was 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.

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

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.

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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.

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Charlton Nesbit, who is justly entitled to be ranked with the best wood engravers of his time, was born in 1775 at Swalwell, in the county of Durham, about five miles westward of Gateshead, and when about fourteen years of age was apprenticed to Beilby and Bewick to learn the art of wood engraving. During his apprenticeship he engraved a few of the tail-pieces in the first volume of the History of British Birds, and all the head and tail-pieces, except two, in the Poems by Goldsmith and Parnell, printed by Bulmer in 1795. Shortly after the expiration of his apprenticeship he began to engrave a large cut, containing a view of St. Nicholas Church, Newcastle-on-Tyne, from a drawing by his fellow-pupil, Robert Johnson. We here present a reduced copy of this cut, which is one of the largest ever engraved in England.VII.75The 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.

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About 1799 Mr. Nesbit came to London, where he continued to reside till 1815. During his residence there he engraved a number of cuts for various works, chiefly from the designs of the late Mr. John Thurston,VII.76520who 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.

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

In order to give a fictitious value to Mr. Savage’s book, most of the cuts, as soon as a certain number of impressions were taken, were sawn across, but not through, in several places, and impressions of them when thus defaced were given in the work.VII.77Nesbit’s cut was, however,521carefully 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 thebest, 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.

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

Luke Clennell, one of the most distinguished of Bewick’s pupils as a designer and painter, as well as an engraver on wood, was born at Ulgham, a village near Morpeth, in Northumberland, on the 8th of April, 1781. At an early age he was placed with a relation, a grocer in Morpeth, and continued with him, assisting in the shop as an apprentice, until he was sixteen. Some drawings which he made when at Morpeth having attracted attention, and he himself showing a decided predilection for the art, his friends were induced to place him as a wood engraver with Bewick, to whom he was bound apprentice for seven years on the 8th of April, 1797. He in a short time made great proficiency in wood engraving; and as he drew with great correctness and power, Bewick employed him to copy, on the block, several of Robert Johnson’s drawings, and to engrave them as tail-pieces for the second volume of the History of British Birds. Clennell for a few months after the expiration of his apprenticeship continued to work for Bewick, who chiefly employed him in engraving some of the cuts for a History of England, published by Wallis and Scholey, 46, Paternoster Row. Clennell, who was paid only two guineas apiece for each of those cuts, having learnt that Bewick received five, sent to the publisher a proof of one of them—Alfred in the Danish Camp—stating that it was of his own engraving. In the course of a few days Clennell received an answer from the publisher, inviting him to come to London, and offering him employment522until all the cuts intended for the work should be finished. He accepted the offer, and shortly afterwards set out for London, where he arrived about the end of autumn, 1804.VII.78

Most of Clennell’s cuts are distinguished by their free andartist-likeexecution and by their excellent effect; but though generally spirited, they are sometimes rather coarsely engraved. He was accustomed to improve Thurston’s designs by occasionally heightening the effect.VII.79To such alterations Thurston at first objected; but perceiving that the cuts when engraved were thus very much improved, he afterwards allowed Clennell to increase the lights and deepen the shadows according to his own judgment. An admirable specimen of Clennell’s engraving is to be found in an octavo edition of Falconer’s Shipwreck, printed for Cadell and Davies, 1808. It occurs as a vignette to the second canto at p. 43, and the subject is a ship running before the wind in a gale. The motion of the waves, and the gloomy appearance of the sky, are represented with admirable truth and feeling. The dark shadow on the waters to the right gives wonderful effect to the white crest of the wave in front; and the whole appearance of the cut is indicative of a gloomy and tempestuous day, and of an increasing storm. Perhaps no engraving of the same kind, either on copper or wood, conveys the idea of a storm at sea with greater fidelity.VII.80The drawing was made on the block by Thurston; but the spirit andeffect,—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 notillustrationsof Falconer’s Shipwreck.

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DIPLOMA OF THE HIGHLAND SOCIETYReduced to one-fourth of the original size

Clennell’s largest cut is that which he engraved for the diploma of the Highland Society, from a design by Benjamin West, President of the523Royal 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 in524others the execution is careless; the more important parts are, however, engraved with great spirit; and the cut, as a whole, is bold and effective. Cross-hatchings are freely introduced, not so much, perhaps, because they were necessary, as to show that the engraver could execute such kind of work,—the vulgar error that cross-hatchings could not be executed on wood having been at that time extremely prevalent among persons who had little knowledge of the art, and who yet vented their absurd notions on the subject as if they were undeniable truths. The preceding is a reduced copy of this cut.VII.81The 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.

The illustrations to an edition of Rogers’s Poems, 1812, engraved from pen-and-ink drawings by Thomas Stothard, R.A., may be fairly ranked among the best of the wood-cuts engraved by Clennell. They are executed with the feeling of an artist, and are admirable representations of the original drawings.VII.82Stothard 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.

Clennell, who drew beautifully in water-colours, made many of the drawings for the Border Antiquities; and the encouragement which he received as a designer and painter made him resolve to entirely abandon wood engraving. With this view he laboured diligently to improve himself in painting, and in a short time made such progress that his pictures attracted the attention of the Directors of the British Institution. In 1814, the Earl of Bridgewater employed him to paint a large picture of the entertainment given to the Allied Sovereigns in the Guildhall by the city of London. He experienced great difficulty in obtaining sketches of the numerous distinguished persons whose portraits it was necessary to give in the picture; and he lost much time, and suffered considerable anxiety, in procuring those preliminary materials for his work. Having at length completed his sketches, he began the picture, and had made considerable progress in it when, in April 1817, he suddenly became insane, and the work was interrupted.VII.83It has525been 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.

Within a short time after Clennell had lost his reason, his wife also became insane;VII.84and 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.

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 writingpoetry. 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.

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