see textsee textSONG.Good morning to you, Mary,It glads me much to see thee once again;What joy, since thee I’ve heard!Heaven such beauty ever deign,Mary of the vineyard!THE EVENING STAR.Look! what is it, with twinkling light,That brings such joy, serenely bright,That turns the dusk again to light?—’Tis the Evening Star!What is it with purest ray,That brings such peace at close of day,That lights the traveller on his way?—’Tis the Evening Star!What is it, of purest holy ray,That brings to man the promised day,And peace?—’Tis the Evening Star!COMPENDIUM POETICA.A drop of heaven’s treasure, on an angel’s wing,Such heaven alone can bring;—The painted hues upon the rose,In heaven’s shower reposing,Is an earthly treasure of such measure.The butterfly, in his spell,Upon the rosy prism doth dwell,And as he doth fly, in his tourFrom flower to flower,Is seen for a whileEvery care to beguile,And so doth wing his little way,A little fairy of the day!527A FLOWERET.Where lengthened rayGildeth the bark upon her way;Where vision is lost in space,To trace,As resting on a stile,In ascent of half a mile—It is when the birds do sing,In the evening of the spring.The broad shadow from the tree,Falling upon the slope,You may see,O’er flowery mead,Where doth a pathway leadTo the topmost ope—The yellow butter-cupAnd purple crow-foot,The waving grass up,Rounding upon the but—The spreading daisyIn the clover maze,The wild rose upon the hedge-row,And the honey-suckle blowFor village girlTo dress her chaplet—Or some youth, mayhap, let—Or bind the linky trinketFor some earl—Or trim up in plaits her hairWith much seeming care,As fancy may think it—Or with spittle moisten,Or half wink it,Or to music inclined,Or to sleep in the soft wind.St Peter’s, August 1828.L. C.About 1831, Clennell having become much worse, his friends were again compelled to place him under restraint. He was accordingly conveyed to a lunatic asylum near Newcastle, where he is still living. Until within this last year or two, he continued to amuse himself with drawing and writing poetry, and perhaps may do so still. It is to be hoped that, though his condition appear miserable to us, he is not miserable himself; that though deprived of the light of reason, he may yet enjoy imaginary pleasures of which we can form no conception; and that his confinement occasions to him“Small feeling of privation, none of pain.”VII.85William Harvey, another distinguished pupil of Bewick, and one whose earlier engravings are only surpassed by his more recent productions as a designer on wood, was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, 13th of July 1796. Having from an early age shown great fondness for drawing, he was at the age of fourteen apprenticed to Thomas Bewick to learn the art of engraving on wood.VII.86In 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 Robert528Johnson’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.Harvey was a great favourite of Bewick, who presented him with a copy of the History of British Birds as a new year’s gift on the 1st of January 1815, and at the same time addressed to him the following admonitory letter. Mr. Harvey is a distinguished artist, a kind son, an affectionate husband, a loving father, and in every relation of life a most amiable man: he has not, however, been exposed to any plots or conspiracies, nor been persecuted by envy and malice, as his master anticipated; but, on the contrary, his talents and his amiable character have procured for him public reputation and private esteem.“Gateshead, 1st January, 1815.“Dear William,“I sent you last night the History of British Birds, which I beg your acceptance of as a new year’s gift, and also as a token of my respect. Don’t trouble yourself about thanking me for them; but, instead of doing so, let those books put you in mind of the duties you have to perform through life. Look at them (as long as they last) on every new year’s day, and at the same time resolve, with the help of the all-wise but unknowable God, to conduct yourself on every occasion as becomes a good man.—Be a good son, a good brother, (and when the time comes) a good husband, a good father, and a good member of society. Peace of mind will then follow you like a shadow; and when your mind grows rich in integrity, you will fear the frowns of no man, and only smile at the plots and conspiracies which it is probable will be laid against you by envy, hatred, and malice.“To William Harvey, jun. Westgate.signature of Thomas Bewick.”In September, 1817, Mr. Harvey came to London; and shortly afterwards, with a view of obtaining a correct knowledge of the principles of drawing, he became a pupil of Mr. B. R. Haydon, and he certainly could not have had a better master. While improving himself under Mr. Haydon, he drew and engraved from a picture by that eminent artist his large cut of the Death of Dentatus, which was published in 1821.VII.87529As 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 atone, and some of the more distant figures appear tostickto 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.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.see text and captionSPECIMENS OF MR. HARVEY’S WOOD-ENGRAVING.see textFROM DR. HENDERSON’S HISTORY OF ANCIENT AND MODERN WINES.see textThe beautiful vignettes and tail-pieces in Dr. Henderson’s History of Ancient and Modern Wines, 1824, drawn and engraved by Mr. Harvey, may be considered the ground-work of his reputation as a designer, and by the kindness of Dr. Henderson we are enabled (in this second edition) to present impressions of seven of them. The cuts in the first and second series of Northcote’s Fables, 1828, 1833;VII.88in the Tower Menagerie,5301828; in the Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society, 1831; and in Latrobe’s Solace of Song, 1837, were all drawn by him.see text531Among 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.see textFor various other532works he has also furnished, in all, between three and four thousand designs. As a designer on wood, he is decidedly superior to the533majority 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.see textsee textThe 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.see textThe 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,—the534gentleman 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.see textWhat 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; and535in 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.see textRob. Branston.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 was536much 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, androad-sideincidents. In the representation of trees and of natural scenery, Branston has almost uniformly failed. Some of the best of his earlier productions are to be found in the History of England, published by Scholey, 1804-1810; in Bloomfield’s Wild Flowers, 1806; and in a quarto volume entitled “Epistles in Verse,” and other poems by George Marshall, 1812.The best specimen of Mr. Branston’s talents as a wood engraver is a large cut of the Cave of Despair, in Savage’s Hints on Decorative Printing. It was executed in rivalry with Nesbit, who engraved the cut of Rinaldo and Armida for the same work, and it would be difficult to decide which is the best. Both are good specimens of the styles of their respective schools; and the subjects are well adapted to display the peculiar excellence of the engravers. Had they exchanged subjects, neither of the cuts would have been so well executed; but in this case there call be little doubt that Nesbit would have engraved the figure and the rocks in the Cave of Despair better than Branston would have engraved the trees and the foliage in the cut of Rinaldo and Armida. The cut on the previous page is a reduced copy of a portion of that of Mr. Branston.Mr. Branston, like many others, did not think highly of the cuts in Bewick’s Fables; and feeling persuaded that he could produce something better, he employed Mr. Thurston to make several designs, with the intention of publishing a similar work. After a few of them had been engraved, he gave up the thought of proceeding further with the work, from a doubt of its success. Bewick’s work was already in the market; and it was questionable if another of the same kind, appearing shortly after, would meet with a sale adequate to defray the expense. The three cuts in the opposite page were engraved by Mr. Branston for the proposed work. The two first are respectively illustrations of the fables of Industry and Sloth, and of the Two Crabs; the third was intended as a tail-piece. The cut of Industry and Sloth is certainly superior to that of the same subject in Bewick’s Fables; but that of the Two Crabs, though more delicately engraved, is not equal to the cut of the same subject in Bewick.[537]see text and captionINDUSTRY AND SLOTH.—Robert Branston.see text and captionTHE TWO CRABS.—Robert Branston.see text and captionTAIL-PIECE TO THE TWO CRABS.—Robert Branston.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 the538same 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.see textBetween 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.539see text and captionHugh Hughes, del. et sc.PISTILL CAIN.see text and captionHugh Hughes, del. et sc.MOLL FAMAU.540see text and captionHugh Hughes, del. et sc.WREXHAM CHURCH.see text and captionHugh Hughes, del. et sc.PWLL CARADOC.541John Thompson,VII.89one of the best English wood engravers of the present day, was a pupil of Mr. Branston. He not only excels, like his542master, in the engraving of human figures, but displays equal talent in the execution of all kinds of subjects. Among the very many excellent cuts which have been engraved in England within the last twenty years, those executed by John Thompson rank foremost. As he is rarely unequal to himself, it is rather difficult to point out any which are very much superior to the others of his execution. The following, however, may be referred to as specimens of the general excellence of his cuts:—The title-page to Puckle’s Club, 1817, and the cuts of Moroso, Newsmonger, Swearer, Wiseman, and Xantippe in the same work; the Trout, the Tench, the Salmon, the Chub, and a group of small fish,VII.90consisting543of the Minnow, the Loach, the Bull-head, and the Stickle-back, in Major’s edition of Walton’s Angler;VII.91see text and captionGROUP OF FISH.—J. Thompson.see text and captionSALMON.—J. Thompson.see text and captionCHUB.—J. Thompson.see text and captionPIKE.—R. Branston.see text and captionEEL.—H. White.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 atpage 531. The following cut—a reduced copy of one of the plates in the Rake’s Progress—by Mr. Thompson, engraved a few years ago for a projected edition of Hogarth’s Graphic Works, of which only about a dozen cuts were completed, is one of the best specimens of the art that has been executed in modern times. In the engraving of small544cuts 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.see text and captionJohn Thompson.see textThe 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.* All the engravers to whose names an asterisk is added are now deceased.545see textJOHN MARTINJOHN JACKSONThe 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.see textJOHN MARTINF. W. BRANSTONMr. F. W. Branston, brother of Mr. Robert Branston, has long been known as one of our best engravers, as the annexed Specimen will shew.546see textJOHN MARTINE. LANDELLSMr. Ebenezer Landells, the engraver of this beautiful cut, has quite recently been lost to us. He was projector, and for a long time proprietor, of The Ladies’ Illustrated Newspaper, and has engraved an immense number of subjects of all classes.see textJOHN MARTINW. H. POWISThe 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 cost547the projectors, Messrs. Bull and Churton, upwards of four thousand guineas: it may now be bought for a dozen shillings.see textJOHN MARTINTHOS. WILLIAMSMr. Thomas Williamsranks 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.see textJOHN MARTINW. T. GREENThe 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.548To this is added, as a vignette finish to the chapter, an engraving recently executed by him for an illustrated edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost, now published in Bohn’s Library, and already mentioned at page 531.One of the principal wood engravers in Germany, about the time that Bewick began to practise the art in England, was Unger. In 1779 he published a tract, containing five cuts of his own engraving, discussing the question whether Albert Durer actually engraved on wood: his decision is in the negative. In the same year, his son also published a dissertation, illustrated with wood-cuts, on the progress of wood engraving in Brandenburg, with an account of the principal books containing wood-cuts printed in that part of Prussia. They jointly executed some chiaro-scuros, and a number of trifling book-illustrations such as are to be found in Heineken’s Idée Générale d’une Collection complette d’Estampes. These cuts are of a very inferior character. Gubitz, a German wood engraver, who flourished about thirty years ago, executed several cuts which are much superior to any I have seen by the Ungers. Several of those engraved by Gubitz, bear considerable resemblance to the cuts of Bewick. The principal French wood engravers in the eighteenth century, subsequent to Papillon, were Gritner and Beugnet; but neither of them produced anything superior to the worst of the cuts to be found in the work of Papillon. With them wood engraving in France rather declined than advanced. Of late years the art has made great progress both in Germany and France; and should the taste for wood-cuts continue to increase in those countries, their engravers may regain for the art that popularity which it enjoyed in former times, when Nuremberg and Lyons were the great marts for works illustrated with wood engravings.see textW. HARVEYW. T. GREENVII.1Small 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 alsolittle cuts and figures, 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 ofequi admissorii.VII.2Some 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.VII.3Papillon, Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 323.VII.4“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.VII.5The 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.VII.6It is not unlikely that the frequency of such casts has induced many persons to suppose that most of the cuts of this period were “engravedon metal in the manner of wood.”VII.7Two 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.VII.8Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. pp. 327, 328.VII.9This painting, which is wholly in chiaro-scuro, is now in the National Gallery, to which it was presented by the late Sir George Beaumont.VII.10The 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.VII.11There 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.”VII.12I 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.VII.13Papillon, 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.VII.14Traité 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.VII.15The 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.VII.16Papillon’s account of the Cunio, with an examination of its credibility, will be found in chapter i. pp. 26-39.VII.17This 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. Thecompositor, as is stated in the same Advertisement, was a young woman.—SeeBibliotheca Parriana, p. 513.VII.18“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.VII.19Several 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.VII.20He 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, butdaredto engrave wood-cuts themselves.VII.21Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. ii. p. 365.VII.22The portrait was engraved “in venerationis testimonium,” and presented to Papillon by Nicholas Caron, a bookseller and wood engraver of Besançon. The following complimentary verses are engraved below the portrait:“Tu vois ici les traits d’un Artiste fameuxDont la savante main enfanta des merveilles;Par ses travaux et par ses veillesIl resuscita l’Art qui le trace à tes yeux.”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.”VII.23From 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.VII.24In 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.VII.25The 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.”VII.26The cut here introduced is the first in theStultifera Navis, or “Ship of Fools,” and is copied from Pyason’s edition of 1509. The following lines accompany it:“——this is my mynde, this one pleasoure have I,Of bokes to have great plenty and aparayle.I take no wysdome by them; nor yet avayleNor them perceyve not: And then I them despyse.Thus am I a foole and all that serve that guyse.”VII.27Dr. 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.”VII.28Mr. 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.VII.29Prettierandprettier.VII.30Philip.VII.31“While withBeilbyhe 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.VII.32Alders—the name of a small plantation above Ovingham, which Bewick had to pass through on his way to Eltringham ferry-boat.VII.33The Reverend William Turner, of Newcastle, in a letter printed in the Monthly Magazine for June 1801, says that Bewick obtained this premium “during his apprenticeship.” 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.VII.34Bewick’s mother, Jane Wilson, was a daughter of Thomas Wilson of Ainstable in Cumberland, about five miles north-north-west of Kirk-Oswald.VII.35Bewick, 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.VII.36Mr. 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.VII.37I have not been able to discover the date of the first edition of this work. The third edition is dated 1785.VII.38“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.VII.39Humble, Eltringham, and Newton were the names of three of his country acquaintances; Prudhoe, Hall-Yards, and Mickley are places near Ovingham.VII.40Bewick 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.VII.41Mr. 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.VII.42This cut was executed for Marmaduke Tunstall, Esq. of Wycliffe, near Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire.VII.43The 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.VII.44A Prospectus containing specimens of the cuts was printed in 1787.VII.45The first edition consisted of fifteen hundred copies in demy octavo at 8s., and one hundred royal at 12s.The price of the demy copies of theeighthedition, published in 1825, was £1 1s.A proof of the estimation in which the work continued to be held.VII.46The 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.VII.47Some account of this work is previously given at page 287.VII.48This work is noticed at page 407.VII.49The 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.VII.50The LancashireBull, of the first edition, by a similar process has been converted into the LancashireOx.VII.51The 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, astrong bit, 269; Drunken Man making his Dam, 378; and Seals on a large piece of floating ice, 510.VII.52This account is extracted from a letter written by Bewick, and printed in the Monthly Magazine for November 1805.VII.53Of this edition, 1,874 copies were printed,—one thousand demy octavo, at 10s.6d.; eight hundred and fifty thin and thick royal, at 13s., and 15s.; and twenty-four imperial at £1 1s.The first edition of the second volume, 1804, consisted of the same number of copies as the first, but the prices were respectively 12s., 15s., 18s.and £1 4s.VII.54Pinkerton 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.VII.55These 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.VII.56“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.VII.57The 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.”VII.58The subject of this cut is thus explained in Brockett’s Glossary of North Country Words: “Neddy, Netty, a certain place that will not bear a written explanation; but which isdepicted to the very lifein 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.”VII.59“Mr. Atkinson must have misunderstood Bewick, as the old man’s name was George, not Matthew, Carr. He was grandfather to Edward Willis, one of Bewick’s pupils, and to George Stephenson, the celebrated engineer. Matthew Carr was a tailor, who lived and died at Righton, in Durham.”—Jno. Jackson.VII.60The 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 theLionin 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.”VII.61The fable of the Ship Dog is one of those written by Bewick.VII.62Mr. 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.”VII.63“There is a tradition that the two black marks on the opposite sides of the haddock were occasioned by St. Peter’s thumb and fore-finger when he took the piece of money out of the fish’s mouth to give it as a tribute to Cæsar.”VII.64Bewick’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.VII.65About 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, afterMr.Beilby’s retirement, still continued the business of copper-plate engraving and printing, and for this purpose always kept presses of his own.VII.66A small cut of the same subject, though with a different back-ground, occurs as a tail-piece in the Fables, 1818-1823.VII.67The lastbirdthat 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.VII.68This 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.”VII.69When 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.VII.70The 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.VII.71This line is adapted from Wordsworth, who, at the commencement of his verses entitled “The Two Thieves, or The Last Stage of Avarice,” thus expresses his high opinion of the talents of Bewick:“O now that the genius of Bewick were mine,And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne!Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose,For I’d take my last leave both of verse and of prose.”Lyrical Ballads, vol. ii. p. 199. Edition 1805.VII.72The cut of the Hermit at his morning devotion was drawn by John Johnson, a cousin of Robert, and also one of Bewick’s pupils.VII.73Johnson’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 miniaturePaul Potters. It is known to only a few persons that they were drawn by Johnson during his apprenticeship. Most of them were copied on the block by William Harvey, and the rest chiefly by Bewick himself.VII.74John 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.VII.75The original cut, including the border, is fifteen inches wide by about twelve inches high.VII.76Mr. 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.VII.77The 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.VII.78Between 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.VII.79He also invariably corrected theoutlineof 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.VII.80Mr. 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.VII.81The 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.VII.82Several additional cuts of the same kind, engraved with no less ability by J. Thompson, were inserted in a subsequent edition.VII.83This painting was afterwards finished by E. Bird, R.A., who also became insane.VII.84Clennell’s wife was a daughter of the late C. Warren, one of the best copper-plate engravers of his time.VII.85Clennell died in the Lunatic Asylum, Feb. 9, 1840, in his fifty-ninth year.VII.86Isaac 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.VII.87This 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 subsequentlytouchedwith Indian ink.VII.88What may be considered the sketches for the principal cuts were supplied by Northcote himself. The following account of the manner in which hecomposedthem 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. Hecompletedthat which Northcote merely suggested. The tail-pieces and letters are all of Mr. Harvey’s own invention and drawing.VII.89Charles 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.VII.90The Salmon, Chub, and group of small fish are given on the preceding page from the actual cuts referred to.VII.91Bewick 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.
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SONG.Good morning to you, Mary,It glads me much to see thee once again;What joy, since thee I’ve heard!Heaven such beauty ever deign,Mary of the vineyard!
Good morning to you, Mary,
It glads me much to see thee once again;
What joy, since thee I’ve heard!
Heaven such beauty ever deign,
Mary of the vineyard!
THE EVENING STAR.Look! what is it, with twinkling light,That brings such joy, serenely bright,That turns the dusk again to light?—’Tis the Evening Star!What is it with purest ray,That brings such peace at close of day,That lights the traveller on his way?—’Tis the Evening Star!What is it, of purest holy ray,That brings to man the promised day,And peace?—’Tis the Evening Star!
Look! what is it, with twinkling light,
That brings such joy, serenely bright,
That turns the dusk again to light?—
’Tis the Evening Star!
What is it with purest ray,
That brings such peace at close of day,
That lights the traveller on his way?—
’Tis the Evening Star!
What is it, of purest holy ray,
That brings to man the promised day,
And peace?—
’Tis the Evening Star!
COMPENDIUM POETICA.A drop of heaven’s treasure, on an angel’s wing,Such heaven alone can bring;—The painted hues upon the rose,In heaven’s shower reposing,Is an earthly treasure of such measure.The butterfly, in his spell,Upon the rosy prism doth dwell,And as he doth fly, in his tourFrom flower to flower,Is seen for a whileEvery care to beguile,And so doth wing his little way,A little fairy of the day!
A drop of heaven’s treasure, on an angel’s wing,
Such heaven alone can bring;—
The painted hues upon the rose,
In heaven’s shower reposing,
Is an earthly treasure of such measure.
The butterfly, in his spell,
Upon the rosy prism doth dwell,
And as he doth fly, in his tour
From flower to flower,
Is seen for a while
Every care to beguile,
And so doth wing his little way,
A little fairy of the day!
A FLOWERET.Where lengthened rayGildeth the bark upon her way;Where vision is lost in space,To trace,As resting on a stile,In ascent of half a mile—It is when the birds do sing,In the evening of the spring.The broad shadow from the tree,Falling upon the slope,You may see,O’er flowery mead,Where doth a pathway leadTo the topmost ope—The yellow butter-cupAnd purple crow-foot,The waving grass up,Rounding upon the but—The spreading daisyIn the clover maze,The wild rose upon the hedge-row,And the honey-suckle blowFor village girlTo dress her chaplet—Or some youth, mayhap, let—Or bind the linky trinketFor some earl—Or trim up in plaits her hairWith much seeming care,As fancy may think it—Or with spittle moisten,Or half wink it,Or to music inclined,Or to sleep in the soft wind.St Peter’s, August 1828.L. C.
Where lengthened ray
Gildeth the bark upon her way;
Where vision is lost in space,
To trace,
As resting on a stile,
In ascent of half a mile—
It is when the birds do sing,
In the evening of the spring.
The broad shadow from the tree,
Falling upon the slope,
You may see,
O’er flowery mead,
Where doth a pathway lead
To the topmost ope—
The yellow butter-cup
And purple crow-foot,
The waving grass up,
Rounding upon the but—
The spreading daisy
In the clover maze,
The wild rose upon the hedge-row,
And the honey-suckle blow
For village girl
To dress her chaplet—
Or some youth, mayhap, let—
Or bind the linky trinket
For some earl—
Or trim up in plaits her hair
With much seeming care,
As fancy may think it—
Or with spittle moisten,
Or half wink it,
Or to music inclined,
Or to sleep in the soft wind.
St Peter’s, August 1828.L. C.
About 1831, Clennell having become much worse, his friends were again compelled to place him under restraint. He was accordingly conveyed to a lunatic asylum near Newcastle, where he is still living. Until within this last year or two, he continued to amuse himself with drawing and writing poetry, and perhaps may do so still. It is to be hoped that, though his condition appear miserable to us, he is not miserable himself; that though deprived of the light of reason, he may yet enjoy imaginary pleasures of which we can form no conception; and that his confinement occasions to him
“Small feeling of privation, none of pain.”VII.85
William Harvey, another distinguished pupil of Bewick, and one whose earlier engravings are only surpassed by his more recent productions as a designer on wood, was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, 13th of July 1796. Having from an early age shown great fondness for drawing, he was at the age of fourteen apprenticed to Thomas Bewick to learn the art of engraving on wood.VII.86In 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 Robert528Johnson’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.
Harvey was a great favourite of Bewick, who presented him with a copy of the History of British Birds as a new year’s gift on the 1st of January 1815, and at the same time addressed to him the following admonitory letter. Mr. Harvey is a distinguished artist, a kind son, an affectionate husband, a loving father, and in every relation of life a most amiable man: he has not, however, been exposed to any plots or conspiracies, nor been persecuted by envy and malice, as his master anticipated; but, on the contrary, his talents and his amiable character have procured for him public reputation and private esteem.
“Gateshead, 1st January, 1815.
“Dear William,
“I sent you last night the History of British Birds, which I beg your acceptance of as a new year’s gift, and also as a token of my respect. Don’t trouble yourself about thanking me for them; but, instead of doing so, let those books put you in mind of the duties you have to perform through life. Look at them (as long as they last) on every new year’s day, and at the same time resolve, with the help of the all-wise but unknowable God, to conduct yourself on every occasion as becomes a good man.—Be a good son, a good brother, (and when the time comes) a good husband, a good father, and a good member of society. Peace of mind will then follow you like a shadow; and when your mind grows rich in integrity, you will fear the frowns of no man, and only smile at the plots and conspiracies which it is probable will be laid against you by envy, hatred, and malice.
“To William Harvey, jun. Westgate.
signature of Thomas Bewick.”
In September, 1817, Mr. Harvey came to London; and shortly afterwards, with a view of obtaining a correct knowledge of the principles of drawing, he became a pupil of Mr. B. R. Haydon, and he certainly could not have had a better master. While improving himself under Mr. Haydon, he drew and engraved from a picture by that eminent artist his large cut of the Death of Dentatus, which was published in 1821.VII.87529As 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 atone, and some of the more distant figures appear tostickto 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.
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.
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SPECIMENS OF MR. HARVEY’S WOOD-ENGRAVING.
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FROM DR. HENDERSON’S HISTORY OF ANCIENT AND MODERN WINES.
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The beautiful vignettes and tail-pieces in Dr. Henderson’s History of Ancient and Modern Wines, 1824, drawn and engraved by Mr. Harvey, may be considered the ground-work of his reputation as a designer, and by the kindness of Dr. Henderson we are enabled (in this second edition) to present impressions of seven of them. The cuts in the first and second series of Northcote’s Fables, 1828, 1833;VII.88in the Tower Menagerie,5301828; in the Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society, 1831; and in Latrobe’s Solace of Song, 1837, were all drawn by him.
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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.
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For various other532works he has also furnished, in all, between three and four thousand designs. As a designer on wood, he is decidedly superior to the533majority 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.
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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.
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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,—the534gentleman 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.
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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; and535in 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.
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Rob. Branston.
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 was536much 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, androad-sideincidents. In the representation of trees and of natural scenery, Branston has almost uniformly failed. Some of the best of his earlier productions are to be found in the History of England, published by Scholey, 1804-1810; in Bloomfield’s Wild Flowers, 1806; and in a quarto volume entitled “Epistles in Verse,” and other poems by George Marshall, 1812.
The best specimen of Mr. Branston’s talents as a wood engraver is a large cut of the Cave of Despair, in Savage’s Hints on Decorative Printing. It was executed in rivalry with Nesbit, who engraved the cut of Rinaldo and Armida for the same work, and it would be difficult to decide which is the best. Both are good specimens of the styles of their respective schools; and the subjects are well adapted to display the peculiar excellence of the engravers. Had they exchanged subjects, neither of the cuts would have been so well executed; but in this case there call be little doubt that Nesbit would have engraved the figure and the rocks in the Cave of Despair better than Branston would have engraved the trees and the foliage in the cut of Rinaldo and Armida. The cut on the previous page is a reduced copy of a portion of that of Mr. Branston.
Mr. Branston, like many others, did not think highly of the cuts in Bewick’s Fables; and feeling persuaded that he could produce something better, he employed Mr. Thurston to make several designs, with the intention of publishing a similar work. After a few of them had been engraved, he gave up the thought of proceeding further with the work, from a doubt of its success. Bewick’s work was already in the market; and it was questionable if another of the same kind, appearing shortly after, would meet with a sale adequate to defray the expense. The three cuts in the opposite page were engraved by Mr. Branston for the proposed work. The two first are respectively illustrations of the fables of Industry and Sloth, and of the Two Crabs; the third was intended as a tail-piece. The cut of Industry and Sloth is certainly superior to that of the same subject in Bewick’s Fables; but that of the Two Crabs, though more delicately engraved, is not equal to the cut of the same subject in Bewick.
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INDUSTRY AND SLOTH.—Robert Branston.
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THE TWO CRABS.—Robert Branston.
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TAIL-PIECE TO THE TWO CRABS.—Robert Branston.
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 the538same 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.
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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.
see text and captionHugh Hughes, del. et sc.PISTILL CAIN.
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Hugh Hughes, del. et sc.
PISTILL CAIN.
see text and captionHugh Hughes, del. et sc.MOLL FAMAU.
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Hugh Hughes, del. et sc.
MOLL FAMAU.
see text and captionHugh Hughes, del. et sc.WREXHAM CHURCH.
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Hugh Hughes, del. et sc.
WREXHAM CHURCH.
see text and captionHugh Hughes, del. et sc.PWLL CARADOC.
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Hugh Hughes, del. et sc.
PWLL CARADOC.
John Thompson,VII.89one of the best English wood engravers of the present day, was a pupil of Mr. Branston. He not only excels, like his542master, in the engraving of human figures, but displays equal talent in the execution of all kinds of subjects. Among the very many excellent cuts which have been engraved in England within the last twenty years, those executed by John Thompson rank foremost. As he is rarely unequal to himself, it is rather difficult to point out any which are very much superior to the others of his execution. The following, however, may be referred to as specimens of the general excellence of his cuts:—The title-page to Puckle’s Club, 1817, and the cuts of Moroso, Newsmonger, Swearer, Wiseman, and Xantippe in the same work; the Trout, the Tench, the Salmon, the Chub, and a group of small fish,VII.90consisting543of the Minnow, the Loach, the Bull-head, and the Stickle-back, in Major’s edition of Walton’s Angler;VII.91
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GROUP OF FISH.—J. Thompson.
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SALMON.—J. Thompson.
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CHUB.—J. Thompson.
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PIKE.—R. Branston.
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EEL.—H. White.
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 atpage 531. The following cut—a reduced copy of one of the plates in the Rake’s Progress—by Mr. Thompson, engraved a few years ago for a projected edition of Hogarth’s Graphic Works, of which only about a dozen cuts were completed, is one of the best specimens of the art that has been executed in modern times. In the engraving of small544cuts 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.
see text and captionJohn Thompson.
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John Thompson.
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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.
* All the engravers to whose names an asterisk is added are now deceased.
* All the engravers to whose names an asterisk is added are now deceased.
see textJOHN MARTINJOHN JACKSON
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JOHN MARTIN
JOHN JACKSON
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.
see textJOHN MARTINF. W. BRANSTON
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JOHN MARTIN
F. W. BRANSTON
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.
see textJOHN MARTINE. LANDELLS
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JOHN MARTIN
E. LANDELLS
Mr. Ebenezer Landells, the engraver of this beautiful cut, has quite recently been lost to us. He was projector, and for a long time proprietor, of The Ladies’ Illustrated Newspaper, and has engraved an immense number of subjects of all classes.
see textJOHN MARTINW. H. POWIS
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JOHN MARTIN
W. H. POWIS
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 cost547the projectors, Messrs. Bull and Churton, upwards of four thousand guineas: it may now be bought for a dozen shillings.
see textJOHN MARTINTHOS. WILLIAMS
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JOHN MARTIN
THOS. WILLIAMS
Mr. Thomas Williamsranks 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.
see textJOHN MARTINW. T. GREEN
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JOHN MARTIN
W. T. GREEN
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.548To this is added, as a vignette finish to the chapter, an engraving recently executed by him for an illustrated edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost, now published in Bohn’s Library, and already mentioned at page 531.
One of the principal wood engravers in Germany, about the time that Bewick began to practise the art in England, was Unger. In 1779 he published a tract, containing five cuts of his own engraving, discussing the question whether Albert Durer actually engraved on wood: his decision is in the negative. In the same year, his son also published a dissertation, illustrated with wood-cuts, on the progress of wood engraving in Brandenburg, with an account of the principal books containing wood-cuts printed in that part of Prussia. They jointly executed some chiaro-scuros, and a number of trifling book-illustrations such as are to be found in Heineken’s Idée Générale d’une Collection complette d’Estampes. These cuts are of a very inferior character. Gubitz, a German wood engraver, who flourished about thirty years ago, executed several cuts which are much superior to any I have seen by the Ungers. Several of those engraved by Gubitz, bear considerable resemblance to the cuts of Bewick. The principal French wood engravers in the eighteenth century, subsequent to Papillon, were Gritner and Beugnet; but neither of them produced anything superior to the worst of the cuts to be found in the work of Papillon. With them wood engraving in France rather declined than advanced. Of late years the art has made great progress both in Germany and France; and should the taste for wood-cuts continue to increase in those countries, their engravers may regain for the art that popularity which it enjoyed in former times, when Nuremberg and Lyons were the great marts for works illustrated with wood engravings.
see textW. HARVEYW. T. GREEN
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W. HARVEY
W. T. GREEN
VII.1Small 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 alsolittle cuts and figures, 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 ofequi admissorii.VII.2Some 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.VII.3Papillon, Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 323.VII.4“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.VII.5The 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.VII.6It is not unlikely that the frequency of such casts has induced many persons to suppose that most of the cuts of this period were “engravedon metal in the manner of wood.”VII.7Two 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.VII.8Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. pp. 327, 328.VII.9This painting, which is wholly in chiaro-scuro, is now in the National Gallery, to which it was presented by the late Sir George Beaumont.VII.10The 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.VII.11There 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.”VII.12I 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.VII.13Papillon, 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.VII.14Traité 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.VII.15The 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.VII.16Papillon’s account of the Cunio, with an examination of its credibility, will be found in chapter i. pp. 26-39.VII.17This 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. Thecompositor, as is stated in the same Advertisement, was a young woman.—SeeBibliotheca Parriana, p. 513.VII.18“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.VII.19Several 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.VII.20He 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, butdaredto engrave wood-cuts themselves.VII.21Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. ii. p. 365.VII.22The portrait was engraved “in venerationis testimonium,” and presented to Papillon by Nicholas Caron, a bookseller and wood engraver of Besançon. The following complimentary verses are engraved below the portrait:“Tu vois ici les traits d’un Artiste fameuxDont la savante main enfanta des merveilles;Par ses travaux et par ses veillesIl resuscita l’Art qui le trace à tes yeux.”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.”VII.23From 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.VII.24In 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.VII.25The 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.”VII.26The cut here introduced is the first in theStultifera Navis, or “Ship of Fools,” and is copied from Pyason’s edition of 1509. The following lines accompany it:“——this is my mynde, this one pleasoure have I,Of bokes to have great plenty and aparayle.I take no wysdome by them; nor yet avayleNor them perceyve not: And then I them despyse.Thus am I a foole and all that serve that guyse.”VII.27Dr. 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.”VII.28Mr. 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.VII.29Prettierandprettier.VII.30Philip.VII.31“While withBeilbyhe 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.VII.32Alders—the name of a small plantation above Ovingham, which Bewick had to pass through on his way to Eltringham ferry-boat.VII.33The Reverend William Turner, of Newcastle, in a letter printed in the Monthly Magazine for June 1801, says that Bewick obtained this premium “during his apprenticeship.” 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.VII.34Bewick’s mother, Jane Wilson, was a daughter of Thomas Wilson of Ainstable in Cumberland, about five miles north-north-west of Kirk-Oswald.VII.35Bewick, 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.VII.36Mr. 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.VII.37I have not been able to discover the date of the first edition of this work. The third edition is dated 1785.VII.38“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.VII.39Humble, Eltringham, and Newton were the names of three of his country acquaintances; Prudhoe, Hall-Yards, and Mickley are places near Ovingham.VII.40Bewick 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.VII.41Mr. 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.VII.42This cut was executed for Marmaduke Tunstall, Esq. of Wycliffe, near Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire.VII.43The 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.VII.44A Prospectus containing specimens of the cuts was printed in 1787.VII.45The first edition consisted of fifteen hundred copies in demy octavo at 8s., and one hundred royal at 12s.The price of the demy copies of theeighthedition, published in 1825, was £1 1s.A proof of the estimation in which the work continued to be held.VII.46The 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.VII.47Some account of this work is previously given at page 287.VII.48This work is noticed at page 407.VII.49The 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.VII.50The LancashireBull, of the first edition, by a similar process has been converted into the LancashireOx.VII.51The 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, astrong bit, 269; Drunken Man making his Dam, 378; and Seals on a large piece of floating ice, 510.VII.52This account is extracted from a letter written by Bewick, and printed in the Monthly Magazine for November 1805.VII.53Of this edition, 1,874 copies were printed,—one thousand demy octavo, at 10s.6d.; eight hundred and fifty thin and thick royal, at 13s., and 15s.; and twenty-four imperial at £1 1s.The first edition of the second volume, 1804, consisted of the same number of copies as the first, but the prices were respectively 12s., 15s., 18s.and £1 4s.VII.54Pinkerton 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.VII.55These 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.VII.56“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.VII.57The 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.”VII.58The subject of this cut is thus explained in Brockett’s Glossary of North Country Words: “Neddy, Netty, a certain place that will not bear a written explanation; but which isdepicted to the very lifein 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.”VII.59“Mr. Atkinson must have misunderstood Bewick, as the old man’s name was George, not Matthew, Carr. He was grandfather to Edward Willis, one of Bewick’s pupils, and to George Stephenson, the celebrated engineer. Matthew Carr was a tailor, who lived and died at Righton, in Durham.”—Jno. Jackson.VII.60The 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 theLionin 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.”VII.61The fable of the Ship Dog is one of those written by Bewick.VII.62Mr. 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.”VII.63“There is a tradition that the two black marks on the opposite sides of the haddock were occasioned by St. Peter’s thumb and fore-finger when he took the piece of money out of the fish’s mouth to give it as a tribute to Cæsar.”VII.64Bewick’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.VII.65About 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, afterMr.Beilby’s retirement, still continued the business of copper-plate engraving and printing, and for this purpose always kept presses of his own.VII.66A small cut of the same subject, though with a different back-ground, occurs as a tail-piece in the Fables, 1818-1823.VII.67The lastbirdthat 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.VII.68This 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.”VII.69When 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.VII.70The 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.VII.71This line is adapted from Wordsworth, who, at the commencement of his verses entitled “The Two Thieves, or The Last Stage of Avarice,” thus expresses his high opinion of the talents of Bewick:“O now that the genius of Bewick were mine,And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne!Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose,For I’d take my last leave both of verse and of prose.”Lyrical Ballads, vol. ii. p. 199. Edition 1805.VII.72The cut of the Hermit at his morning devotion was drawn by John Johnson, a cousin of Robert, and also one of Bewick’s pupils.VII.73Johnson’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 miniaturePaul Potters. It is known to only a few persons that they were drawn by Johnson during his apprenticeship. Most of them were copied on the block by William Harvey, and the rest chiefly by Bewick himself.VII.74John 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.VII.75The original cut, including the border, is fifteen inches wide by about twelve inches high.VII.76Mr. 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.VII.77The 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.VII.78Between 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.VII.79He also invariably corrected theoutlineof 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.VII.80Mr. 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.VII.81The 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.VII.82Several additional cuts of the same kind, engraved with no less ability by J. Thompson, were inserted in a subsequent edition.VII.83This painting was afterwards finished by E. Bird, R.A., who also became insane.VII.84Clennell’s wife was a daughter of the late C. Warren, one of the best copper-plate engravers of his time.VII.85Clennell died in the Lunatic Asylum, Feb. 9, 1840, in his fifty-ninth year.VII.86Isaac 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.VII.87This 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 subsequentlytouchedwith Indian ink.VII.88What may be considered the sketches for the principal cuts were supplied by Northcote himself. The following account of the manner in which hecomposedthem 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. Hecompletedthat which Northcote merely suggested. The tail-pieces and letters are all of Mr. Harvey’s own invention and drawing.VII.89Charles 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.VII.90The Salmon, Chub, and group of small fish are given on the preceding page from the actual cuts referred to.VII.91Bewick 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.
VII.1Small 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 alsolittle cuts and figures, 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 ofequi admissorii.
VII.2Some 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.
VII.3Papillon, Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 323.
VII.4“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.
VII.5The 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.
VII.6It is not unlikely that the frequency of such casts has induced many persons to suppose that most of the cuts of this period were “engravedon metal in the manner of wood.”
VII.7Two 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.
VII.8Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. pp. 327, 328.
VII.9This painting, which is wholly in chiaro-scuro, is now in the National Gallery, to which it was presented by the late Sir George Beaumont.
VII.10The 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.
VII.11There 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.”
VII.12I 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.
VII.13Papillon, 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.
VII.14Traité 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.
VII.15The 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.
VII.16Papillon’s account of the Cunio, with an examination of its credibility, will be found in chapter i. pp. 26-39.
VII.17This 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. Thecompositor, as is stated in the same Advertisement, was a young woman.—SeeBibliotheca Parriana, p. 513.
VII.18“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.
VII.19Several 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.
VII.20He 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, butdaredto engrave wood-cuts themselves.
VII.21Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. ii. p. 365.
VII.22The portrait was engraved “in venerationis testimonium,” and presented to Papillon by Nicholas Caron, a bookseller and wood engraver of Besançon. The following complimentary verses are engraved below the portrait:
“Tu vois ici les traits d’un Artiste fameuxDont la savante main enfanta des merveilles;Par ses travaux et par ses veillesIl resuscita l’Art qui le trace à tes yeux.”
“Tu vois ici les traits d’un Artiste fameux
Dont la savante main enfanta des merveilles;
Par ses travaux et par ses veilles
Il resuscita l’Art qui le trace à tes yeux.”
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.”
VII.23From 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.
VII.24In 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.
VII.25The 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.”
VII.26The cut here introduced is the first in theStultifera Navis, or “Ship of Fools,” and is copied from Pyason’s edition of 1509. The following lines accompany it:
“——this is my mynde, this one pleasoure have I,Of bokes to have great plenty and aparayle.I take no wysdome by them; nor yet avayleNor them perceyve not: And then I them despyse.Thus am I a foole and all that serve that guyse.”
“——this is my mynde, this one pleasoure have I,
Of bokes to have great plenty and aparayle.
I take no wysdome by them; nor yet avayle
Nor them perceyve not: And then I them despyse.
Thus am I a foole and all that serve that guyse.”
VII.27Dr. 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.”
VII.28Mr. 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.
VII.29Prettierandprettier.
VII.30Philip.
VII.31“While withBeilbyhe 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.
VII.32Alders—the name of a small plantation above Ovingham, which Bewick had to pass through on his way to Eltringham ferry-boat.
VII.33The Reverend William Turner, of Newcastle, in a letter printed in the Monthly Magazine for June 1801, says that Bewick obtained this premium “during his apprenticeship.” 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.
VII.34Bewick’s mother, Jane Wilson, was a daughter of Thomas Wilson of Ainstable in Cumberland, about five miles north-north-west of Kirk-Oswald.
VII.35Bewick, 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.
VII.36Mr. 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.
VII.37I have not been able to discover the date of the first edition of this work. The third edition is dated 1785.
VII.38“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.
VII.39Humble, Eltringham, and Newton were the names of three of his country acquaintances; Prudhoe, Hall-Yards, and Mickley are places near Ovingham.
VII.40Bewick 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.
VII.41Mr. 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.
VII.42This cut was executed for Marmaduke Tunstall, Esq. of Wycliffe, near Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire.
VII.43The 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.
VII.44A Prospectus containing specimens of the cuts was printed in 1787.
VII.45The first edition consisted of fifteen hundred copies in demy octavo at 8s., and one hundred royal at 12s.The price of the demy copies of theeighthedition, published in 1825, was £1 1s.A proof of the estimation in which the work continued to be held.
VII.46The 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.
VII.47Some account of this work is previously given at page 287.
VII.48This work is noticed at page 407.
VII.49The 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.
VII.50The LancashireBull, of the first edition, by a similar process has been converted into the LancashireOx.
VII.51The 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, astrong bit, 269; Drunken Man making his Dam, 378; and Seals on a large piece of floating ice, 510.
VII.52This account is extracted from a letter written by Bewick, and printed in the Monthly Magazine for November 1805.
VII.53Of this edition, 1,874 copies were printed,—one thousand demy octavo, at 10s.6d.; eight hundred and fifty thin and thick royal, at 13s., and 15s.; and twenty-four imperial at £1 1s.The first edition of the second volume, 1804, consisted of the same number of copies as the first, but the prices were respectively 12s., 15s., 18s.and £1 4s.
VII.54Pinkerton 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.
VII.55These 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.
VII.56“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.
VII.57The 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.”
VII.58The subject of this cut is thus explained in Brockett’s Glossary of North Country Words: “Neddy, Netty, a certain place that will not bear a written explanation; but which isdepicted to the very lifein 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.”
VII.59“Mr. Atkinson must have misunderstood Bewick, as the old man’s name was George, not Matthew, Carr. He was grandfather to Edward Willis, one of Bewick’s pupils, and to George Stephenson, the celebrated engineer. Matthew Carr was a tailor, who lived and died at Righton, in Durham.”—Jno. Jackson.
VII.60The 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 theLionin 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.”
VII.61The fable of the Ship Dog is one of those written by Bewick.
VII.62Mr. 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.”
VII.63“There is a tradition that the two black marks on the opposite sides of the haddock were occasioned by St. Peter’s thumb and fore-finger when he took the piece of money out of the fish’s mouth to give it as a tribute to Cæsar.”
VII.64Bewick’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.
VII.65About 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, afterMr.Beilby’s retirement, still continued the business of copper-plate engraving and printing, and for this purpose always kept presses of his own.
VII.66A small cut of the same subject, though with a different back-ground, occurs as a tail-piece in the Fables, 1818-1823.
VII.67The lastbirdthat 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.
VII.68This 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.”
VII.69When 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.
VII.70The 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.
VII.71This line is adapted from Wordsworth, who, at the commencement of his verses entitled “The Two Thieves, or The Last Stage of Avarice,” thus expresses his high opinion of the talents of Bewick:
“O now that the genius of Bewick were mine,And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne!Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose,For I’d take my last leave both of verse and of prose.”Lyrical Ballads, vol. ii. p. 199. Edition 1805.
“O now that the genius of Bewick were mine,
And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne!
Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose,
For I’d take my last leave both of verse and of prose.”
Lyrical Ballads, vol. ii. p. 199. Edition 1805.
VII.72The cut of the Hermit at his morning devotion was drawn by John Johnson, a cousin of Robert, and also one of Bewick’s pupils.
VII.73Johnson’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 miniaturePaul Potters. It is known to only a few persons that they were drawn by Johnson during his apprenticeship. Most of them were copied on the block by William Harvey, and the rest chiefly by Bewick himself.
VII.74John 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.
VII.75The original cut, including the border, is fifteen inches wide by about twelve inches high.
VII.76Mr. 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.
VII.77The 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.
VII.78Between 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.
VII.79He also invariably corrected theoutlineof 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.
VII.80Mr. 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.
VII.81The 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.
VII.82Several additional cuts of the same kind, engraved with no less ability by J. Thompson, were inserted in a subsequent edition.
VII.83This painting was afterwards finished by E. Bird, R.A., who also became insane.
VII.84Clennell’s wife was a daughter of the late C. Warren, one of the best copper-plate engravers of his time.
VII.85Clennell died in the Lunatic Asylum, Feb. 9, 1840, in his fifty-ninth year.
VII.86Isaac 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.
VII.87This 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 subsequentlytouchedwith Indian ink.
VII.88What may be considered the sketches for the principal cuts were supplied by Northcote himself. The following account of the manner in which hecomposedthem 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. Hecompletedthat which Northcote merely suggested. The tail-pieces and letters are all of Mr. Harvey’s own invention and drawing.
VII.89Charles 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.
VII.90The Salmon, Chub, and group of small fish are given on the preceding page from the actual cuts referred to.
VII.91Bewick 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.