CHAPTER VII.

REVIVAL OF WOOD ENGRAVING.

English Wood-Cuts in 1712 -- Howel’s Medulla Historiæ Anglicanæ --

Maittaire’s Classics 1713 -- E. Kirkall -- His Chiaro-Scuros -- Cuts

in Croxall’s Æsop, 1722 -- J. B. Jackson -- Chiaro-Scuros Engraved

by Him at Venice, 1738-1742 -- French Wood Engravers, 1710-1768;

J. M. Papillon, M. Le Sueur, and P. S. Fournier -- English

Wood-Cuts, 1760-1772 -- Cuts in Sir John Hawkins’s History of Music,

1776 -- Thomas Bewick -- His First Wood-Cuts, in Hutton’s

Mensuration, 1768-1770 -- Cuts by Him in a Hieroglyphic Bible -- In

Fables, 1779-1784 -- His Cut of the Chillingham Bull -- His

Quadrupeds, British Birds, and Fables -- John Bewick -- Cuts by Him

in Emblems of Mortality, and Other Books -- Poems by Goldsmith and

Parnell -- Somerviles’s Chase -- Robert Johnson, Designer of Several

of the Tail-Pieces in Bewick’s Works -- Charlton Nesbit -- Luke

Clennell -- William Harvey -- Robert Branston -- John Thompson, and

Others.

Although wood engraving had fallen into almost utter neglect by the end

of the seventeenth century, and continued in a languishing state for

many years afterward, yet the art was never lost, as some persons have

stated; for both in England and in France a regular succession of wood

engravers can be traced from 1700 to the time of Thomas Bewick. The cuts

which appear in books printed in Germany, Holland, and Italy during the

same period, though of very inferior execution, sufficiently prove that

the art continued to be practised in those countries.

The first English book of this period which requires notice is an

edition of Howel’s Medulla Historiæ Anglicanæ, octavo, printed at London

in 1712.[VII-1] There are upwards of sixty wood-cuts in this work, and

the manner in which they are executed sufficiently indicates that the

engraver must have either been self-taught or the pupil of a master who

did not understand the art. The blocks have, for the most part, been

engraved in the manner of copper-plates; most of the lines, which a

regular wood engraver would have left in relief, are cut in _intaglio_,

and hence in the impression they appear white where they ought to be

black. The bookseller, in an address to the reader, thus proceeds to

show the advantages of those cuts, and to answer any objection that

might be urged against them on account of their being engraved on wood.

“The cuts added in this edition are intended more for use than show. The

utility consists in these two particulars. 1. To make the better

impression on the memory. 2. To show more readily when the notable

passages in our history were transacted; which, without the knowledge of

the names of the persons, are not to be found out, by even the best

indexes. As for example: In what reign was it that a rebellious rout,

headed by a vile fellow, made great ravage, and appearing in the King’s

presence with insolence, their captain was stabbed upon the spot by the

Lord-Mayor? Here, without knowing the names of some of the parties,

which a world of people are ignorant of, the story is not to be found by

an index; but by the help of the cut, which catches the eye, is soon

discovered. We all have heard of the piety of one of our queens who

sucked the poison out of her husband’s wound, but very few remember

which of them it was, which the cut presently shows. The same is to be

said of all the rest, since we have chosen only such things as are

NOTABILIA in the history to describe in our sculptures.--And if it be

objected that the graving is in wood, and not in copper, which would be

more beautiful; we answer, that such would be much more expensive too.

And we were willing to save the buyer’s purse; especially since even the

best engraving would not better serve the purposes above-said.”

[Footnote VII-1: Small wood-cuts appear to have been frequently

used about this time in newspapers, for what the Americans call a

“caption” to advertisements. “The great art in writing

advertisements is the finding out a proper method to catch the

reader’s eye, without which many a good thing may pass over

unobserved, or be lost among commissions of bankrupts. Asterisks

and hands were formerly of great use for this purpose. Of late

years the N.B. has been much in fashion, as also _little 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 of _equi admissorii_.]

Though no mark is to be found on any of those cuts, I am inclined to

think that they were executed by Edward Kirkall, whose name appears as

the engraver of the copper-plate frontispiece to the book. The accounts

which we have of Kirkall are extremely unsatisfactory. Strutt says that

he was born at Sheffield in 1695; and that, visiting London in search of

improvement, he was for some time employed in graving arms, stamps, and

ornaments for books. It is, however, likely that he was born previous to

1695; for the frontispiece to Howel’s Medulla is dated 1712, when, if

Strutt be correct, Kirkall would be only seventeen. That he engraved on

wood, as well as on copper, is unquestionable; and I am inclined to

think that he either occasionally engraved small ornaments and

head-pieces on type-metal for the use of printers, or that casts in this

kind of metal were taken from some of his small cuts.[VII-2]

[Footnote VII-2: Some of the cuts in an edition of Dryden’s plays,

6 vols. 12mo. published by Tonson and Watts in 1717, have

evidently been either engraved on some kind of soft metal or been

casts from a wood block. In the corner of such cuts, the marks of

the pins, which have fastened the engraved metal-plate to a piece

of wood below, are quite apparent.]

The head-pieces and ornaments in Maittaire’s Latin Classics, duodecimo,

published by Tonson and Watts, 1713, were probably engraved on wood by

Kirkall, as his initials, E. K., are to be found on one of the

tail-pieces. Papillon speaks rather favourably of those small cuts,

though he objects to the uniformity of the tint and the want of

precision in the more delicate parts of the figures, such as the faces

and hands. He notices the tail-piece with the mark E. K. as one of the

best executed; and he suspects that these letters were intended for the

name of an English painter--called _Ekwits_, to the best of his

recollection,--who “taught the arts of painting and of engraving on wood

to J. B. Jackson, so well known to the printers of Paris about 1730 from

his having supplied them with so large a stock of indifferent

cuts.”[VII-3]

[Footnote VII-3: Papillon, Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom.

i. p. 323.]

The cuts in Croxall’s edition of Æsop’s Fables, first published by

J. and R. Tonson and J. Watts, in 1722, were, in all probability,

executed by the same person who engraved the head-pieces and other

ornaments in Maittaire’s Latin Classics, printed for the same publishers

about nine years before; and there is reason to believe that this

person, as has been previously observed, was E. Kirkall. Bewick, in the

introduction prefixed to his “Fables of Æsop and others,” first printed

in 1818, says that the cuts in Croxall’s edition were “on metal, in the

manner of wood.” He, however, gives no reason for this opinion, and I

very much question its correctness. After a careful inspection I have

not been able to discover any peculiar mark which should induce me to

suppose that they had been engraved on metal; and without some such mark

indicating that the engraved surface had been fastened to the block to

raise it to the height of the type, I consider it impossible for any

person to decide merely from the appearance of the impressions that

those cuts were printed from a metallic surface. The difference, in

point of impression, between a wood-cut and an engraving on type-metal

in the same manner, or a cast in type-metal from a wood-cut, is not to

be distinguished. A wood engraver of the present day, when casts from

wood-cuts are so frequently used instead of the original engraved block,

decides that a certain impression has been from a cast, not in

consequence of any peculiarity in its appearance denoting that it is

printed from a metallic surface, but from certain marks--little flaws in

the lines and minute “picks”--which he knows are characteristic of a

“cast.” When a cast, however, has been well taken, and afterwards

carefully cleared out with the graver, it is frequently impossible to

decide that the impression has been taken from it, unless the examiner

have also before him an impression from the original block with which it

may be compared; and even then, a person not very well acquainted with

the practice of wood engraving and the method of taking casts from

engraved wood-blocks, will be extremely liable to decide erroneously.

Though it is by no means improbable that a person like Kirkall, who had

been accustomed to engrave on copper, might attempt to engrave on

type-metal in the same manner as on wood, and that he might thus execute

a few small head-pieces and flowered ornaments, yet I consider it very

unlikely that he should _continue to prefer metal_ for the purpose of

relief engraving after he had made a few experiments. The advantages of

wood over type-metal are indeed so great, both as regards clearness of

line and facility of execution, that it seems incredible that any person

who had tried both materials should hesitate to give the preference to

wood. If, however, the cuts in Croxall’s Æsop were really engraved on

metal in the manner of wood, they are, as a series, the most

extraordinary specimens of relief engraving for the purpose of printing,

that have ever been executed. When Bewick stated that those cuts were

engraved on metal, I am inclined to think that he founded his opinion

rather on popular report than on close and impartial examination of the

cuts themselves; and it is further to be observed that Thomas Bewick,

with all his merits as a wood engraver, was not without his weaknesses

as a man; he was not unwilling that people should believe that the art

of wood engraving was lost in this country, and that the honour of its

re-discovery, as well as of its subsequent advancement, was due to him.

Though he was no doubt sincere in the opinion which he gave, yet those

who know him are well aware that he would not have felt any pleasure in

calling the attention of his readers to a series of wood-cuts executed

in England upwards of thirty years before he was born, and which are not

much inferior--except as regards the animals--to the cuts of fables

engraved by himself and his brother previous to 1780.[VII-4] The cuts in

Croxall’s Æsop not only display great improvement in the engraver,

supposing him to be the same person that executed the head-pieces and

ornaments in Maittaire’s Latin Classics printed in 1713, but are very

much superior to any cuts contained in works of the same kind printed in

France between 1700 and 1760.[VII-5]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote VII-5: The cuts in two different editions of Æsop’s

Fables, published at Paris,--the one by Charles Le Clerc in 1731,

and the other by J. Barbou in 1758,--are most wretchedly executed.

The mark of Vincent Le Sueur appears on the frontispiece to Le

Clerc’s edition.]

[Illustration: FROM A COPPER-PLATE BY S. LE CLERC.]

[Illustration: FROM A WOOD-CUT IN CROXALL’S ÆSOP.]

Many of the subjects in Croxall are merely reversed copies of engravings

on copper by S. Le Clerc, illustrative of a French edition of Æsop’s

Fables published about 1694. The first of the preceding cuts is a

fac-simile of one of Le Clerc’s engravings; and the second is a copy of

the same subject as it appears in Croxall. The fable to which they both

relate is the Fox and the Goat.

The above cut is by no means one of the best in Croxall: it has not been

selected as a specimen of the manner in which those cuts are executed,

but as an instance of the closeness with which the English wood-cuts

have been copied from the French copper-plates. In several of the cuts

in Bewick’s Fables of Æsop and others, the arrangement and composition

appear to have been suggested by those in Croxall; but in every instance

of this kind the modern artist has made the subject his own by the

superior manner in which it is treated: he restores to the animals their

proper forms, represents them _acting_ their parts as described in the

fable, and frequently introduces an incident or sketch of landscape

which gives to the whole subject a natural character. The following copy

of the Fox and Goat, in the Fables of Æsop and others, 1818-1823, will

serve to show how little the modern artist has borrowed in such

instances from the cuts in Croxall, and how much has been supplied by

himself.

[Illustration]

Between 1722 and 1724, Kirkall published by subscription twelve

chiaro-scuros engraved by himself, chiefly after designs by old Italian

masters. In those chiaro-scuros the outlines and the darker parts of the

figures are printed from copper-plates, and the sepia-coloured tints

afterwards impressed from wood-blocks; though they possess considerable

merit, they are deficient in spirit, and will not bear a comparison with

the chiaro-scuros executed by Ugo da Carpi and other early Italian wood

engravers. Most of them are too smooth, and want the bold outline and

vigorous character which distinguish the old chiaro-scuros: what Kirkall

gained in delicacy and precision by the introduction of mezzotint, he

lost through the inefficient engraving of the wood-blocks. One of the

largest of those chiaro-scuros is a copy of one of Ugo da Carpi’s--Æneas

carrying his father on his shoulders--after a design by Raffaele. In

Walpole’s Catalogue of Engravers, a notice of Kirkall’s “new method of

printing, composed of etching, mezzotinto, and wooden stamps,” concludes

with the following passage: “He performed several prints in this manner,

and did great justice to the drawing and expression of the masters he

imitated. This invention, for one may call it so, had much success, much

applause, no imitators.--I suppose it is too laborious and too tedious.

In an opulent country where there is great facility of getting money, it

is seldom got by merit. Our artists are in too much hurry to gain it, or

deserve it.”

About 1724 Kirkall published seventeen views of shipping, from designs

by W. Vandevelde, which he also called “prints in chiaro-scuro.” They

have, however, no just pretensions to the name as it is usually

understood when applied to prints, for they are merely tinted engravings

worked off in a greenish-blue ink. These so-called chiaro-scuros are

decided failures.

Kirkall engraved, on copper, the plates in Rowe’s translation of Lucan’s

Pharsalia, folio, published by Tonson, 1718; the plates for an edition

of Inigo Jones’s Stonehenge, 1725; and a frontispiece to the works of

Mrs. Eliza Haywood, which is thus alluded to in the Dunciad:

“See in the circle next Eliza placed,

Two babes of love close clinging to her waist;

Fair as before her works she stands confest,

In flowers and pearls by bounteous Kirkall drest.”

A considerable number of rude and tasteless ornaments and head-pieces,

with the mark F. H., engraved on wood, are to be found in English books

printed between 1720 and 1740. Several of them have been cast in

type-metal,[VII-6] as is evident from the marks of the pins, in the

impressions, by which they have been fastened to the blocks; the same

head-piece or ornament is also frequently found in books printed in the

same year by different printers. Some of the best headings and

tail-pieces of this period occur in a volume of “Miscellaneous Poems,

original and translated, by several hands. Published by Mr. Concanen,”

London, printed for J. Peele, octavo, 1724. The subjects are, Apollo

with a lyre; Minerva with a spear and shield; two men sifting corn;

Hercules destroying the hydra; and a man with a large lantern. They are

much superior to any cuts of the same kind with the mark F. H.; and from

the manner in which they are executed, I am inclined to think that they

are the work of the person who engraved the cuts in Croxall’s Æsop. The

following is a fac-simile of one of the best of the cuts that I have

ever seen with the mark F. H. It occurs as a tail-piece at the end of

the preface to “Strephon’s Revenge: A Satire on the Oxford Toasts,”

octavo, London, 1724.[VII-7]

[Footnote VII-6: It is not unlikely that the frequency of such

casts has induced many persons to suppose that most of the cuts of

this period were “_engraved_ on metal in the manner of wood.”]

[Illustration:

LEGENT HÆC NOSTRA NEPOTES.]

John Baptist Jackson, an English wood engraver, was, according to

Papillon, a pupil of the person who engraved the small head-pieces and

ornaments in Maittaire’s Latin Classics, published by Tonson and Watts

in 1713; and as the cuts in Croxall’s Æsop were probably engraved by the

same person, as has been previously observed, it is not unlikely that

Jackson, as his apprentice, might have some share in their execution.

Though these cuts were much superior to any that had appeared in England

for about a hundred years previously, wood engraving seems to have

received but little encouragement. Probably from want of employment in

his own country, Jackson proceeded to Paris, where he remained several

years, chiefly employed in engraving head-pieces and ornaments for the

booksellers. Papillon, who seems to have borne no good-will towards

Jackson, thus speaks of him in the first volume of his “Traité de la

Gravure en Bois.”

[Footnote VII-7: Two cuts, with the same mark, are to be found in

Thoresby’s Vicaria Leodinensis, 8vo. London, 1724; one at the

commencement of the preface, and the other at the end of the

work.]

“J. Jackson, an Englishman, who resided several years in Paris, might

have perfected himself in wood engraving, which he had learnt of an

English painter, as I have previously mentioned, if he had been willing

to follow the advice which it was in my power to give him. Having called

on me, as soon as he arrived in Paris, to ask for work, I for several

months gave him a few things to execute in order to afford him the means

of subsistence. He, however, repaid me with ingratitude; he made a

duplicate of a flowered ornament of my drawing, which he offered, before

delivering to me the block, to the person for whom it was to be

engraved. From the reproaches that I received, on the matter being

discovered, I naturally declined to employ him any longer. He then went

the round of the printing-offices in Paris, and was obliged to engrave

his cuts without order, and to offer them for almost nothing; and many

of the printers, profiting by his distress, supplied themselves amply

with his cuts. He had acquired a certain insipid taste which was not

above the little mosaics on snuff-boxes; and with ornaments of this

kind, after the manner of several other inferior engravers, he

surcharged his works. His mosaics, however delicately engraved, are

always deficient in effect, and display the engraver’s patience rather

than his talent; for the other parts of the cut, consisting of delicate

lines without tints or a gradation of light and shade, want that force

which is necessary to render the whole striking. Such wood engravings,

however deficient in this respect, are yet admired by printers of vulgar

taste, who foolishly pretend that they most resemble copper-plates, and

that they print better than cuts of a picturesque character, and

containing a variety of tints.

“Jackson, being obliged, through destitution, to leave Paris, where he

could get nothing more to do, travelled in France; and afterwards, being

disgusted with his profession, he accompanied a painter to Rome, from

whence he went to Venice, where, as I am informed, he married, and

subsequently returned to England, his native country.”[VII-8]

[Footnote VII-8: Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. pp. 327,

328.]

Though Papillon speaks disparagingly of Jackson, the latter was at least

as good an engraver as himself. Jackson appears to have visited Paris

not later than 1726, for Papillon mentions a vignette and a large letter

engraved by him in that year for a Latin and French dictionary, printed

in 1727 by the brothers Barbou; and it is likely that he remained there

till about 1731. In an Italian translation of the Lives of the Twelve

Cæsars, printed there in quarto 1738, there is a large ornamental

title-page of his engraving; and in the same year he engraved a

chiaro-scuro of Christ taken down from the cross, from a painting by

Rembrandt,[VII-9] in the possession of Joseph Smith, Esq. the British

consul at Venice, a well-known collector of pictures and other works of

art. Between 1738 and 1742, when residing at Venice, he also engraved

twenty-seven large chiaro-scuros,--chiefly after pictures by Titian,

G. Bassano, Tintoret, and P. Veronese,--which were published in a large

folio volume in the latter year. They are very unequal in point of

merit; some of them appearing harsh and crude, and others flat and

spiritless, when compared with similar productions of the old Italian

wood engravers. One of the best is the Martyrdom of St. Peter

Dominicanus, after Titian, with the date 1739; the manner in which the

foliage of the trees is represented is particularly good. On his return

to England he seems to have totally abandoned the practice of wood

engraving in the ordinary manner for the purpose of illustrating or

ornamenting books; for I have not been able to discover any English

wood-cut of the period that either contains his mark, or seems, from its

comparative excellence, to have been of his engraving. Finding no demand

in this country for wood-cuts, he appears to have tried to render his

knowledge of engraving in chiaro-scuro available for the purpose of

printing paper-hangings. In an “Essay on the Invention of Engraving and

Printing in Chiaro Oscuro,”[VII-10] published in his name in 1754, we

learn that he was then engaged in a manufacture of this kind at

Battersea. The account given in this essay of the origin and progress of

chiaro-scuro engraving is frequently incorrect; and from several of the

statements which it contains, it would seem that the writer was very

imperfectly acquainted with the works of his predecessors and

contemporaries in the same department of wood engraving. From the

following passage, which is to be found in the fifth page, it is evident

that the writer was either ignorant of what had been done in the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and even in his own age, or that he

was wishful to enhance the merit of Mr. Jackson’s process by concealing

what had recently been done in the same manner by others. “After having

said all this, it may seem highly improper to give to Mr. Jackson the

merit of inventing this art; but let me be permitted to say, that an art

recovered is less little than an art invented. The works of the former

artists remain indeed; but the manner in which they were done is

entirely lost: the inventing then the manner is really due to this

latter undertaker, since no writings, or other remains, are to be found

by which the method of former artists can be discovered, or in what

manner they executed their works; nor, in truth, has the Italian method

since the beginning of the sixteenth century been attempted by any one

except Mr. Jackson.” What is here called the “Italian method,” that is,

the method of executing chiaro-scuros entirely on wood, was practised in

France at the end of the seventeenth century: and Nicholas Le Sueur had

engraved several cuts in this manner about 1730, the very time when

Jackson was living in Paris. The principles of the art had also been

applied in France to the execution of paper-hangings upwards of fifty

years before Jackson attempted to establish the same kind of manufacture

in England. Not a word is said of the chiaro-scuros of Kirkall,[VII-11]

from whom it is likely that Jackson first acquired his knowledge of

chiaro-scuro engraving: with the exception of the outlines and some

other parts in these chiaro-scuros being executed in mezzotint, the

printing of the rest from wood-blocks is precisely the same as in the

Italian method.

[Footnote VII-9: This painting, which is wholly in chiaro-scuro,

is now in the National Gallery, to which it was presented by the

late Sir George Beaumont.]

[Footnote VII-10: The title at length is as follows: “An Essay on

the Invention of Engraving and Printing in Chiaro Oscuro, as

practised by Albert Durer, Hugo di Carpi, &c., and the Application

of it to the making Paper Hangings of taste, duration, and

elegance, by Mr. Jackson of Battersea. Illustrated with Prints in

proper colours.” 4to. London, 1754.]

[Footnote VII-11: There can be no doubt that the mention of

Kirkall’s name is purposely avoided. The “attempts” of Count

Caylus, who executed several chiaro-scuros by means of

copper-plates and wood-blocks subsequent to Kirkall, are noticed;

but the name of Nicholas Le Sueur, who assisted the Count and

engraved the wood-blocks, is never mentioned. It is also stated in

the Essay, page 6, that some of the subjects begun by Count Caylus

were finished by Mr. Jackson, and “approved by the lovers and

promoters of that art in Paris.”]

The Essay contains eight prints illustrative of Mr. Jackson’s method;

four are chiaro-scuros, and four are printed in “proper colours,” as is

expressed in the title, in imitation of drawings. They are very poorly

executed, and are very much inferior to the chiaro-scuros engraved by

Jackson when residing at Venice. The prints in “proper colours” are

egregious failures. The following notices respecting Mr. Jackson are

extracted from the Essay in question.

“Certainly Mr. Jackson, the person of whom we speak, has not spent less

time and pains, applied less assiduity, or travelled to fewer distant

countries in search of perfecting his art, than other men; having passed

twenty years in France and Italy to complete himself in drawing after

the best masters in the best schools, and to see what antiquity had most

worthy the attention of a student in his particular pursuits. After all

this time spent in perfecting himself in his discoveries, like a true

lover of his native country, he is returned with a design to communicate

all the means which his endeavours can contribute to enrich the land

where he drew his first breath, by adding to its commerce, and employing

its inhabitants; and yet, like a citizen of it, he would willingly enjoy

some little share of those advantages before he leaves this world, which

he must leave behind him to his countrymen when he shall be no more.”

“During his residence at Venice, where he made himself perfect in the

art which he professes, he finished many works well known to the

nobility and gentry who travelled to that city whilst he lived in

it.--Mr. Frederick, Mr. Lethuillier, and Mr. Smith, the English consul

at Venice, encouraged Mr. Jackson to undertake to engrave in

chiaro-oscuro, blocks after the most capital pictures of Titian,

Tintoret, Giacomo Bassano, and Paul Veronese, which are to be found in

Venice, and to this end procured him a subscription. In this work may be

seen what engraving on wood will effectuate, and how truly the spirit

and genius of every one of those celebrated masters are preserved in the

prints.

“During his executing this work he was honoured with the encouragement

of the Right Honourable the Marquis of Hartington, Sir Roger Newdigate,

Sir Bouchier Wrey, and other English gentlemen on their travels at

Venice, who saw Mr. Jackson drawing on the blocks for the print after

the famous picture of the Crucifixion painted by Tintoret in the albergo

of St. Roche. Those prints may now be seen at his house at

Battersea.--Not content with having brought his works in chiaro-oscuro

to such perfection, he attempted to print landscapes in all their

original colours; not only to give to the world all the outline light

and shade, which is to be found in the paintings of the best masters,

but in a great degree their very manner and taste of colouring. With

this intent he published six landscapes,[VII-12] which are his first

attempt in this nature, in imitation of painting in _aquarillo_ or

water-colours; which work was taken notice of by the Earl of Holderness,

then ambassador extraordinary to the republic of Venice; and his

excellency was pleased to permit the dedication of those prints to him,

and to encourage this new attempt of printing pictures with a very

particular and very favourable regard, and to express his approbation of

the merit of the inventor.”

[Footnote VII-12: I have only seen one of these landscapes; and

from it I form no very high opinion of the others. It is scarcely

superior in point of execution to the prints in “proper colours”

contained in the Essay.]

John Michael Papillon, one of the best French wood engravers of his age,

was born in 1698. His grandfather and his father, as has been previously

observed, were both wood engravers. In 1706, when only eight years old,

he secretly made his first essay in wood engraving; and when only nine,

his father, who had become aware of his amusing himself in this manner,

gave him a large block to engrave, which he appears to have executed to

his father’s satisfaction, though he had previously received no

instructions in the art.[VII-13] The block was intended for printing

paper-hangings, the manufacture of which was his father’s principal

business. Though until the time of his father’s death, which happened in

1723, Papillon appears to have been chiefly employed in such works, and

in hanging the papers which he had previously engraved, he yet executed

several vignettes and ornaments for the booksellers, and sedulously

endeavoured to improve himself in this higher department of his

business.

[Footnote VII-13: Papillon, in the Supplement to his “Traité de la

Gravure en Bois,” page 6, gives a small cut--a copy of a figure in

a copper-plate by Callot--engraved by himself when nine years old.

If the cut be genuine, the engraver had improved but little as he

grew older.]

Shortly after the death of his father he married; and, having given up

the business of engraving paper-hangings, he laboured so hard to perfect

himself in the art of designing and engraving vignettes and ornaments

for books, that his head became affected; and he sometimes displayed

such absence of mind that his wife became alarmed, fancying that “he no

longer loved her.” On his assuring her that his behaviour was the result

of his anxiety to improve himself in drawing and engraving on wood, and

to write something about the art, she encouraged him in his purpose, and

aided him with her advice, for, as she was the daughter of a clever man,

M. Chaveau, a sculptor, and had herself made many pretty drawings on

fans, she had some knowledge of design. Papillon’s fits of absence,

however, though they may have been proximately induced by close

application and anxiety about his success in the line to which he

intended to apply himself in future, appear to have originated in a

tendency to insanity, which at a later period displayed itself in a more

decided manner. In 1759, in consequence of a determination of blood to

the head, as he says, through excessive joy at seeing his only daughter,

who had lived from the age of four years with her uncle, combined with a

recollection of his former sorrows, his mind became so much disordered

that it was necessary to send him to an hospital, where, through

repeated bleedings and other remedies, he seems to have speedily

recovered. He mentions that in the same year, four other engravers were

attacked by the same malady, and that only one of them regained his

senses.[VII-14]

[Footnote VII-14: Traité de la Gravure en Bois, Supplement, tom.

iii. p. 39. In the first volume, page 335, he alludes to the

disorder as “un accident et une fatalité commune à plusieurs

graveurs, aussi bien que moi.” Has the practice of engraving on

wood or on copper a tendency to induce insanity? Three

distinguished engravers, all from the same town, have in recent

times lost their reason; and several others, from various parts of

the country, have been afflicted with the same distressing malady.

These facts deserve the consideration of parents who design to

send their sons as pupils to engravers. When there is the least

reason to suspect a hereditary taint of insanity in the

constitution of the youth, it perhaps would be safest to put him

to some other business or profession where close attention to

minute objects is less required.]

Papillon’s endeavours to improve himself were not unsuccessful; the cuts

which he engraved about 1724, though mostly small, possess considerable

merit; they are not only designed with much more feeling than the

generality of those executed by other French engravers of the period,

but are also much more effective, displaying a variety of tint and a

contrast of light and shade which are not to be found in the works of

his contemporaries. In 1726, in order to divert his anxiety and to bring

his cuts into notice, he projected _Le petit Almanach de Paris_, which

subsequently was generally known as “Le Papillon.” The first that he

published was for the year 1727; and the wood-cuts which it contained

equally attracted the attention of the public and of connoisseurs.

Monsieur Colombat, the editor of the Court Calendar, spoke highly of the

cut for the mouth of January; the cross-hatchings, he said, were

executed in the first style of wood engraving, and he kindly predicted

to Papillon that he would one day excel in his art. From this time he

seems to have no longer had any doubt of his own abilities, but, on the

contrary, to have entertained a very high opinion of them. He appears to

have considered wood engraving as the highest of all the graphic arts,

and himself as the greatest of all its professors, either ancient or

modern.

From this, to him, memorable epoch,--the publication of “Le petit

Almanach de Paris,” with cuts by PAPILLON,--he appears to have been

seldom without employment, for in the Supplement to the “Traité de la

Gravure en Bois,” he mentions that in 1768, the “Collection of the Works

of the Papillons,” presented by him to the Royal Library, contained

upwards of _five thousand_ pieces of his own engraving. This “Recueil

des Papillons,” which he seems to have considered as a family monument

“ære perennius,” is perpetually referred to in the course of his work.

It consisted of four large folio volumes containing specimens of wood

engravings executed by the different members of the Papillon family for

three generations--his grandfather, his father, his uncle, his brother,

and himself.

Papillon was employed not only by the booksellers of his own country,

but also by those of Holland. A book, entitled “Historische School en

Huis-Bybel,” printed at Amsterdam in 1743, contains two hundred and

seventeen cuts, all of which appear to have been either engraved by

Papillon himself, or under his superintendence. His name appears on

several of them, and they are all engraved in the same style. From a

passage in the dedication, it seems likely that they had appeared in a

similar work printed at the same place a few years previously. They are

generally executed in a coarser manner than those contained in

Papillon’s own work, but the style of engraving and general effect are

the same. The cut on the next page is a copy of the first, which is one

of the best in the work. To the left is Papillon’s name, engraved, as

was customary with him, in very small letters, with the date, 1734.

[Illustration]

Papillon’s History of Wood Engraving, published in 1766, in two octavo

volumes, with a Supplement,[VII-15] under the title of “Traité

Historique et Pratique de la Gravure en Bois,” is said to have been

projected, and partly written, upwards of thirty years before it was

given to the public. Shortly after his being admitted a member of the

Society of Arts, in 1733, he read, at one of the meetings, a paper on

the history and practice of wood engraving; and in 1735 the Society

signified their approbation that a work written by him on the subject

should be printed. It appears that the first volume of such a work was

actually printed between 1736 and 1738, but never published. He does not

explain why the work was not proceeded with at that time; and it would

be useless to speculate on the possible causes of the interruption. He

mentions that a copy of this volume was preserved in the Royal Library;

and he charges Fournier the younger, who between 1758 and 1761 published

three tracts on the invention of wood engraving and printing, with

having availed himself of a portion of the historical information

contained in this volume. The public, however, according to his own

statement, gained by the delay; as he grew older he gained more

knowledge of the history of the art, and “invented” several important

improvements in his practice, all of which are embodied in his later

work. In 1758 he also discovered the memoranda which he had made at

Monsieur De Greder’s, in 1719 or 1720, relative to the interesting

twins, Alexander Alberic Cunio and his sister Isabella, who, about 1284,

between the fourteenth and sixteenth years of their age, executed a

series of wood engravings illustrative of the history of Alexander the

Great.[VII-16] However the reader may be delighted or amused by the

romantic narrative of the Cunio, Papillon’s reputation as the historian

of his art would most likely have stood a _little_ higher had he never

discovered those memoranda. They have very much the character of

ill-contrived forgeries; and even supposing that he believed them, and

printed them in good faith, his judgment must be sacrificed to save his

honesty.

[Footnote VII-15: The Supplement, or “Tome troisième,” as it is

also called, though dated 1766, was not printed until 1768, as is

evident from a “Discours Nuptial,” at page 97, pronounced on 13th

June 1768. Two of the cuts also contain the date 1768.]

[Footnote VII-16: Papillon’s account of the Cunio, with an

examination of its credibility, will be found in chapter i. pp.

26-39.]

The first volume of Papillon’s work contains the history of the art; it

is divided into two parts, the first treating of wood engraving for the

purpose of printing in the usual manner from a single block, and the

second treating of chiaro-scuro. He does not trace the progress of the

art by pointing out the improvements introduced at different periods; he

enumerates all the principal cuts that he had seen, without reference to

their execution as compared with those of an earlier date; and, from his

desire to enhance the importance of his art, he claims almost every

eminent painter whose name or mark is to be found on a cut, as a wood

engraver. He is in this respect so extremely credulous as to assert that

Mary de Medici, Queen of Henry IV. of France, had occasionally amused

herself with engraving on wood; and in order to place the fact beyond

doubt he refers to a cut representing the bust of a female, with the

following inscription: “MARIA MEDICI. F. M.D.LXXXVII.” “The engraving,”

he observes, with his usual _bonhomie_, “is rather better than what

might be reasonably expected from a person of such quality; it contains

many cross-hatchings, somewhat unequal indeed, and occasionally

imperfect, but, notwithstanding, sufficiently well engraved to show that

she had executed several wood-cuts before she had attempted this. I know

more than one wood engraver--or at least calling himself such--who is

incapable of doing the like.” In 1587, the date of this cut, Mary de

Medici was only fourteen years old; and since its execution, according

to Papillon, shows that she was then no novice in the art, she must have

acquired her practical knowledge of wood engraving at rather an early

age,--at least for a princess. Papillon never seems to have considered

that F is the first letter of “FILIA” as well as of “FECIT,” nor to have

suspected that the cut was simply a portrait of Mary de Medici, and not

a specimen of her engraving.

From the following passage in the preface, he seems to have been aware

that his including the names of many eminent painters in his list of

wood engravers would be objected to. “Some persons, who entertain a

preconceived opinion that many painters whom I mention have not engraved

on wood, may perhaps dispute the works which I ascribe to them. Of such

persons I have to request that they will not condemn me before they have

acquainted themselves with my researches and examined my proofs, and

that they will judge of them without prejudice or partiality.” The

“researches” to which he alludes, appear to have consisted in searching

out the names and marks of eminent painters in old wood-cuts, and his

“proofs” are of the same kind as that which he alleges in support of his

assertion that Mary de Medici had engraved on wood,--a fact which, as he

remarks, “was unknown to Rubens.” The historical portion of Papillon’s

work is indeed little more than a confused catalogue of all the

wood-cuts which had come under his observation; it abounds in errors,

and almost every page affords an instance of his credulity.

In the second volume, which is occupied with details relative to the

practice of the art, Papillon gives his instructions and enumerates his

“inventions” in a style of complacent self-conceit. The most trifling

remarks are accompanied by a reference to the “Recueil des Papillons;”

and the most obvious means of effecting certain objects,--such means as

had been regularly adopted by wood engravers for upwards of two hundred

years previously, and such as in succeeding times have suggested

themselves to persons who never received any instructions in the

art,--are spoken of as important discoveries, and credit taken for them

accordingly. One of his fancied discoveries is that of lowering the

surface of a block towards the edges in order that the engraved lines in

those parts may be less subject to the action of the _plattin_ in

printing, and consequently lighter in the impression. The Lyons Dance of

Death, 1538, affords several instances of blocks lowered in this manner,

not only towards the edges, but also in the middle of the cut, whenever

it was necessary that certain delicately engraved lines should be

lightly printed, and thus have the appearance of gradually diminishing

till their extremities should scarcely be distinguishable from the paper

on which they are impressed. Numerous instances of this practice are

frequent in wood-cuts executed from 1540 to the decline of the art in

the seventeenth century. Lowering was also practised by the engraver of

the cuts in Croxall’s Æsop; by Thomas Bewick, who acquired a knowledge

of wood engraving without a master; and by the self-taught artist who

executed the cuts in Alexander’s Expedition down the Hydaspes, a poem by

Dr. Thomas Beddoes, printed in 1792, but never published.[VII-17] As the

same practice has recently been claimed as an “invention,” it would seem

that some wood engravers are either apt to ascribe much importance to

little things, or are singularly ignorant of what has been done by their

predecessors. Such an “invention,” though unquestionably useful, surely

does not require any particular ingenuity for its discovery; such

“discoveries” every man makes for himself as soon as he feels the want

of that which the so-called invention will supply. The man who pares the

cork of a quart bottle in order to make it fit a smaller one is, with

equal justice, entitled to the name of an inventor, provided he was not

aware of the thing having been done before: such an “adaptation of means

to the end” cannot, however, be considered as an effort of genius

deserving of public commendation.

[Footnote VII-17: This poem was privately printed and never

published. It was written expressly in imitation of Dr. Darwin,

some of whose friends had contended that his style was inimitable,

but were deceived into a belief that this poem was written by him,

until the real author avowed himself. In the Advertisement

prefixed to it Dr. Beddoes speaks thus of the engraver of the

cuts: “The engravings in the following pages will be praised or

excused when it is known that they are the performance of an

uneducated and uninstructed artist, if such an application be not

a profanation of the term, in a remote village. All the assistance

he received was from the example of Mr. Bewick’s most masterly

engravings on wood.” The name of this self-taught artist was

Edward Dyas, who was parish-clerk at Madeley, Shropshire, where

the book was printed. The _compositor_, as is stated in the same

Advertisement, was a young woman.--See _Bibliotheca Parriana_,

p. 513.]

In Papillon’s time it was not customary with French engravers on wood to

have the subject perfectly drawn on the block, with all the lines and

hatchings pencilled in, and the _effect_ and the different tints

indicated either in pencil or in Indian ink, as is the usual practice in

the present day. The design was first drawn on paper; from this, by

means of tracing paper, the engraver made an outline copy on the block;

and, without pencilling in all the lines or washing in the tints, he

proceeded to “translate” the original, to which he constantly referred

in the progress of his work, in the same manner as a copper-plate

engraver does to the drawing or painting before him. Papillon perceived

the disadvantages which resulted from this mode of proceeding; and

though he still continued to make his first drawing on paper, he copied

it more carefully and distinctly on the block than was usual with his

contemporaries. He was thus enabled to proceed with greater certainty in

his engraving; what he had to effect was immediately before him, and it

was no longer necessary to refer so frequently to the original. To the

circumstance of the drawings being perfectly made on the block, Papillon

ascribes in a great measure the excellence of the old wood engravings of

the time of Durer and Holbein.

Papillon, although always inclined to magnify little things connected

with wood engraving, and to take great credit to himself for trifling

“inventions,” was yet thoroughly acquainted with the practice of his

art. The mode of thickening the lines in certain parts of a cut, after

it has been engraved, by scraping them down, was frequently practised by

him, and he explains the manner of proceeding, and gives a cut of the

tools required in the operation.[VII-18] As Papillon, previous to the

publication of his book, had contributed several papers on the subject

of wood engraving to the famed Encyclopédie, he avails himself of the

second volume of the Traité to propose several additions and corrections

to those articles. The following definition proposed to be inserted in

the Encyclopédie, after the article GRATUIT, will afford some idea of

the manner in which he is accustomed to speak of his “inventions.” The

term which he explains is “GRATTURE ou GRATTAGE,” literally, “SCRAPING,”

the practice just alluded to. “This is, according to the new manner of

engraving on wood, the operation of skilfully and carefully scraping

down parts in an engraved block which are not sufficiently dark, in

order to give them, as may be required, greater strength, and to render

the shades more effective. This admirable plan, utterly unknown before,

was accidentally discovered in 1731 by M. Papillon, by whom the art of

wood engraving is advanced to a state tending to perfection, and

approaching more and more towards the beauty of engraving on copper.”

The tools used by Papillon to scrape down the lines of an engraved

block, and thus render them thicker and, consequently, the impression

darker, differ considerably in shape from those used for the same

purpose by modern wood engravers in England. This tool now principally

used is something like a copper-plate engraver’s burnisher, and

occasionally a fine and sharp file is employed.

[Footnote 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.]

In Papillon’s time the French wood engravers appear to have held the

graver in the manner of a pen, and in forming a line to have cut

_towards them_ as in forming a down-stroke in writing, and to have

engraved on the longitudinal, and not the cross section of the wood.

Modern English wood engravers, having the rounded handle of the graver

supported against the hollow of the hand, and directing the blade by

means of the fore-finger and thumb, cut the line _from them_; and always

engrave on the cross section of the wood. Papillon mentions box,

pear-tree, apple-tree, and the wood of the service-tree, as the best for

the purposes of engraving: box was generally used for the smaller and

finer cuts intended for the illustration or ornament of books; the

larger cuts, in which delicacy was not required, were mostly engraved on

pear-tree wood. Apple-tree wood was principally used by the wood

engravers of Normandy. Next to box, Papillon prefers the wood of the

service-tree. The box brought from Turkey, though of larger size, he

considers inferior to that of Provence, Italy, or Spain.

Although Papillon’s _modus operandi_ differs considerably from that of

English wood engravers of the present day, I am not aware of any

supposed discovery in the modern practice of the art that was not known

to him. The methods of lowering a block in certain parts before drawing

the subject on it, and of thickening the lines, and thus getting more

_colour_, by scraping the surface of the cut when engraved, were, as has

been observed, known to him; he occasionally introduced cross-hatchings

in his cuts;[VII-19] and in one of his chapters he gives instructions

how to insert a _plug_ in a block, in order to replace a part which had

either been spoiled in the course of engraving or subsequently damaged.

One of the improvements which he suggested, but did not put in practice,

was a plan for engraving the same subject on two, three, or four blocks,

in order to obtain cross-hatchings and a variety of tints with less

trouble than if the subject were entirely engraved on the same block.

Such cuts were not to be printed as chiaro-scuros, but in the usual

manner, with printer’s ink. It is worthy of observation that Bewick in

the latter part of his life had formed a similar opinion of the

advantages of engraving a subject on two or more blocks, and thus

obtaining with comparative ease such cross-lines and varied tints as

could only be executed with great difficulty on a single block. He,

however, proceeded further than Papillon, for he began to engrave a

large cut which he intended to finish in this manner; and he was so

satisfied that the experiment would be successful, that when the

pressman handed to him a proof of the first block, he exclaimed, “I wish

I was but twenty years younger!”

[Footnote VII-19: Several cuts in which cross-hatching is

introduced occur in the “Traité de la Gravure en Bois;” and the

author refers to several others in the “Recueil des Papillons” as

displaying the same kind of work. He considers the execution of

such hatchings as the test of excellence in wood engraving; “for,”

he observes, “when a person has learnt to execute them he may

boast of having mastered one of the most difficult parts of the

art, and may justly assume the name of a wood engraver.”--Tom. ii.

p. 90.]

Papillon, in his account of the practice of the art, explains the manner

of engraving and printing chiaro-scuros; and in illustration of the

process he gives a cut executed in this style, together with separate

impressions from each of the four blocks from which it is printed. There

is also another cut of the same kind prefixed to the second part of the

first volume, containing the history of engraving in chiaro-scuro.

Scarcely anything connected with the practice of wood engraving appears

to have escaped his notice. He mentions the effect of the breath in cold

weather as rendering the block damp and the drawing less distinct; and

he gives in one of his cuts the figure of a “mentonnière,”--that is to

say, a piece of quilted linen, like the pad used by women to keep their

bonnets cocked up,--which, being placed before the mouth and nostrils,

and kept in its place by strings tied behind the head, screened the

block from the direct action of the engraver’s breath.

He frequently complains of the careless manner in which wood-cuts were

printed;[VII-20] but from the following passage we learn that the

inferiority of the printed cuts when compared with the engraver’s proofs

did not always proceed from the negligence of the printer. “Some wood

engravers have the art of fabricating proofs of their cuts much more

excellent and delicate than they fairly ought to be; and the following

is the manner in which they contrive to obtain tolerably decent proofs

from very indifferent engravings. They first take two or three

impressions, and then, to obtain one to their liking, and with which

they may deceive their employers, they only ink the block on those

places which ought to be dark, leaving the distances and lighter parts

without any ink, except what remained after taking the previous

impressions. The proof which they now obtain appears extremely delicate

in those parts which were not properly inked; but when they come to be

printed in a page with type, the impression is quite different from the

proof which the engraver delivers with the blocks; there is no variety

of tint, all is hard, and the distance is sometimes darker than objects

in the fore-ground. I run no great risk in saying that all the three _Le

Sueurs_ have been accustomed to practise this deception.”[VII-21]

[Footnote VII-20: He complains in another part of the work that

many printers, both compositors and pressmen, by pretending to

engrave on wood, had brought the art into disrepute. They not only

spoiled the work of regular engravers, but _dared_ to engrave

wood-cuts themselves.]

[Footnote VII-21: Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. ii. p. 365.]

All the cuts in Papillon’s work, except the portrait prefixed to the

first volume,[VII-22] are his own engraving, and, for the most part,

from his own designs. The most of the blocks were lent to the author by

the different persons for whom he had engraved them long previous to the

appearance of his work.[VII-23] They are introduced as ornaments at the

beginning and end of the chapters; but though they may enable the reader

to judge of Papillon’s abilities as a designer and engraver on wood,

beyond this they do not in the least illustrate the progress of the art.

The execution of some of the best is extremely neat; and almost all of

them display an effect--a contrast of black and white--which is not to

be found in any other wood-cuts of the period. A few of the designs

possess considerable merit, but in by far the greater number simplicity

and truth are sacrificed to ornament and French taste. Whatever may be

Papillon’s faults as a historian of the art, he deserves great credit

for the diligence with which he pursued it under unfavourable

circumstances, and for his endeavours to bring it into notice at

a time when it was greatly neglected. His labours in this respect were,

however, attended with no immediate fruit. He died in 1776, and his

immediate successors do not appear to have profited by his instructions.

The wood-cuts executed in France between 1776 and 1815 are generally

much inferior to those of Papillon; and the recent progress which wood

engraving has made in that country seems rather to have been influenced

by English example than by his precepts.

[Footnote VII-22: The 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 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.”]

[Footnote VII-23: From several of those blocks not less than sixty

thousand impressions had been previously taken, and from one of

them four hundred and fifty-six thousand had been printed.]

Nicholas Le Sueur--born 1691, died 1764,--was, next to Papillon, the

best French wood engraver of his time. His chiaro-scuros, printed

entirely from wood-blocks, are executed with great boldness and

spirit, and partake more of the character of the earlier Italian

chiaro-scuros than any other works of the same kind engraved by his

contemporaries.[VII-24] He chiefly excelled in the execution of

chiaro-scuros and large cuts; his small cuts are of very ordinary

character; they are generally engraved in a hard and meagre style,

want variety of tint, and are deficient in effect.

[Illustration]

[Footnote VII-24: In the chiaro-scuros from original drawings in

the collection of Monsieur Crozat, with the figures etched by

Count Caylus, the wood-blocks from which the sepia-coloured tints

were printed were engraved by Nicholas Le Sueur.--About the same

period Arthur Pond and George Knapton in England, and Count

M. A. Zanetti in Italy, executed in the same manner several

chiaro-scuros in imitation of drawings and sketches by eminent

painters. The taste for chiaro-scuros seems to have been revived

in France by the Regent-Duke of Orleans, who declared that Ugo da

Carpi’s chiaro-scuros afforded him more pleasure than any other

kind of prints.]

P. S. Fournier, the younger, a letter-founder of considerable

reputation,--born at Paris 1712, died 1768,--occasionally engraved on

wood. Papillon says that he was self-taught; and that he certainly would

have made greater progress in the art had he not devoted himself almost

exclusively to the business of type-founding. Monsieur Fournier is,

however, better known as a writer on the history of the art than as a

practical wood engraver. Between 1758 and 1761 he published three tracts

relating to the origin and progress of wood engraving, and the invention

of typography.[VII-25] From these works it is evident that, though he

takes no small credit to himself for his practical knowledge of wood

engraving and printing, he was very imperfectly acquainted with his

subject. They abound in errors which it is impossible that any person

possessing the knowledge he boasts of should commit, unless he had very

superficially examined the books and cuts on which he pronounces an

opinion. He seems indeed to have thought that, from the circumstance of

his being a wood engraver and letter-founder, his decisions on all

doubtful matters in the early history of wood engraving and printing

should be received with implicit faith. Looking at the comparatively

small size of his works, no writer, not even Papillon himself, has

committed so many mistakes; and his decisions are generally most

peremptory when utterly groundless or evidently wrong. He asserts that

Faust and Scheffer’s Psalter, 1457-1459, is printed from moveable types

of wood, and that the most of the earliest specimens of typography are

printed from the same kind of types; and in the fulness of his knowledge

he also declares that the text of the Theurdank is printed not from

types, but from engraved wood-blocks. Like Papillon, he seems to have

possessed a marvellous sagacity in ferreting out old wood engravers. He

says that Andrea Mantegna engraved on wood a grand triumph in 1486; that

Sebastian Brandt engraved in 1490 the wood-cuts in the Ship of

Fools,[VII-26] after the designs of J. Locher; and that Parmegiano

executed several wood-cuts after designs by Raffaele. He decides

positively that Albert Durer, Lucas Cranach, Titian, and Holbein were

wood engravers, and, like Papillon, he includes Mary de Medici in the

list. Papillon appears to have had good reason to complain that Fournier

had availed himself of his volume printed in 1738. His taste appears to

have been scarcely superior to his knowledge and judgment: he mentions a

large and coarsely engraved cut of the head of Christ as one of the best

specimens of Albert Durer’s engraving; and he says that Papillon’s cuts

are for excellence of design and execution equal to those of the

greatest masters!

[Footnote VII-25: The following are the titles of those tracts,

which are rather scarce. They are all of small octavo size, and

printed by J. Barbou. 1. Dissertation sur l’Origine et les Progrès

de l’Art de Graver en Bois, pour éclaircir quelques traits de

l’Histoire de l’Imprimerie, et prouver que Guttemberg n’en est pas

l’Inventeur. Par Mr. Fournier le Jeune, Graveur et Fondeur de

Caractères d’Imprimerie, 1758. 2. De l’Origine et des productions

de l’Imprimerie primitive en taille en Bois, 1759. 3. Remarques

sur un Ouvrage intitulé, Lettre sur l’Origine de l’Imprimerie, &c.

1761. This last was an answer to a letter written by M. Bär,

almoner of the Swedish chapel in Paris, in which the two former

tracts of Fournier were severely criticised.--Fournier was also

the author of a work in two small volumes, entitled “Manuel

Typographique, utile aux Gens de lettres, et à ceux qui exercent

les differentes parties de l’Art de l’Imprimerie.”]

[Footnote VII-26: The cut here introduced is the first in the

_Stultifera 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 avayle

Nor them perceyve not: And then I them despyse.

Thus am I a foole and all that serve that guyse.”]

From a passage in one of Fournier’s tracts--Remarques Typographiques,

1761,--it is evident that wood engraving was then greatly neglected in

Germany. It relates to the following observation of M. Bär’s, almoner of

the Swedish chapel at Paris, on the length of time necessary to engrave

a number of wooden types sufficient to print such a work as Faust and

Scheffer’s Psalter: “M. Schœpflin declares that, by the general

admission of all experienced persons, it would require upwards of six

years to complete such a work in so perfect a manner.” The following is

Fournier’s rejoinder: “To understand the value of this remark, it ought

to be known that, so far from there being many experienced wood

engravers to choose from, M. Schœpflin would most likely experience some

difficulty in finding one to consult.” The wood-cuts which occur in

German books printed between 1700 and 1760 are certainly of the most

wretched kind; contemptible alike in design and execution. Some of the

best which I have seen--and they are very bad--are to be found in a thin

folio entitled “Orbis Literatus Germanico-Europaeus,” printed at

Frankfort in 1737. They are cuts of the seals of all the principal

colleges and academical foundations in Germany. The art in Italy about

the same period was almost equally neglected. An Italian wood engraver,

named Lucchesini, executed several cuts between 1760 and 1770. Most of

the head-pieces and ornaments in the Popes’ Decretals, printed at Rome

at this period, were engraved by him; and he also engraved the cuts in a

Spanish book entitled “Letania Lauretana de la Virgen Santissima,”

printed at Valencia in 1768. It is scarcely necessary to say that these

cuts are of the humblest character.

Though wood engraving did not make any progress in England from 1722 to

the time of Thomas Bewick, yet the art was certainly never lost in this

country; the old stock still continued to put forth a branch--_non

deficit alter_--although not a golden one. Two wood-cuts tolerably well

executed, and which show that the engraver was acquainted with the

practice of “lowering,” occur in a thin quarto, London, printed for

H. Payne, 1760. The book and the cuts are thus noticed in Southey’s Life

of Cowper, volume I. page 50. The writer is speaking of the Nonsense

Club, of which Cowper was a member.

“At those meetings of

Jest and youthful Jollity,

Sport that wrinkled Care derides,

And Laughter holding both his sides,

there can be little doubt that the two odes to Obscurity and Oblivion

originated, joint compositions of Lloyd and Colman, in ridicule of Gray

and Mason. They were published in a quarto pamphlet, with a vignette, in

the title-page, of an ancient poet safely seated and playing on his

harp; and at the end a tail-piece representing a modern poet in huge

boots, flung from a mountain by his Pegasus into the sea, and losing his

tie-wig in the fall.” The following is a fac-simile of the cut

representing the poet’s fall. He seems to have been tolerably confident

of himself, for, though the winged steed has no bridle, he is provided

with a pair of formidable spurs.

[Illustration]

The cuts in a collection of humorous pieces in verse, entitled “The

Oxford Sausage,” 1764, are evidently by the same engraver, and almost

every one of them affords an instance of “lowering.” At the foot of one

of them, at page 89, the name “Lister” is seen; the subject is a

bacchanalian figure mounted on a winged horse, which has undoubtedly

been drawn from the same model as the Pegasus in Colman and Lloyd’s

burlesque odes. In an edition of the Sausage, printed in 1772, the name

of “T. Lister” occurs on the title-page as one of the publishers, and as

residing at Oxford. Although those cuts are generally deficient in

effect, their execution is scarcely inferior to many of those in the

work of Papillon; the portrait indeed of “Mrs. Dorothy Spreadbury,

Inventress of the Oxford Sausage,” forming the frontispiece to the

edition of 1772, is better executed than Monsieur Nicholas Caron’s

votive portrait of Papillon, “the restorer of the art of wood

engraving.”

In 1763, a person named S. Watts engraved two or three large wood-cuts

in outline, slightly shaded, after drawings by Luca Cambiaso.

Impressions of those cuts are most frequently printed in a yellowish

kind of ink. About the same time Watts also engraved, in a bold and free

style, several small circular portraits of painters. In Sir John

Hawkins’s History of Music, published in 1776, there are four wood-cuts;

and at the bottom of the largest--Palestrini presenting his work on

Music to the Pope--is the name of the engraver thus: _T. Hodgson.

Sculp._ Dr. Dibdin, in noticing this cut, in his Preliminary

Disquisition on Early Engraving and Ornamental Printing, prefixed to his

edition of the Typographical Antiquities, says that it was “done by

Hodgson, the master of the celebrated Bewick.”[VII-27] If by this it is

meant that Bewick was the apprentice of Hodgson, or that he obtained

from Hodgson his knowledge of wood engraving, the assertion is

incorrect. It is, however, almost certain that Bewick, when in London in

1776, was employed by Hodgson, as will be shown in its proper place.

[Footnote VII-27: Dr. Dibdin adds: “Mr. Douce informs me that Sir

John Hawkins told him of the artist’s obtaining the prize for it

from the Society for the Encouragement of Arts.”]

Having now given some account of wood engraving in its languishing

state--occasionally showing symptoms of returning vigour, and then

almost immediately sinking into its former state of depression--we at

length arrive at an epoch from which its revival and progressive

improvement may be safely dated. The person whose productions recalled

public attention to the neglected art of wood engraving was

[Illustration:

THOMAS BEWICK]

This distinguished wood engraver, whose works will be admired as long as

truth and nature shall continue to charm, was born on the 10th or 11th

of August, 1753, at Cherry-burn, in the county of Northumberland, but on

the south side of the Tyne, about twelve miles westward of Newcastle.

[Illustration: THE HOUSE IN WHICH BEWICK WAS BORN.]

His father rented a small land-sale colliery at Mickley-bank, in the

neighbourhood of his dwelling, and it is said that when a boy the future

wood engraver sometimes worked in the pit. At a proper age he was sent

as a day-scholar to a school kept by the Rev. Christopher Gregson at

Ovingham, on the opposite side of the Tyne. The Parsonage House, in

which Mr. Gregson lived, is pleasantly situated on the edge of a sloping

bank immediately above the river; and many reminiscences of the place

are to be found in Bewick’s cuts; the gate at the entrance is

introduced, with trifling variations, in three or four different

subjects; and a person acquainted with the neighbourhood will easily

recognise in his tail-pieces several other little local sketches of a

similar kind. In the time of the Rev. James Birkett, Mr. Gregson’s

successor, Ovingham school had the character of being one of the best

private schools in the county; and several gentlemen, whose talents

reflect credit on their teacher, received their education there. In the

following cut, representing a view of Ovingham from the south-westward,

the Parsonage House, with its garden sloping down to the Tyne, is

perceived immediately to the right of the clump of large trees. The bank

on which those trees grow is known as the _crow-tree bank_. The

following lines, descriptive of a view from the Parsonage House, are

from “The School Boy,” a poem, by Thomas Maude, A.M., who received his

early education at Ovingham under Mr. Birkett.

[Illustration: PARSONAGE AT OVINGHAM.]

“But can I sing thy simpler pleasures flown,

Loved OVINGHAM! and leave the _chief_ unknown,--

Thy _annual Fair_, of every joy the mart,

That drained my pocket, ay, and took my childish heart?

Blest morn! how lightly from my bed I sprung,

When in the blushing east thy beams were young;

While every blithe co-tenant of the room

Rose at a call, with cheeks of liveliest bloom.

Then from each well-packed drawer our vests we drew,

Each gay-frilled shirt, and jacket smartly new.

Brief toilet ours! yet, on a morn like this,

Five extra minutes were not deemed amiss.

Fling back the casement!--Sun, propitious shine!

How sweet your beams gild the clear-flowing Tyne,

That winds beneath our master’s garden-brae,

With broad bright mazes o’er its pebbly way.

See Prudhoe! lovely in the morning beam:-- }

Mark, mark, the ferry-boat, with twinkling gleam, }

Wafting fair-going folks across the stream. }

Look out! a bed of sweetness breathes below,

Where many a rocket points its spire of snow;

And from the _Crow-tree Bank_ the cawing sound

Of sable troops incessant poured around!

Well may each little bosom throb with joy!

On such a morn, who would not be a boy?”

Bewick’s school acquirements probably did not extend beyond English

reading, writing, and arithmetic; for, though he knew a little Latin, he

does not appear to have ever received any instructions in that language.

In a letter dated 18th April, 1803, addressed to Mr. Christopher

Gregson,[VII-28] London, a son of his old master, introducing an artist

of the name of Murphy, who had painted his portrait, Bewick humorously

alludes to his _beauty_ when a boy, and to the state of his coat-sleeve,

in consequence of his using it instead of a pocket-handkerchief. Bewick,

it is to be observed, was very hard-featured, and much marked with the

small-pox. After mentioning Mr. Murphy as “a man of worth, and a

first-rate artist in the miniature line,” he thus proceeds: “I do not

imagine, at your time of life, my dear friend, that you will be

solicitous about forming new acquaintances; but it may not, perhaps, be

putting you much out of the way to show any little civilities to Mr.

Murphy during his stay in London. He has, on his own account, taken my

portrait, and I dare say will be desirous to show you it the first

opportunity: when you see it, you will no doubt conclude that T. B. is

turning _bonnyer_ and _bonnyer_[VII-29] in his old days; but indeed you

cannot _help knowing this_, and also that there were _great indications_

of its turning out so _long since_. But if you have forgot our earliest

youth, perhaps your brother P.[VII-30] may help you to remember what a

_great beauty_ I was at that time, when the grey coat-sleeve was

_glazed_ from the cuff towards the elbows.” The words printed in Italics

are those that are underlined by Bewick himself.

[Footnote VII-28: Mr. Christopher Gregson, who was an apothecary,

lived in Blackfriars. He died about the year 1813. As long as he

lived, Bewick maintained a friendly correspondence with him.]

[Footnote VII-29: _Prettier_ and _prettier_.]

[Footnote VII-30: Philip.]

Bewick, having shown a taste for drawing, was placed by his father as an

apprentice with Mr. Ralph Beilby, an engraver, living in Newcastle, to

whom on the 1st of October 1767 he was bound for a term of seven years.

Mr. Beilby was not a wood engraver; and his business in the copper-plate

line was of a kind which did not allow of much scope for the display of

artistic talent. He engraved copper-plates for books, when any by chance

were offered to him; and he also executed brass-plates for doors, with

the names of the owners handsomely filled up, after the manner of the

old “_niellos_,” with black sealing-wax. He engraved crests and initials

on steel and silver watch-seals; also on tea-spoons, sugar-tongs, and

other articles of plate; and the engraving of numerals and ornaments,

with the name of the maker, on clock-faces,--which were not then

enamelled,--seems to have formed one of the chief branches of his very

general business.[VII-31]

[Footnote VII-31: “While with BEILBY he was employed in engraving

clock-faces, which, I have heard him say, made his hands as hard

as a blacksmith’s, and almost disgusted him with

engraving.”--Sketch of the Life and Works of the late Thomas

Bewick, by George C. Atkinson. Printed in the Transactions of the

Natural History Society, Newcastle, 1830.]

Bewick’s attention appears to have been first directed to wood engraving

in consequence of his master having been employed by the late Dr.

Charles Hutton, then a schoolmaster in Newcastle, to engrave on wood the

diagrams for his Treatise on Mensuration. The printing of this work was

commenced in 1768, and was completed in 1770. The engraving of the

diagrams was committed to Bewick, who is said to have invented a graver

with a fine groove at the point, which enabled him to cut the outlines

by a single operation.

[Illustration]

The above is a fac-simile of one of the earliest productions of Bewick

in the art of wood engraving. The church is intended for that of St.

Nicholas, Newcastle.

Subsequently, and while he was still an apprentice, Bewick undoubtedly

endeavoured to improve himself in wood engraving; but his progress does

not appear to have been great, and his master had certainly very little

work of this kind for him to do. He appears to have engraved a few

bill-heads on wood; and it is not unlikely that the cuts in a little

book entitled “Youth’s Instructive and Entertaining Story Teller,” first

published by T. Saint, Newcastle, 1774, were executed by him before the

expiration of his apprenticeship.

Bewick, at one period during his apprenticeship, paid ninepence a week

for his lodgings in Newcastle, and usually received a brown loaf every

week from Cherry-burn. “During his servitude,” says Mr. Atkinson, “he

paid weekly visits to Cherry-burn, except when the river was so much

swollen as to prevent his passage of it at Eltringham, when he

vociferated his inquiries across the stream, and then returned to

Newcastle.” This account of his being accustomed to _shout_ his

enquiries across the Tyne first appeared in a Memoir prefixed to the

Select Fables, published by E. Charnley, 1820. Mr. William Bedlington,

an old friend of Bewick, once asked him if it were true? “Babbles and

nonsense!” was the reply. “It never happened but once, and that was when

the river had suddenly swelled before I could reach the top of the

_allers_,[VII-32] and yet folks are made to believe that I was in the

habit of doing it.”

[Footnote VII-32: Alders--the name of a small plantation above

Ovingham, which Bewick had to pass through on his way to

Eltringham ferry-boat.]

On the expiration of his apprenticeship he returned to his father’s

house at Cherry-burn, but still continued to work for Mr. Beilby. About

this time he seems to have formed the resolution of applying himself

exclusively in future to wood engraving, and with this view to have

executed several cuts as specimens of his ability. In 1775 he received a

premium of seven guineas from the Society of Arts for a cut of the

Huntsman and the Old Hound, which he probably engraved when living at

Cherry-burn after leaving Mr. Beilby.[VII-33] The following is a

fac-simile of this cut, which was first printed in an edition of Gay’s

Fables, published by T. Saint, Newcastle, 1779. Mr. Henry Bohn, the

publisher of the present edition, happening to be in possession of the

original cut, it is annexed on the opposite page.

[Illustration]

[Footnote VII-33: The 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.]

In 1776, when on a visit to some of his relations in Cumberland,[VII-34]

he availed himself of the opportunity of visiting the Lakes; and in

after-life he used frequently to speak in terms of admiration of the

beauty of the scenery, and of the neat appearance of the white-washed,

slate-covered cottages on the banks of some of the lakes. His tour was

made on foot, with a stick in his hand and a wallet at his back; and it

has been supposed that in a tail-piece, to be found at page 177 of the

first volume of his British Birds, first edition, 1797, he has

introduced a sketch of himself in his travelling costume, drinking out

of what he himself would have called the _flipe_ of his hat. The figure

has been copied in our ornamental letter T at page 471.

[Illustration]

[Footnote VII-34: Bewick’s mother, Jane Wilson, was a daughter of

Thomas Wilson of Ainstable in Cumberland, about five miles

north-north-west of Kirk-Oswald.]

In the same year, 1776, he went to London, where he arrived on the 1st

of October. He certainly did not remain more than a twelvemonth in

London,[VII-35] for in 1777 he returned to Newcastle, and entered into

partnership with his former master, Mr. Ralph Beilby. Bewick--who does

not appear to have been wishful to undeceive those who fancied that he

was the person who rediscovered the “long-lost art of engraving on

wood”[VII-36]--would never inform any of the good-natured friends, who

fished for intelligence with the view of writing his life, of the works

on which he was employed when in London. The faith of a believer in the

story of Bewick’s re-discovering “the long-lost art” would have received

too great a shock had he been told by Bewick himself that on his arrival

in London he found professors of the “long-lost art” regularly

exercising their calling, and that with one of them he found employment.

[Footnote VII-35: Bewick, in London, in 1828, observed to one of

his former pupils, that it was then fifty-one years since he left

London, on his first visit, to return to Newcastle.]

[Footnote VII-36: Mr. Atkinson talks about wood engraving having

taken a nap for a century or two “after the time of Durer and

Holbein,” and of Bewick being the restorer of the “long-lost art;”

and yet, with singular inconsistency, in another part of his

Sketch, he refers to Papillon, whose work, containing a minute

account of the art as then practised, was published about two

years before Bewick began to engrave on wood.--The Reverend

William Turner, who ought to have known better, also speaks of the

“long-lost art,” in his Memoir of Thomas Bewick.]

There is every reason to believe that Bewick, when in London, was

chiefly employed by T. Hodgson, most likely the person who engraved the

four cuts in Sir John Hawkins’s History of Music. It is at any rate

certain that several cuts engraved by Bewick appeared in a little work

entitled “A curious Hieroglyphick Bible,” printed by and for T. Hodgson,

in George’s Court, St. John’s Lane, Clerkenwell.[VII-37] Proofs of three

of the principal cuts are now lying before me. The subjects are: Adam

and Eve, with the Deity seen in the clouds, forming the frontispiece;

the Resurrection; and a cut representing a gentleman seated in an

arm-chair, with four boys beside him: the border of this cut is of the

same kind as that of the large cut of the Chillingham Bull engraved by

Bewick in 1789. These proofs appear to have been presented by Bewick to

an eminent painter, now dead, with whom either then, or at a subsequent

period, he had become acquainted. Not one of Bewick’s biographers

mentions those cuts, nor seems to have been aware of their existence.

The two memoirs of Bewick, written by his “friends” G. C. Atkinson and

John F. M. Dovaston,[VII-38] sufficiently demonstrate that neither of

them had enjoyed his confidence in matters relative to his progress in

the art of wood engraving.

[Footnote VII-37: I have not been able to discover the date of the

first edition of this work. The third edition is dated 1785.]

[Footnote 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.]

Mr. Atkinson, in his Sketch of the Life and Works of Bewick, says that

when in London he worked with a person of the name of Cole. Of this

person, as a wood engraver, I have not been able to discover any trace.

Bewick did not like London; and he always advised his former pupils and

north-country friends to leave the “province covered with houses” as

soon as they could, and return to the country to there enjoy the

beauties of Nature, fresh air, and content. In the letter to his old

schoolfellow, Mr. Christopher Gregson, previously quoted, he thus

expresses his opinion of London life. “Ever since you paid your last

visit to the north, I have often been thinking upon you, and wishing

that you would _lap up_, and leave the metropolis, to enjoy the fruits

of your hard-earned industry on the banks of the Tyne, where you are so

much respected, both on your own account and on that of those who are

gone. Indeed, I wonder how you can think of turmoiling yourself to the

end of the chapter, and let the opportunity slip of contemplating at

your ease the beauties of Nature, so bountifully spread out to

enlighten, to captivate, and to cheer the heart of man. For my part,

I am still of the same mind that I was in when in London, and that is,

_I would rather be herding sheep on Mickley bank top than remain in

London, although for doing so I was to be made the premier of England_.”

Bewick was truly a _country_ man; he felt that it was better “to hear

the lark sing than the mouse cheep;” for, though no person was capable

of closer application to his art when within doors, he loved to spend

his hours of relaxation in the open air, studying the character of

beasts and birds in their natural state; and diligently noting those

little incidents and traits of country life which give so great an

interest to many of his tail-pieces. When a young man, he was fond of

angling; and, like Roger Ascham, he “dearly loved a main of cocks.” When

annoyed by street-walkers in London, he used to assume the air of a

stupid countryman, and, in reply to their importunity, would ask, with

an expression of stolid gravity, if they knew “Tommy Hummel o’ Prudhoe,

Willy Eltringham o’ Hall-Yards, or Auld Laird Newton o’

Mickley?”[VII-39] He thus, without losing his temper, or showing any

feeling of annoyance, soon got quit of those who wished to engage his

attention, though sometimes not until he had received a hearty

malediction for his stupidity.

[Footnote VII-39: Humble, Eltringham, and Newton were the names of

three of his country acquaintances; Prudhoe, Hall-Yards, and

Mickley are places near Ovingham.]

In 1777, on his return to Newcastle, he entered into partnership with

Mr. Beilby; and his younger brother, John Bewick, who was then about

seventeen years old, became their apprentice. From this time Bewick,

though he continued to assist his partner in the other branches of their

business,[VII-40] applied himself chiefly to engraving on wood. The cuts

in an edition of Gay’s Fables, 1779,[VII-41] and in an edition of Select

Fables, 1784, both printed by T. Saint, Newcastle, were engraved by

Bewick, who was probably assisted by his brother. Several of those cuts

are well engraved, though by no means to be compared to his later works,

executed when he had acquired greater knowledge of the art, and more

confidence in his own powers. He evidently improved as his talents were

exercised; for the cuts in the Select Fables, 1784, are generally much

superior to those in Gay’s Fables, 1779; the animals are better drawn

and engraved; the sketches of landscape in the back-grounds are more

natural; and the engraving of the foliage of the trees and bushes is,

not unfrequently, scarce inferior to that of his later productions. Such

an attention to nature in this respect is not to be found in any

wood-cuts of an earlier date. The following impressions from two of the

original cuts in the Select Fables are fair specimens; one is

interesting, as being Bewick’s first idea of a favourite vignette in his

British Land Birds; the other as his first treatment of the lion and the

four bulls, afterwards repeated in his Quadrupeds. In the best cuts of

the time of Durer and Holbein the foliage is generally neglected; the

artists of that period merely give general forms of trees, without ever

attending to that which contributes so much to their beauty. The merit

of introducing this great improvement in wood engraving, and of

depicting quadrupeds and birds in their natural forms, and with their

characteristic expression, is undoubtedly due to Bewick. Though he was

not the discoverer of the art of wood engraving, he certainly was the

first who applied it with success to the delineation of animals, and to

the natural representation of landscape and woodland scenery. He found

for himself a path which no previous wood engraver had trodden, and in

which none of his successors have gone beyond him. For several of the

cuts in the Select Fables, Bewick was paid only nine shillings each.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

[Footnote VII-40: Bewick could engrave on copper, but did not

excel in this branch of engraving. The following are the principal

copper-plates which are known to be of his engraving. Plates in

Consett’s Tour through Sweden, Swedish Lapland, Finland, and

Denmark, 4to. Stockton, 1789; The Whitley large Ox, 1789; and the

remarkable Kyloe Ox, bred in the Mull, Argyleshire, 1790--A set of

silver buttons, containing sporting devices, engraved by Bewick

for the late H. U. Reay, Esq. of Killingworth, which passed into

the possession of Mr. Reay’s son-in-law, Matthew Bell, Esq. of

Wolsingham.]

[Footnote VII-41: Mr. Atkinson says that “about the same time he

executed the cuts [sixty-two in number] for a small child’s book,

entitled ‘A pretty Book of Pictures for little Masters and Misses,

or Tommy Trip’s History of Beasts and Birds.’”--An edition of the

Select Fables, with very bad wood-cuts, was printed by Mr. Saint

in 1776. The person by whom they were engraved is unknown. Bewick

always denied that any of them were of his engraving.]

In 1789 he drew and engraved his large cut of the Chillingham

Bull,[VII-42] which many persons suppose to be his master-piece; but

though it is certainly well engraved, and the character of the animal is

well expressed, yet as a wood engraving it will not bear a comparison

with several of the cuts in his History of British Birds. The grass and

the foliage of the trees are most beautifully expressed; but there is a

want of variety in the more distant trees, and the bark of that in the

fore-ground to the left is too rough. This exaggeration of the roughness

of the bark of trees is also to be perceived in many of his other cuts.

The style in which the bull is engraved is admirably adapted to express

the texture of the short white hair of the animal; the dewlap, however,

is not well represented, it appears to be stiff instead of flaccid and

pendulous; and the lines intended for the hairs on its margin are too

_wiry_. On a stone in the fore-ground he has introduced a _bit_ of

cross-hatching, but not with good effect, for it causes the stone to

look very much like an old scrubbing-brush. Bewick was not partial to

cross-hatching, and it is seldom to be found in cuts of his engraving.

He seems to have introduced it in this cut rather to show to those who

knew anything of the matter that he could engrave such lines, than from

an opinion that they were necessary, or in the slightest degree improved

the cut. This is almost the only instance in which Bewick has introduced

black lines crossing each other, and thus forming what is usually called

“cross-hatchings.” From the commencement of his career as a wood

engraver, he adopted a much more simple method of obtaining colour. He

very justly considered, that, as impressions of wood-cuts are printed

from lines engraved in _relief_, the unengraved surface of the block

already represented the darkest colour that could be produced; and

consequently, instead of labouring to produce colour in the same manner

as the old wood engravers, he commenced upon colour or black, and

proceeded from _dark to light_ by means of lines cut in intaglio, and

appearing white when in the impression, until his subject was completed.

This great simplification of the old process was the result of his

having to engrave his own drawings; for in drawing his subject on the

wood he avoided all combinations of lines which to the designer are

easy, but to the engraver difficult. In almost every one of his cuts the

effect is produced by the simplest means. The colour which the old wood

engravers obtained by means of cross-hatchings, Bewick obtained with

much greater facility by means of single lines, and masses of black

slightly intersected or broken with white.

[Footnote VII-42: This cut was executed for Marmaduke Tunstall,

Esq. of Wycliffe, near Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire.]

When only a few impressions of the Chillingham Bull had been taken, and

before he had added his name, the block split. The pressmen, it is said,

got tipsy over their work, and left the block lying on the window-sill

exposed to the rays of the sun, which caused it to warp and

split.[VII-43] About six impressions were taken on thin vellum before

the accident occurred. Mr. Atkinson says that one of those impressions,

which had formerly belonged to Mr. Beilby, Bewick’s partner, was sold in

London for twenty pounds; A. Stothard, R.A., had one, as had also Mr.

C. Nesbit.

[Footnote VII-43: The block remained in several pieces until 1817,

when they were firmly united by means of cramps, and a number of

impressions printed off. These impressions are without the border,

which distinguishes the earlier ones. The border, which was

engraved on separate pieces, enclosed the principal cut in the

manner of a frame.]

Towards the latter end of 1785 Bewick began to engrave the cuts for his

General History of Quadrupeds, which was first printed in 1790.[VII-44]

The descriptions were written by his partner, Mr. Beilby, and the cuts

were all drawn and engraved by himself. The comparative excellence of

those cuts, which, for the correct delineation of the animals and the

natural character of the _incidents_, and the back-grounds, are greatly

superior to anything of the kind that had previously appeared, insured a

rapid sale for the work; a second edition was published in 1791, and a

third in 1792.[VII-45]

[Footnote VII-44: A Prospectus containing specimens of the cuts

was printed in 1787.]

[Footnote VII-45: The first edition consisted of fifteen hundred

copies in demy octavo at 8_s._, and one hundred royal at 12_s._

The price of the demy copies of the _eighth_ edition, published in

1825, was £1 1_s._ A proof of the estimation in which the work

continued to be held.]

The great merit of those cuts consists not so much in their execution as

in the spirited and natural manner in which they are drawn. Some of the

animals, indeed, which he had not had an opportunity of seeing, and for

which he had to depend on the previous engravings of others, are not

correctly drawn. Among the most incorrect are the Bison, the Zebu, the

Buffalo, the Many-horned Sheep, the Gnu, and the Giraffe or

Cameleopard.[VII-46] Even in some of our domestic quadrupeds he was not

successful; the Horses are not well represented; and the very

indifferent execution of the Common Bull and Cow, at page 19, edition

1790, is only redeemed by the interest of the back-grounds. In that of

the Common Bull, the action of the bull seen chasing a man is most

excellent; and in that of the Cow, the woman, with a _skeel_ on her

head, and her petticoats tucked up behind, returning from milking, is

evidently a sketch from nature. The Goats and the Dogs are the best of

those cuts both in design and execution; and perhaps the very best of

all the cuts in the first edition is that of the Cur Fox at page 270.

The tail of the animal, which is too long, and is also incorrectly

marked with black near the white tip, was subsequently altered.

[Footnote VII-46: The cut of the Giraffe in the edition of 1824 is

not the original one engraved by Bewick. In the later cut, which

was chiefly engraved by W. W. Temple, one of Bewick’s pupils, the

marks on the body of the animal appear like so many white-coloured

lines crossing each other, and enclosing large irregular spots.]

In the first edition the characteristic tail-pieces are comparatively

few; and several of those which are merely ornamental, displaying

neither imagination nor feeling, are copies of cuts which are frequent

in books printed at Leipsic between 1770 and 1780, and which were

probably engraved by Ungher, a German wood engraver of that period.

Examples of such tasteless trifles are to be found at pages 9, 12, 18,

65, 110, 140, 201, 223, and 401. Ornaments of the same character occur

in Heineken’s “Idée Générale d’une Collection complette d’Estampes,”

Leipsic and Vienna, 1771. Bewick was unquestionably better acquainted

with the history and progress of wood engraving than those who talk

about the “long-lost art” were aware of. The first of the two following

cuts is a fac-simile of a tail-piece which occurs in an edition of “Der

Weiss Kunig,”[VII-47] printed at Vienna, 1775, and which Bewick has

copied at page 144 of the first edition of the Quadrupeds, 1790. The

second, from one of the cuts illustrative of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, 1569,

designed by Virgil Solis,[VII-48] is copied in a tail-piece in the first

volume of Bewick’s Birds, page 330, edition 1797.

[Footnote VII-47: Some account of this work is previously given at

page287.]

[Footnote VII-48: This work is noticed at page 407.]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

The following may be mentioned as the best of the tail-pieces in the

first edition of the Quadrupeds, and as those which most decidedly

display Bewick’s talent in depicting, without exaggeration, natural and

humorous incidents. In this respect he has been excelled by no other

artist either of past or present times. The Elephant, fore-shortened, at

page 162; the Dog and Cat, 195; the Old Man crossing a ford, mounted on

an old horse, which carries, in addition, two heavy sacks, 244; the

Bear-ward, with his wife and companion, leading Bruin, and accompanied

by his dancing-dogs,--a gallows seen in the distance, 256; a Fox, with

Magpies flying after him, indicating his course to his pursuers, 265;

Two unfeeling fellows enjoying the pleasure of hanging a dog,--a gibbet,

seen in the distance, to denote that those who could thus quietly enjoy

the dying struggles of a dog would not be unlikely to murder a man, 274;

a Man eating his dinner with his dog sitting beside him, expecting his

share, 285; Old Blind Man led by a dog, crossing a bridge of a single

plank, and with the rail broken, in a storm of wind and rain, 320; a Mad

Dog pursued by three men,--a feeble old woman directly in the dog’s way,

324; a Man with a bundle at his back, crossing a stream on stilts, 337;

a winter piece,--a Man travelling in the snow, 339; a grim-visaged Old

Man, accompanied by a cur-dog, driving an old sow, 371; Two Boys and an

Ass on a common, 375; a Man leaping, by means of a pole, a stream,

across which he has previously thrown his stick and bag, 391; a Man

carrying a bundle of faggots on the ice, 395; a Wolf falling into a

trap, 430; and Two Blind Fiddlers and a Boy, the last in the book, at

456. In this cut Bewick has represented the two blind fiddlers earnestly

scraping away, although there is no one to listen to their strains; the

bare-legged _tatty_-headed boy who leads them, and the half-starved

melancholy-looking dog at their heels, are in admirable keeping with the

principal characters.

On the next page is a copy of the cut of the Two Boys and the Ass,

previously mentioned as occurring at page 375. This cut, beyond any

other of the tail-pieces in the first edition of the Quadrupeds, perhaps

affords the best specimen of Bewick’s peculiar talent of depicting such

subjects; he faithfully represents Nature, and at the same time conveys

a moral, which gives additional interest to the sketch. Though the ass

remains immoveable, in spite of the application of a branch of furze to

his hind quarters, the young graceless who is mounted evidently enjoys

his seat. The pleasure of the twain consists as much in having _caught_

an ass as in the prospect of a ride. To such characters the stubborn ass

frequently affords more _amusement_ than a willing goer; they like to

flog and thump a thing well, though it be but a gate-post. The gallows

in the distance--a favourite _in terrorem_ object with Bewick--suggests

their ultimate destiny; and the cut, in the first edition, derives

additional _point_ from its situation among the animals found in _New

South Wales_,--the first shipment of convicts to Botany Bay having taken

place about two years previous to the publication of the work. This cut,

as well as many others in the book, affords an instance of

lowering,--the light appearance of the distance is entirely effected by

that process.

[Illustration]

The subsequent editions of the Quadrupeds were enlarged by the addition

of new matter and the insertion of several new cuts. Of these, with the

exception of the Kyloe Ox,[VII-49] the tail-pieces are by far the best.

The following are the principal cuts of animals that have been added

since the first publication of the work; the pages annexed refer to the

edition of 1824, the last that was published in Bewick’s life-time: the

Arabian Horse, page 4,--the stallion, seen in the back-ground, has

suffered a dismemberment since its first appearance;[VII-50] the Old

English Road Horse, 9; the Improved Cart Horse, 14; the Kyloe Ox, 36;

the Musk Bull, 49; the Black-faced, or Heath Ram, 56; Heath Ram of the

Improved Breed, 57; The Cheviot Ram, 58; Tees-water Ram of the Old

Breed, 60; Tees-water Ram, Improved Breed, 61; the American Elk, 125;

Sow of the Improved Breed, 164; Sow of the Chinese Breed, 166; Head of a

Hippopotamus, (engraved by W. W. Temple,) 185; Indian Bear, 293; Polar,

or Great White Bear, substituted for another cut of the same animal,

295; the Spotted Hyena, substituted for another cut of the same animal,

301; the Ban-dog, 338; the Irish Greyhound, 340; the Harrier, 347;

Spotted Bavy, substituted for another cut of the same animal, 379; the

Grey Squirrel, 387; the Long-tailed Squirrel, 396; the Jerboa,

substituted for another cut of the same animal, 397; the Musquash, or

Musk Beaver, 416; the Mouse, substituted for another cut of the same

animal, 424; the Short-eared Bat, 513; the Long-eared Bat, 515; the

Ternate Bat, 518; the Wombach, 523; and the Ornithorhynchus Paradoxicus,

525. The cut of the animal called the Thick-nosed Tapiir, at page 139 of

the first edition, is transposed to page 381 of the last edition, and

there described under the name of the Capibara: it is probably intended

for the Coypu rat, a specimen of which is at present in the Gardens of

the Zoological Society, Regent’s Park. Bewick was a regular visitor of

all the wild-beast shows that came to Newcastle, and availed himself of

every opportunity to obtain drawings from living animals.

[Footnote VII-49: The Kyloe Ox, which occurs at page 36 of the

edition of 1824, the last that was published in Bewick’s

life-time, is one of the very best cuts of a quadruped that he

ever engraved. The drawing is excellent, and the characteristic

form and general appearance of the animal are represented in a

manner that has never been excelled.]

[Footnote VII-50: The Lancashire _Bull_, of the first edition, by

a similar process has been converted into the Lancashire _Ox_.]

[Illustration]

The tail-pieces introduced in subsequent editions of the Quadrupeds

generally display more humour and not less talent in representing

natural objects than those contained in the first. In the annexed cut of

a sour-visaged old fellow going with corn to the mill, we have an

exemplification of cruelty not unworthy of Hogarth.[VII-51] The

over-laden, half-starved old horse,--broken-kneed, greasy-heeled, and

evidently troubled with the string-halt, as is indicated by the action

of the _off_ hind-leg,--hesitates to descend the brae, at the foot of

which there is a stream, and the old brute on his back urges him forward

by _working_ him, as jockeys say, with the halter, and beating him with

his stick. In the distance, Bewick, as is usual with him when he gives a

sketch of cruelty or knavery, has introduced a gallows. The miserable

appearance of the poor animal is not a little increased by the nakedness

of his hind quarters; his stump of a tail is so short that it will not

even serve as a _catch_ for the crupper or _tail-band_.

[Footnote VII-51: The originals of this and the three following

cuts occur respectively at pages 13, 15, 69, and 526 of the

edition of 1824. The other principal tail-pieces in this edition

are: Greyhound-coursing, (originally engraved on a silver cup for

a person at Northallerton,) drawn by Bewick on the block, but

engraved by W. W. Temple, page x, at the end of the Index; the Old

Coachman and the Young Squire, 12; Tinker’s Children in a pair of

panniers on the back of an Ass, 21; a Cow drinking, 28; Winter

scene, 34; Two Men digging, (engraved by H. White, who also

engraved the cut of the Musk Bull at page 49,) 37; Dog worrying a

Sheep, 62; Old Soldier travelling in the rain, 117; Smelling,

tail-piece to the Genet, a _strong bit_, 269; Drunken Man making

his Dam, 378; and Seals on a large piece of floating ice, 510.]

[Illustration]

In the cut of the child, unconscious of its danger, pulling at the long

tail of a young unbroken colt, the story is most admirably told. The

nurse, who is seen engaged with her sweetheart by the side of the hedge,

has left the child to wander at will, and thus expose itself to

destruction; while the mother, who has accidentally perceived the danger

of her darling, is seen hastening over the stile, regardless of the

steps, in an agony of fear. The backward glance of the horse’s eye, and

the heel raised ready to strike, most forcibly suggest the danger to

which the unthinking infant is exposed.

Though the subject of the following cut be simple, yet the _sentiment_

which it displays is the genuine offspring of true genius. Near to a

ruined cottage, while all around is covered with snow, a lean and hungry

ewe is seen nibbling at an old broom, while her young and weakly lamb is

sucking her milkless teats. Such a picture of animal want--conceived

with so much feeling, and so well expressed,--has perhaps never been

represented by any artist except Bewick.

[Illustration]

The original of the following cut forms the tail-piece to the last page

of the edition of 1824. An old man, wearing a parson’s cast-off beaver

and wig, is seen carrying his young wife and child across a stream. The

complacent look of the cock-nosed wife shows that she enjoys the treat,

while the old drudge patiently bears his burden, and with his right hand

keeps a firm _grip_ of the nether end of his better part. This cut is an

excellent satire on those old men who marry young wives and become

dotingly uxorious in the decline of life; submitting to every indignity

to please their youthful spouses and reconcile them to their state. It

is a _new reading_ of January and May,--he an old travelling beggar, and

she a young slut with her heels peeping, or rather staring, through her

stockings.

[Illustration]

Mr. Solomon Hodgson, the printer of the first four editions of the

Quadrupeds, had an interest in the work; he died in 1800; and in

consequence of a misunderstanding between his widow and Bewick, the

latter had the subsequent editions printed at the office of Mr. Edward

Walker. Mrs. Hodgson having asserted, in a letter printed in the Monthly

Magazine for July 1805, that Bewick was neither the author nor the

projector of the History of Quadrupeds, but “was employed merely as the

engraver or wood-cutter,” he, in justification of his own claims, gave

the following account of the origin of the work.[VII-52] “From my first

reading, when a boy at school, a sixpenny History of Birds and Beasts,

and a then wretched composition called the History of Three Hundred

Animals, to the time I became acquainted with works on Natural History

written for the perusal of men, I never was without the design of

attempting something of this kind myself; but my principal object was

(and still is) directed to the mental pleasure and improvement of youth;

to engage their attention, to direct their steps aright, and to lead

them on till they become enamoured of this innocent and delightful

pursuit. Some time after my partnership with Mr. Beilby commenced,

I communicated my wishes to him, who, after many conversations, came

into my plan of publishing a History of Quadrupeds, and I then

immediately began to draw the animals, to design the vignettes, and to

cut them on wood, and this, to avoid interruption, frequently till very

late in the night; my partner at the same time undertaking to compile

and draw up the descriptions and history at his leisure hours and

evenings at home. With the accounts of the foreign animals I did not

much interfere; the sources whence I had drawn the little knowledge I

possessed were open to my coadjutor, and he used them; but to those of

the animals of our own country, as my partner before this time had paid

little attention to natural history, I lent a helping hand. This help

was given in daily conversations, and in occasional notes and memoranda,

which were used in their proper places. As the cuts were engraved, we

employed the late Mr. Thomas Angus, of this town, printer, to take off a

certain number of impressions of each, many of which are still in my

possession. At Mr. Angus’s death the charge for this business was not

made in his books, and at the request of his widow and ourselves, the

late Mr. Solomon Hodgson fixed the price; and yet the widow and

executrix of Mr. Hodgson asserts in your Magazine, that I was ‘merely

employed as the engraver or wood-cutter,’ (I suppose) by her husband!

Had this been the case, is it probable that Mr. Hodgson would have had

the cuts printed in any other office than his own? The fact is the

reverse of Mrs. Hodgson’s statement; and although I have never, either

‘insidiously’ or otherwise, used any means to cause the reviewers, or

others, to hold me up as the ‘first and sole mover of the concern,’ I am

now dragged forth by her to declare that _I am the man_.

[Footnote VII-52: This account is extracted from a letter written

by Bewick, and printed in the Monthly Magazine for November 1805.]

“But to return to my story:--while we were in the progress of our work,

prudence suggested that it might be necessary to inquire how our labours

were to be ushered to the world, and, as we were unacquainted with the

printing and publishing of books, what mode was the most likely to

insure success. Upon this subject Mr. Hodgson was consulted, and made

fully acquainted with our plan. He entered into the undertaking with

uncommon ardour, and urged us strenuously not to retain our first humble

notions of ‘making it like a school-book,’ but pressed us to let it

‘assume a more respectable form.’ From this warmth of our friend we had

no hesitation in offering him a share in the work, and a copartnership

deed was entered into between us, for that purpose, on the 10th of April

1790. What Mr. Hodgson did in correcting the press, beyond what falls to

the duty of every printer, I know not; but I am certain that he was

extremely desirous that it should have justice done it. In this _weaving

of words_ I did not interfere, as I believed it to be in hands much

fitter than my own, only I took the liberty of blotting out whatever I

knew not to be truth.”

The favourable manner in which the History of Quadrupeds was received

determined Bewick to commence without delay his History of British

Birds. He began to draw and engrave the cuts in 1791, and in 1797 the

first volume of the work, containing the Land Birds, was

published.[VII-53] The letter-press, as in the Quadrupeds, was written

by his partner, Mr. Beilby, who certainly deserves great praise for the

manner in which he has performed his task. The descriptions generally

have the great merit of being simple, intelligible, and correct. There

are no trifling details about system, no confused arguments about

classification, which more frequently bewilder than inform the reader

who is uninitiated in the piebald jargon of what is called “Systematic

nomenclature.” He describes the quadruped or bird in a manner which

enables even the most unlearned to recognize it when he sees it; and,

like one who is rather wishful to inform his readers than to display his

own acquaintance with the scientific vocabulary, he carefully avoids the

use of all terms which are not generally understood. Mr. Beilby, though

in a different manner and in a less degree, is fairly entitled to share

with Bewick in the honour of having rendered popular in this country the

study of the most interesting and useful branches of Zoology--Quadrupeds

and Birds--by giving the descriptions in simple and intelligible

language, and presenting to the eye the very form and character of the

living animals. As a copper-plate engraver, Mr. Beilby has certainly no

just pretensions to fame; but as a compiler, and as an able coadjutor of

Bewick in simplifying the study of Natural History, and rendering its

most interesting portions easy of attainment to the young, and to those

unacquainted with the “science,” he deserves higher praise than he has

hitherto generally received. Roger Thornton’s Monument, and the Plan of

Newcastle, in the Reverend John Brand’s History of that town, were

engraved by Mr. Beilby. Mr. Brand’s book-plate was also engraved by him.

It is to be found in most of the books that formerly belonged to that

celebrated antiquary, who is well known to all collectors from the

extent of his purchases at stalls, and the number of curious old books

which he thus occasionally obtained.--The Reverend William Turner, of

Newcastle, in a letter printed in the Monthly Magazine for June 1801,

vindicates the character of Mr. Beilby from what he considers the

detractions of Dr. Gleig, in an article on Wood-cuts in the Supplement

to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Mr. Beilby was a native of the city of

Durham, and was brought up as a silversmith and seal-engraver under his

father. He died at Newcastle on the 4th of January 1817, in the

seventy-fourth year of his age.

[Footnote VII-53: Of this edition, 1,874 copies were printed,--one

thousand demy octavo, at 10_s._ 6_d._; eight hundred and fifty

thin and thick royal, at 13_s._, and 15_s._; and twenty-four

imperial at £1 1_s._ The first edition of the second volume, 1804,

consisted of the same number of copies as the first, but the

prices were respectively 12_s._, 15_s._, 18_s._ and £1 4_s._]

The partnership between Beilby and Bewick having been dissolved in 1797,

shortly after the publication of the first volume of the Birds, the

descriptions in the second, which did not appear till 1804, were written

by Bewick himself, but revised by the Reverend Henry Cotes, vicar of

Bedlington. The publication of this volume formed the key-stone of

Bewick’s fame as a designer and engraver on wood; for though the cuts

are not superior to those of the first, they are not excelled, nor

indeed equalled, by any that he afterwards executed. The subsequent

additions, whether as cuts of birds or tail-pieces, are not so excellent

as numerous--in this respect the reverse of the additions to the

Quadrupeds. Though all the birds were designed, and nearly all of them

engraved by Bewick himself, there are yet living witnesses who can

testify that both in the drawing and the engraving of the tail-pieces he

received very considerable assistance from his pupils, more especially

from Robert Johnson as a draftsman, and Luke Clennell as a wood

engraver.[VII-54] Before saying anything further on this subject, it

seems necessary to give the following passage from Mr. Atkinson’s Sketch

of the Life and Works of Bewick. “With regard to the circumstance that

the _British Birds_, with very few exceptions, were finished by his own

hand, I have it in my power to pledge myself. I had been a good deal

surprised one day by hearing a gentleman assert that very few of them

were his own work, all the easy parts being executed by his pupils.

I saw him the same day, and, talking of his art, inquired if he

permitted the assistance of his apprentices in many cases? He said, ‘No;

it had seldom happened, and then they had injured the cuts very much.’

I inquired if he could remember any of them in which he had received

assistance? He said, ‘Aye: I can soon tell you them;’ and, after a few

minutes’ consideration, he made out, with his daughter’s assistance,

_the Whimbrel_, _Tufted Duck_, and _Lesser Tern_:[VII-55] he tried to

recollect more, and turning to his daughter, said, ‘Jane, honey, dost

thou remember any more?’ She considered a little, and said, ‘No: she did

not; but that certainly there were not half a dozen in all:’ those we

both pressed him to do over again. ‘He intended it,’ he said; but, alas!

this intention was prevented. In some cases, I am informed, he made his

pupils block out for him; that is, furnished them with an outline, and

let them cut away the edges of the block to that line; but as, in this

case, the assistance rendered is much the same as that afforded by a

turner’s apprentice when he rounds off the heavy mass of wood in

readiness for a more experienced hand, but not a line of whose

performance remains in the beautiful toy it becomes, it does not

materially shake the authenticity of the work in question.”