room without fire. A violent cold was the consequence, which, neglected, increased to a fever. 'It flew to his brain; and, terrible to relate! he was bound with ropes, beaten, and treated like a madman.' This improper treatment was discontinued by the orders of a physician who accidentally arrived. By the application of blisters, reason returned; and poor Johnson died in peace on October 29, 1796, in the twenty-sixth year of his age. His friend and fellow-prentice, Nesbit, engraved a memorial to his memory; and a stone was erected in Ovingham Churchyard to record the early fate of this ingenious and promising artist."

It is worth noticing that, from the above account, Johnson's connection with Bewick was clearly long subsequent to the "Select Fables" of 1784; and that it had ceased some months before the publication of the first volume of the "Birds" in 1797.

BY E. H. BAILY, R.A., IN THE NEWCASTLE LITERARY AND

PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY'S LIBRARY.

To face page 133.

CHAPTER IX.

"ESOP'S FABLES," BEWICK'S DEATH.

IN 1804, when the second volume of the "Birds" was issued, Bewick was a man of fifty. He had still four-and-twenty years to live. But although he continued to occupy himself actively for the remainder of his life, he never again produced anything to equal the "Select Fables" and the three volumes on Natural History. A large number of books, illustrated or said to be illustrated by him, have been traced out by the indiscriminate enthusiasm of the late Mr. Hugo, whose unwieldy collection was dispersed at Sotheby's in 1877. For the revival of many of these "honest journeywork in defect of better," as Carlyle would have styled them—we suspect that straightforward Thomas Bewick would scarcely have

thanked him. The only volume of any real importance subsequent to 1804 is the "Fables of Æsop," published in 1818. If any books issued in the interval deserve a passing mention they are Thomson's "Seasons," 1805, the "Hive," 1806, Burns's "Poems," 1808, and Ferguson's "Poems," 1814. But the designs for the Thomson and Burns were prepared by John Thurston, and in the case of the latter it is stated by William Harvey that they were engraved by Bewick's pupil, Henry White. In the "Hive," again, the majority of the cuts are by Luke Clennell.

The "Fables of Esop and Others "1 seems

1 This must not be confused with the vamped-up volume issued in 1820 by Emerson Charnley under the title of "Select Fables; with Cuts, Designed and Engraved by Thomas and John Bewick and Others [!], previous to the year 1784: Together with a Memoir; and a descriptive Catalogue of the Works of Messrs. Bewick." Charnley, an enterprising Newcastle publisher, had become possessed of the majority of the blocks to the "Select Fables" (1784) and "Gay" (1779). To these he added a number of inferior cuts of early date, done chiefly for Saint, including some by Isaac Nicholson and “others,” and he put forth the whole with the above title as "Vol. i. of Bewick's Works." The "Memoir" and "Descriptive Catalogue" were prepared by John Trotter Brockett, author of the "Glossary of North Country Words, in Use," 1825; and Charlton Nesbit, who engraved an