The

published "Traité historique et pratique de la Gravure en Bois," he went on to doubt if that author would ever, as he wished, "persuade the world to return to wooden cuts." No time, as it chanced, could have been worse chosen for such a prediction, since, assuming him to have written about 1770,-in the short space of five years later, the "Society of Arts" was offering prizes for engraving in wood, and its list for 1775 contains the names of no less than three persons who received sums of money on this account. names were those of Thomas Hodgson, William Coleman, and Thomas Bewick. With respect to the first of the trio little needs to be said beyond the fact that he was a Newcastle man, whose signature is found attached to a plate in Hawkins's History of Music," as well as to certain poorly executed cuts for magazines and ballad-heads, and that he was also a printer and publisher in London. Concerning the second, we learn from the "Transactions" of the Society that he again obtained prizes in 1776 and 1777 for "engraving on wood or type metal," and from Redgrave's "Dictionary"

that he died at Duke's Court, Bow Street, December, 1807. To the third belongs the honour of doing what fastidious Mr. Walpole considered so improbable--that is to say, "persuading the world," not all at once perhaps, but gradually, "to return to wooden cuts." It is to the improvements made by Bewick in wood-engraving, and the impulse which it received from his individual genius, that its revival as an art must properly be ascribed-a revival which continues to this day, and which has not yet reached the final phase of its developBut, besides his qualities as a pioneer in his craft, he was an artist and observer of a very rare and exceptional kind, whose best work, in his own line, remains unrivalled. Moreover, he was a man of a singularly attractive northern type, having something both of Hogarth and Franklin in his character, and deserving study as much from his personality as from his talents.

ment.

The true record of Bewick's life, like that of most artists, is to be found in his works, which have been voluminously catalogued in Mr. Hugo's "Bewick Collector," 1866-68, and more moder

ately by Mr. J. G. Bell in 1851. Beyond these, the chief written sources of information respecting his career are three in number. The earliest, or rather the first issued, is a brief memoir contributed in 1831 to the "Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, etc.," by Mr. George C. Atkinson, a gentleman of Newcastle, who knew him during the last three years of his life. Next to this comes chapter vii. in Chatto's "Treatise on Wood-Engraving," the first edition of which was published by Charles Knight in 1839. John Jackson, the engraver, who supplied part of the raw material for this book, was a native of Ovingham, near Newcastle, and for a short time one of Bewick's pupils. He completed his apprenticeship under another pupil, William Harvey. With some reservations, this account contains many noteworthy biographical particulars, together with an examination of Bewick's technique. Lastly, there is the memoir composed by Bewick himself at Tynemouth in November 1822 for his eldest daughter Jane, and published by her forty years afterwards. This, like the

autobiographical notes of Hogarth which John Ireland gave to the world, is of the greatest importance, and to Bewick's admirers must always constitute the standard authority for the points it covers. Written with a garrulity easily pardonable in an author who had almost reached his seventieth year, but nevertheless strangely reticent regarding his method and his work, it presents a vivid impression of his character and opinions, and a delightful picture of his youth.

Parentage and early surroundings, according to Carlyle, are the two great factors in determining the nature of a man's life; and by a happy law of our kind, it is precisely with the recollections of childhood that old age delights most complacently to linger. The "Memoir" of Thomas Bewick is no exception to this rule.

CHAPTER II.

BEWICK'S BOYHOOD.

CHERRYBURN HOUSE, Bewick's birthplace, lay upon the south or right bank of the Tyne, in the parish of Ovingham, Northumberland, and not very far from the little village or hamlet of Eltringham. We say "lay," for the old cottage now only exists in part, and that part fulfils the homely office of a "byre" or cowshed, over one door of which is the inscription—“Thomas Bewick born here, August 1753. In the vicinity of this now rises a larger dwelling, still inhabited by Bewick's grandnieces. What remains of the older house formed the central portion of the building shown in John Bewick's sketch of 1781, printed as a frontispiece to the "Memoir." Beyond the fact that the "byre" is still thatched with ling or