430 Life, Genius, and Personal Habits of Bewick, 



Fox's Book of Martyrs, where it is often widely and wantonly 

 thrown away, even where not required ; a proof, that it must 

 have been executed without much art or labour : in honest 

 old Gerard's valuable Herbal : in that of Parkinson : and in 

 Felix Valgrise's beautiful folio edition of Matthiolus's Com- 

 mentaries on Dioscorides, Venice, 1583 : and many other an- 

 cient books in my collection. Mr. Bewick's own Horse- 

 traveller in a Storm, where he shows black and white rain, is 

 a specimen of the use of two blocks. A person acquainted 

 only with the common method would be at a loss to conceive 

 how the union of the absolutely opposite styles of engraving, 

 on copper and wood, could be effected. The black diagonal 

 lines, particularly those on the foreground, constitute its great 

 curiosity as a wood-cut. In many of his tail-pieces, he has 

 given imitations of etching, and cross-hatching; but these are 

 all worked in the usual manner, the surface of the wood being 

 picked out, with infinite labour and surprising skill, from be- 

 tween the lines. He very seldom engraved from any other 

 copy than nature, having the bird (always alive if possible), 

 or other subject, before him, and sketching the outline on the 

 block, filling up the foregrounds, landscapes, and light foliage 

 of trees, at once with the tool, without being previously pen- 

 cilled. It was curious to observe his economy of box- wood; 

 the pieces being circular, he divided them according to the 

 size of his design, so as to lose little or none ; and should 

 there be a flaw, or decayed spot, he contrived to bring that 

 into a part of the drawing that was to be left white, and so 

 cut out. He said,* blocks, in durability of lines, incalculably out- 

 lasted engravings on copper, which wear very much in cleaning, 

 for every impression, with chalk ; but editions of wood-blocks 

 must be very remote indeed before they show any feebleness. 

 In early life he had cut a vignette for the Newcastle news- 

 paper ; and this year it had been calculated that more than 

 nine hundred thousand impressions had been worked off; yet 

 is the block still in use, and not perceptibly impaired. A faint 

 impression therefore, is by no means to be attributed to the 

 wearing out of the block but to the feebler pull of the press- 

 man ; and this may be proved by observing that when any one 

 is remarkably black or light, all that are pulled off that same 

 form, partake of a similar degree of strength or faintness. I 

 have now in my library a cop}^, though, I am sorry to say, 

 spoiled with my having written the margins all over with orni- 

 thological observations, of the very first edition of the Birds, 

 in which many of the impressions are far feebler than the 

 corresponding ones in the very last edition; and in the same 

 edition the same blocks vary in all shades. Let not collectors. 



