OUR WOOD ENGRAVERS. 503 



30001. for the purpose of achieving this darling object of his declining 

 days. Its publication affords us a legitimate opportunity of exposing 

 the fallacy of his pretensions of stripping the daw of his borrowed 

 plumes of cudgelling the ass in the lion's hide. He has voluntarily 

 erected a posthumous pillory for himself, out of the fund accumulated 

 by his own mortifications while in the flesh. This is retributive 

 justice ; this affords a finer moral than all his fables put together. 



With regard to the head-pieces, we have merely to observe, that 

 they are pictorial curiosities: we recognize the original pieces of 

 patchery by Northcote, in spite of the flattering charms by which 

 they are endowed by Harvey. The ornamental letters are, with some 

 few exceptions, beautifully designed by Harvey be it observed and 

 capitally executed by Landells. They are pigmy wonders of art, both 

 as regards conception, effect, and high finish : landscapes, pieces of 

 profound pictorial wit, and even historical compositions, are condensed 

 but not crowded into the square of a nail's breadth. They constitute 

 the perfection of epigram, for they tell their meaning in the most 

 terse and polished language, so to speak, at a single glance ; their 

 point flashes upon us like lightning : they are quite as effective, and 

 at the same time infinitely more intellectual, more exalted, more ima- 

 ginative, than Bewick's best bits. Harvey is a wit, Bewick was a 

 humourist. Bewick trusted, in telling his story, to a true transcript 

 from nature ; Harvey takes a more exalted position, and adopts all 

 the accessories of the most refined and imaginative art. 



The tail-pieces possess an equal degree of excellence, and for the 

 most part, they are cut with great taste and feeling. The names of 

 Jackson, T. Williams, Branston and Wright, Smith, Bonner, White, 

 Thompson, Slader, Gorway, Nesbitt, Landells, and C. Thompson of 

 Paris, all figure in the list of engravers, in which however we miss 

 those of the talented Samuel Williams and Robert Branston ; the 

 latter of whom executed some of the finest cuts in the first series ; 

 while of the former we deem it but justice to say, that in our opinion, 

 with two splendid exceptions Nesbitt and John Thompson al- 

 though frequently meretricious, he is without a superior, and almost 

 without a rival in his art. It behoves him, however, to push on, or he 

 will soon have three or four younger competitors neck and neck with 

 him. 



We have already occupied so much of our allotted limits, that we 

 can only afford room for a hasty notice of some few of our favourite cuts. 

 The head-piece to Fable i. (Nesbitt) is a sweet, simple, picturesque 

 bit of woodland scenery ; the foliage is most tastefully varied; it is just 

 such a retreat as "The Redbreast and the Sparrow" would select for 

 a colloquy. In that to Fable iv. Landells has overcome immense diffi- 

 culties, and come out of the scrape with flying colours. The Two 

 Swine, Fable vin., by J. Thompson, is a splendid pictorial engraving, 

 which no man but himself could have wrought : precisely the same 

 observation may be applied to The Hare and the Bramble, Fable LV. 

 (Nesbitt) a most extraordinary and admirable work of art, which, as 

 regards masterly and felicitous execution, with the tail-pieces to 

 Fables xxvi. and LXXXI., both by J. Thompson, constitute the gems 

 of the book. The tail-piece to xxviu. (Jackson) is capital in every 



