504) OUR WOOD ENGRAVERS. 



respect ; that to XLIV. ( J. Thomson) comes out like one of Edwin 

 Landseer's best bits ; so does that to XLVI. by the same accomplished 

 artist. Among the head-pieces, LX. (Landells) xvi. (Branston and 

 Wright) LXXI. (Smith) and xci. (Smith) merit most honorable men- 

 tion ; LXXVI. (Nesbitt) is particularly bright, but rather deficient in 

 repose ; LXXXVIII. (T. Williams) exhibits all that breadth and taste 

 for effect in which the artist excels; xcix. (by the same haud) is sharp 

 and spirited it reminds us of a painter's sketch the light looks like 

 colour laid on, the dark touches are exceedingly rich. Bonner, Slader, 

 Gor way, White, and Martin, have each added to his reputation, by the 

 cuts contained in this book ; which, in addition to its profusion of 

 sweets by standard artists, affords us a few comfits of comfort and 

 sugar plums of promise by Eliza Thompson and Miss Williams, but 

 not, we lament to perceive, by their fair rival in art, the nymph_of the 

 silver medal, Elizabeth Branston. 



The work, as a set-off to its multitude of beauties, contains a num- 

 ber of absurdities, besides numerous offences, as regards drawing and 

 engraving. It is a wonderful peculiarity of Harvey, that he makes 

 his pictures without any other models than the impressions of nature 

 engraven on his own brain : and these bear him out most gloriously 

 in ninety-nine cases, but leave him most lamentably in the lurch in 

 the hundredth. His astonishing rapidity occasionally betrays him 

 into glaring faults. Excellency from his pencil is so much expected 

 as a matter of course, that error glares out upon us with prodigious 

 effect. But we must admit that the offences in this volume are almost 

 entirely restricted to the head-pieces, in which the artist was in 

 some measure fettered by the scissars and paste patches of poor 

 Northcote. The old gentleman kept his cats in one cupboard and 

 his mice in another ; and he was prone to the fortuitous accidence of 

 occasionally selecting a colossal mouse from one cupboard, and a di- 

 minutive cat from the other, simply on account of their postures being 

 suitable to his purpose. It was in vain that he pasted an Orinoco or a 

 Rhone between them ; the former, from the size of the more distant 

 animal, dwindled into a brook, the latter into a rivulet : hence the 

 discrepancies in the present volume, which, with all his pictorial li- 

 centiousness, would scarcely have occured, had not Harvey been 

 compelled, during the old man's lifetime, to follow, in some measure, 

 his manufactured sketches. In The Elephant and the Wolf, for in- 

 stance, although the trunk of the former almost rests on the head of 

 the latter, his body is reduced to such comparative dimensions, as 

 would befit him, were he distant some league and a half. Again, in 

 tail piece to Fable xxi., The Fox and the Stork, although supposed to 

 be in close conversation, are separated by a river broad as the mouth 

 of the Medway. 



The book is not well printed. This will astonish Mr. Murray 

 amaze Mr. Whittingham and turn half the inhabitants of the Row 

 into star-gazers. The fact, however, will remain as it was the book 

 is not well printed. 



The ignorance of our cotemporary critics as to wood engraving is 

 not to be compared with their ignorance as to wood-cut printing : of 

 the former they know but little of the latter nothing. It is a new 



