xvi EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



subjects in which he has achieved distinction. 

 At the same time, the prominence of political 

 and religious speculation in Bewick's autobio- 

 graphy is, if not entirely defensible, at least 

 intelligible ; and without it the picture would 

 lose much of its reality. His art was an 

 instinct, concerning which he did not reason : 

 he went out and looked at things and came 

 back and drew them, to use the simple formula 

 of his daughters. On that subject he had not 

 needed to analyse the operations of his mind ; 

 and he had consequently little to say about 

 it. But upon morality and theology he had 

 meditated much in his solitary walks, and on 

 those "red-night-cap days" of which he speaks 

 in Chapter xxv; he had discussed those themes 

 repeatedly with his more serious associates ; he 

 was never tired of discussing them even in his 

 old age, and when at last he sat down to 

 write, with something of the garrulity of years, 

 he naturally found them at the end of his 

 pen, as soon as his personal recollections were 

 exhausted. If these things had been omitted, 

 it is manifest that something distinctive and 

 individual would have been lost; and, as Miss 

 Bewick said, the book "would not be her 

 father/' Nor, in spite of the accusation of 

 triteness occasionally made against some of the 



