MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 59 



opportunity of becoming" clever at it ; so he kept 

 labouring on with such work as before named, in 

 which I aided him with all my might. I think 

 he was the best master in the world for teaching 

 boys, for he obliged them to put their hands to 

 every variety of work. Every job, coarse or fine, 

 either in cutting or engraving, I did as well as I 

 could, cheerfully; but the business of polishing 

 copper plates, and hardening and polishing steel 

 seals, was always irksome to me. I had wrought 

 at such as this a long time, and at the coarser 

 kind of engraving (such as I have noticed before), 

 till my hands had become as hard and enlarged 

 as those of a blacksmith. I, however, in due time, 

 had a greater share of better and nicer work given 

 me to execute ; such as the outside and inside 

 mottoes on rings, and sometimes arms and crests 

 on silver, and seals of various kinds, for which I 

 made all the new steel punches and letters. We 

 had a great deal of seal-cutting, in which my 

 master was accounted clever, and in this I did 

 my utmost to surpass him. 



While we were going on in this way, we were 

 occasionally applied to by printers to execute 

 w r ood cuts for them. In this branch my master 

 was very defective. What he did was wretched. 

 He did not like such jobs; on which account 

 they were given to me ; and the opportunity this 

 afforded of drawing the designs on the w r ood was 

 highly gratifying to me. It happened that one 

 of these, a cut of the " George and Dragon" for 

 a bar bill,* attracted so much notice, and had 



[* Another billhead of this kind was for the Cock Inn, a famous 

 old hostelry at the Head of the Side, and probably the one referred 

 to on page 54.] 



