MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 1 09 



led to pursue. I had often, in my lonely walks, 

 debated this business over in my mind ; but, 

 whether it would have been for the better or the 

 worse, I can now only conjecture. I tried the 

 one plan, and not the other : perhaps each might 

 have had advantages and disadvantages. I should 

 not have experienced the envy and ingratitude of 

 some of my pupils, neither should I, on the con- 

 trary, have felt the pride and the pleasure I derived 

 from so many of them having received medals or 

 premiums from the Society for the Encouragement 

 of Arts, and taken the lead, as engravers on wood, 

 in the Metropolis. 



Notwithstanding this pride and this pleasure, I 

 am inclined to think I should have had balancing 

 the good against the bad more pleasure in work- 

 ing alone for myself than with such help as 

 apprentices afforded, for with some of them I had 

 a deal of turmoil and trouble, and others who 

 shewed capacity and genius, and perhaps served 

 out their time without the interchange of a cross 

 word between us, yet these, from coming under 

 the guidance of people of an envious and malignant 

 disposition, perhaps in unison with their own, 

 were, after every pains and every kindness had 

 been shown to them, when done, ready to strangle 

 me. I have much reason to remember on an 

 occasion of my partner and myself being obliged 

 to take one of the most impudent, malignant, and 

 worst apprentices we ever had before the magis- 

 trates, one of them (John Erasmus Blackett, Esq.) 

 calling me aside, to enquire if I knew his asso- 

 ciates. I told him I did, and he sent for some 

 of them, and in the meantime told me he never 

 knew of any bad apprentices being brought before 



