CHAPTER XV. 



DURING a severe illness with which I was visited 

 in April 1812, brought on by a violent perspiration 

 suddenly checked, the particulars of which I need 

 not detail to my dear Jane, as the part you and 

 your mother and sisters took, in nursing me night 

 and day, for so long a time, must be fresh in all your 

 memories, I determined, if I recovered, to go on with 

 a publication of "^Esop's Fables." While I lay 

 helpless, from weakness, and pined to a skeleton, 

 without any hopes of recovery being entertained 

 either by myself or any one else, I became, as it 

 were, all mind and memory. I readily had pre- 

 sented to my recollection almost everything that 

 had passed, through life, both of what I had done 

 and what I had left undone. After much debating 

 in my own mind where I should be buried, I fixed 

 upon Ovingham ; and, when this was settled, I 

 became quite resigned to the will of Omnipotence, 

 and felt happy. I could not, however, help re- 

 gretting that I had not published a book similar 

 to " CroxalFs ^Esop's Fables," as I had always 

 intended to do.* I was extremely fond of that 



[* Bewick seems here to forget or ignore the "Select Fables" of 

 1784 (see note p. 60), many of the designs of which are clearly 

 based on Croxall. Croxall again has affinities with earlier designs 

 by Sebastian le Clerc and Francis Barlow. (This subject is treated at 

 some length in "Thomas Bewick and his Pupils," 1884, pp. 57-67.)] 



