256 MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 



even after he knows what effect his careful pressman 

 may be enabled to produce, from this his manner 

 of cutting. On this all artists must form their 

 own ideas. I think no exact description can be 

 laid down as a rule for others to go by: they 

 will by practice have to find out this themselves. 

 While I was patiently labouring and contending 

 with difficulties which I could not overcome, I 

 was shown some impressions from wood cuts done 

 long ago, with cross-hatching, such as I thought 

 I should never be able to execute. These were 

 wood cuts by Albert Durer, and perhaps some 

 others of his day, in the collection of the Rev. John 

 Brand, the Newcastle Historian; and from these 

 I concluded that Albert Durer must have had some 

 very easy way of loading his blocks with such 

 an useless profusion of cross-hatching, or he would 

 not have done them so, unless, indeed, he had 

 found out some easy means of etching the wood 

 (or perhaps metal plates), quite unknown to me; 

 but, if otherwise, I then, in changing my opinion, 

 could think of no other way than that he must 

 have cut his blocks on the plank or side way of the 

 wood, on which it would be more easy to pick out 

 the interstices between the squares, or the lozenge- 

 shaped lines, than as I (at that time) thought it 

 possible to do on the end way of the wood. One 

 of these plank blocks, said to have been drawn by 

 Albert Durer, was shown to me by my kind friend 

 George Allan, Esq., of the Grange, Darlington. 

 The drawing, which was done with great accuracy, 

 seemed to me to have been done by a crow-quill, 

 with a kind of varnish ink, the strokes of which, 

 from their regularity, looked as if they had been 

 printed from a well-executed copper plate, and 



