MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 263 



panied by a poetical lament of the catastrophe, 

 part of which was 



"Ah! hapless Victory, what avails 

 Thy towering masts, thy spreading sails."* 



Some of the portraits, I recollect, now and then 

 to be met with, were very well done in this way, 

 on wood. In Mr. Gregson's kitchen, one of this 

 character hung against the wall many years. 

 It was a remarkably good likeness of Captain 

 Coram.f In cottages everywhere were to be seen 

 the "Sailor's Farewell" and his "Happy Return/' 

 "Youthful Sports," and the "Feats of Manhood," 

 "The Bold Archers Shooting at a Mark," "The 

 Four Seasons," &c. Some subjects were of a 

 funny others of a grave character. I think the 

 last portraits I remember were of some of the 

 rebel lords and "Duke Willy." These kind of 

 wood cut pictures are long since quite gone out 

 of fashion, which I feel very sorry for, and 

 most heartily wish they could be revived.* It 

 is desirable, indeed, that the subjects should be 



[* The "Victory" was lost, 8 October, 1744, near the race of 

 Alderney.] 



[f Probably a copy of McArdell's mezzotint of 1749, after Hogarth's 

 picture in the Foundling Hospital.] 



[| Bewick was not singular in deriving inspiration from these 

 humble sources. "I recollect Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was 

 present one evening [at Longford's sale] when a drawing was 

 knocked down to his pupil and agent, Mr. Score, after he had 

 expatiated upon the extraordinary powers of Rembrandt, assuring 

 a gentleman with whom he was conversing, that the effect which 

 pleased him most in all his own pictures was that displayed in 

 the one of Lord Ligonier on horseback, of which there is an 

 engraving by Fisher, the chiaro-'scuro of which he conceived from 

 a rude wood-cut upon a halfpenny ballad, which he purchased 

 from the wall of St. Anne's Church in Princes Street. "Nollekens 

 and his Times," 1828, i. 36, 37.] 



