Life, Genius, and Personal Habits of Bewick. 5 
delight was in his fame, and she looked on him almost with 
adoration, as he did on her. ‘The formation of her person 
and deportment was particularly graceful and fascinating ; her 
features lovely, and brilliantly animated with intelligence ; and 
her gentle spirit gave a glow to all her excellencies. Her 
conversation was frank and unreserved, yet with modest de- 
meanour, speaking her mind without regard to the opinions 
of others, yet giving offence to none. Her manners and 
countenance were so aye itching, that she might say what she 
pleased, ‘* in sweet sounds, that give delight, and hurt not.” 
Mere dates and dry facts are laborious to record, and almost 
loathsome to read; yet as they occur, I enter upon them as a 
duty, with something like the determination of a traveller, 
who, after loitering through the labyrinths of a woody snd 
cooly-watered country, inter spersed with peering tocks, ivied 
bridges, and romantic dingles, comes at once upon a common 
just enclosed, with an interminable tape of dusty road stretch- 
ing straight Retore him, without a tree for shade, or object for 
contemplation, save a milestone on one hand, and a finger- 
post on the other; ¢hat reminding his suddenly slackened 
spirit of the distance from, and this the direction ¢o, his des- 
tined period of repose. Yet even roads like these are not 
without their lichens and mosses, their insects, and their fossil 
fragments, the remnants of an earlier age. These remarks 
lead me to a work but little known, yet having much con- 
nection with my main object. I found, on strolling into the 
shop of Mr. Emerson Charnley, that in the year ‘1820 that 
gentleman had published a volume of Fables, as a vehicle for 
mmpressions of the earlier blocks, both of head-pieces and 
vignettes, engraved by Bewick, in his very young and inex- 
perienced labours. These cuts were all executed previous to 
the year 1785, many of them for Mr. Thomas Saint, an ex- 
tensive printer in Newcastle, to adorn his very various publi- 
cations; and were afterwards purchased by Hall and Elliot, 
printers; and after remaining with them several years, were 
bought by Messrs. Wilson of York, who long kept them un- 
employed, with other blocks from the same quarter. This 
collection, amounting to upwe ards of twelve hundred, was 
obtained by Mr. Charnley in 1818, who, quite aware that Mr. 
Bewick wished it fully to be understood, that he had not any 
desire to “feed the whimseys of bibliomanists,” has very pro- 
perly published a volume of them, pr eserving from destruction 
and oblivion, as a few curious morsels to collectors, these very 
early specimens of the revival of that exquisitely valuable and 
admirable art. It is incumbent to mention that this book 
contains several tail-pieces worked by Mr. Isaac Nicholson, a 
BS 
