Liife.) Genius^ and Personal Habits of Berwick. 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 bewitching, 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 and 

 cooly-watered country, interspersed with peering rocks, ivied 

 bridges, and romantic dingles, comes at once upon a common 

 just enclosed, with an interminable tape of dusty road stretch- 

 ing straight before him, without a tree for shade, or object for 

 contemplation, save a milestone on one hand, and a finger- 

 post on the other; that reminding his suddenly slackened 

 spirit of the distance Jrom, and this the direction to, 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 

 impressions 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 upwards 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, preserving 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 



B 3 



