28 



THOMAS BEWICK. 



Miss Bewick is stated to have given her opinion that the cuts were engraved 

 by her father, with the exception of one of a ship at sea done by a fellow- 

 apprentice. In a copy of the " Moral Instructions," once the property of 

 Miss Bewick, is inscribed the name of Thomas's younger brother John, 

 showing that the book was well known in the family. 



In 1776 Saint published the first of his editions of the " Select Fables," a 

 work much better known in the 1784 edition and the more recent reprints 

 by Mr. Pearson than in the original. In some instances the cuts in the 1776 

 edition are the same as in the fables of the " Moral Instructions," but the 

 majority are different, and fourteen at the end are from the blocks after- 

 wards used to illustrate the third part — Fables in Verse — in the 1784 pub- 

 lication. There are in all one hundred and twenty-eight engraved head- 

 pieces to the Fables, and one (used also in 1784) on the title-page. There 

 is a copper-plate frontispiece, signed " R. Beilby delin'. et sculp'.," where 

 /Esop is shown discoursing, surrounded by animals of various kinds — 

 a design repeated on wood for the " Beauties of ./Esop," 1822. The arrange- 

 ment of the 1776 is different from the 1784 edition, being prefaced by an 

 address "To my Friend," signed "The Editor," containing a few words of 

 counsel to the readers of the work. Then follow, as in 1784, the Life of /Esop 

 and an Essay upon Fable, occupying sixteen pages. The Fables, " Part I. 

 After the manner of Dodsley's," come next, there being some difference in the 

 letterpress; and the forty-eight cuts, like those in " Moral Instructions," are 

 rather poorly drawn and engraved. In the sixty-six " Fables with Reflec- 

 tions" the cuts are of the same quality, while the difference is greater in the 

 letterpress, many fables appearing which are not repeated in 1784. The 

 " Fables in Verse " only number fourteen, as against twenty-six in 1784. 



Some of the first one hundred and fourteen cuts are much better in design 

 and execution than others — the Snipe Shooter, page 48; the Angler, page 50; 

 the Horse and Ass, page 66; and the Discontented Ass, page 148, being among 

 the best. The great charm of the book, however, lies in the fourteen cuts 



