THOMAS BEWICK. 



27 



and his apprentice became talked about; the Northern worthies over their 

 potations noticing- and criticizing the cut. Shortly afterwards another block 

 was produced for use in a similar way for the Cock Inn, a celebrated house at 

 the head of the Side in Newcastle. There is no difficulty in believing that 

 these cuts were looked on as productions of a very superior nature when 

 compared with the wretched contemporary engravings. Relatively crude they 

 are in comparison with the artist's maturer efforts, but they have a certain 

 natural air wanting in the work of others, and to Bewick collectors they are 

 exceedingly curious, as they afford an interesting study of the engraver's 

 earliest blocks. 



A little book, "Moral Instructions of a Father to his Son," gives a 

 favourable idea of what children's books were like at the time Bewick was 

 commencing his labours. This was one of T. Saint's publications. He had 

 heard of Beilby's apprentice by the little designs for the bill-heads, and he 

 gave several orders to Beilby for blocks for juvenile works published by him. 

 Saint was a prominent bookseller in Newcastle, and it was from his shop 

 that most of Bewick's early works appeared. For the " Moral Instructions " 

 Bewick had something to do, but only a few of the cuts are his. They are all, 

 throughout the work, very small — scarcely the size of a penny — and in design 

 and execution are of an order which at the present day would be scorned even 

 by children. The cuts illustrate a series of fables which in the letterpress 

 form a distinct part of the book from the Instructions, and are named, "Select 

 Fables on the most important occasions in Life: from the Ancients." There 

 are thirty-four cuts in all, and many contain crude representations of animals. 

 The illustration to the Fox and Bramble fable is one of the more advanced, 

 and may possibly have been Bewick's work; it contains a representation of a 

 hunt with dogs, horsemen, and fox, of a similar idea as that displayed in many 

 of his more advanced cuts. Several of the designs bear, in like manner, a 

 certain relation to the cuts in Gay's and the "Select Fables," and it might be 

 possible to find a linked connection between them and these early productions. 



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