26 



THOMAS BEWICK. 



designed for the Use and Diversion of the Fair Sex." A portrait of Queen 

 Charlotte embellishes the title-page, but this could not have been Bewick's 

 work, as the same head had been many years in use. 



It was for the illustrations of these books that Bewick employed the double- 

 pointed graver of his own making, so as to produce a clear line at one effort. 

 The incident is related by G. C. Atkinson in his sketch of Bewick, published 

 shortly after the artist's death: — "Bewick thought of making a chisel with 

 two points, which being immovable would not fail to produce a line of equal 

 thickness. There was a difficulty — no one could make him a tool sufficiently 

 fine; here, however, his ingenuity again befriended him, for he covered the steel 

 with a coat of etching-ground, and by the application of an acid easily pro- 

 cured a cavity of the requisite form, and found the tool answer every 

 expectation. From this time he devoted himself more exclusively to wood 

 engraving : his success in cutting the figures for Dr. Hutton, and their 

 easiness of execution when compared to the heavy, laborious work he had 

 been before engaged in on metals, gave a bias to his inclinations which 

 led him almost entirely to relinquish the other branches of the art in favour 

 of wood engraving." Several tools such as those described were among the 

 collection at the Bewick Exhibition in Bond Street in 1880. It is a curious 

 fact, however, that modern engravers have almost entirely given up using 

 such implements, although at one time they were pretty extensively 

 employed. 



In little more than a year after Bewick began his apprenticeship he was 

 also able to produce a small woodcut which brought him into considerable 

 notice. This was the representation of St. George and the Dragon, executed 

 for the bar-bill of the public-house of that name at Penrith. It was 

 the first cut done by Bewick of a kind more ambitious than the diagrams, 

 though its execution could not have called forth much ingenuity. It was an 

 advance, however, in the right direction, and being so much better than 

 the cuts ordinarily seen ornamenting the legend of pints and glasses, Beilby 



