8 



THOMAS BEWICK. 



chastisement, both by his father and his mother, in order to compel him 

 to go back to his lessons. The good couple had, no doubt, some anxiety 

 over the refractoriness of their eldest boy. It was not a very terrible crime, 

 however; boys have always been, and ever will be, truants when they are 

 dissatisfied and can obtain an opportunity of escape. But Bewick's mother 

 had received a fair education herself, and it must have given her serious pain 

 to perceive in her son what could only have appeared symptoms of a dis- 

 position to despise book-learning, and which might, to the nervous 

 apprehension of a devoted mother, seem leading to something worse. Good 

 lady, though she did not live to witness the greatest of her son's achieve- 

 ments, she survived long enough to see all her best desires fulfilled. Her 

 anxieties disappeared ere long, owing to the character her son established as 

 a successful and respected citizen, and in the filial respect his growing intel- 

 ligence began to pay to his parents. 



When not at school young Bewick made himself useful in running errands. 

 In a letter written after he had left Cherryburn over fifty years, he relates 

 his well-remembered experiences of earlier days. "When a boy," he 

 says, " I was frequently sent by my parents to the fishermen at Eltringham 

 Ford to purchase a salmon, and was always desired not to pay twopence 

 a pound ; and I commonly paid only a penny, and sometimes three-half- 

 pence."* 



The second teacher Bewick was under at Mickley school only lived to 

 occupy the position a few years, and the boy was then sent to another 

 master. This was to Ovingham, which, like Mickley, is about a mile from 

 Cherryburn, but in an opposite direction and across the Tyne. There the Rev. 

 Mr. Gregson, Bewick's mother's former employer, still received boys as day 



* From a letter dated April 26, 1824, to a friend on " Salmon destruction in the Tyne." Another extract from 

 this letter is curious to read at the present time. " I have been told," Bewick writes, " an article had always 

 been inserted in every indenture of apprenticeship in Newcastle that the apprentices were not to be forced to eat 

 salmon above twice a week, and the same bargain was made with common servants." 



