XIV 



INTRODUCTION. 



been content to show outlines wanting the finish of a shaded drawing, or 

 prints usually occupying, amongst copper-plate illustrations, a place of a very 

 inferior kind. Before Bewick's day, also, there had been little attempt at 

 transcript from nature, and conventionality reigned supreme. 



The change from conventionality to natural forms was one that could not 

 have been brought about except by one possessing the royal stamp of 

 genius. And with this Thomas Bewick was certainly endowed. He also 

 had the humbler, yet quite as necessary, gift of perseverance ; and together 

 these led him to approach nature in simplicity, to receive her lessons with 

 faithfulness, and to depict what he saw with unfailing certainty and loveliness. 

 Thus it was with the Figures in the Birds and Quadrupeds. With the 

 Vignettes for these works and in the Fables it was somewhat different, 

 for here his grave humour as well as his glorious veracity displayed itself, 

 and showed another side of the artist-engraver's powerful mind. 



When Bewick began his labours artistic Wood Engraving did not exist. 

 He led it from mechanism to untrammelled and enduring excellence. It is 

 perfectly probable the change would have come by other means, if not 

 through his exertions ; yet it must have been slower and less individual, 

 "here a little, there a little, line upon line," and therefore less striking. 

 Reforms and changes in all things must come, but because of this certainty 

 we are none the less to honour the immediate instruments who stimulate to 

 new or more vigorous life. Bewick may only have been the inevitable 

 exponent of a reformation, but none the less are we to bow before the heaven- 

 born gift of ability to carry that reformation to a successful issue. 



