The Tame Duck. " The History of British Birds," Vol. II. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The Art of Engraving on Wood in England, though never practically lost 

 from the period of its first introduction about the end of the fifteenth century, 

 was in a very languid condition at the time when Thomas Bewick was 

 apprenticed in Newcastle in 1767. Professors of the Art did then certainly 

 practise in London, if not also in other places in England, but their produc- 

 tions were of a very feeble kind, though they served to keep alive the 

 traditional methods of this branch of Engraving. 



In other countries at the same date Engraving on Wood was, as also in 

 England, discarded, in the case of important work, for the practice of 

 engraving on copper. France appears to have been the only nation whose 

 wood engravers exhibited works of merit during the interval between the end 

 of the sixteenth century and Bewick's time, but even the engravings of 

 Nicholas Le Sueur and John Michael Papillon are good only in the sense 

 of being the best of their age. 



For the finest early examples of works of Art multiplied by having been 

 cut on wood we have to look to the German Schools ; to the masterpieces of 

 Albert Diirer, Louis Cranach, Hans Holbein, and other artists of the country 

 where such works were first produced in Europe. Few, if any, of these early 



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