THOMAS BEWICK. 



65 



the principal beauties of the writing as well as the engraving of Thomas 

 Bewick, the following quotation from pp. 1 10 and 1 1 1 of his Memoir is given, 

 as displaying one of the engraver's happiest flights in literature. It shows 

 that if he had turned his attention to literary composition he would have been 

 able to exemplify the theory, that a great man could be all sorts of men, 

 if necessary. But Bewick, partly no doubt from want of training, never liked 

 writing ; it was always a labour to him, and he probably had infinite trouble 

 with the following passages before he felt they at all approached a thorough 

 description of the scenes his eye and pencil delighted in, and which he so 

 much more easily, by another form of art, transferred to paper : — 



" It will readily be believed that, if I had not felt uncommon pleasure in these 

 journeys, I would not have persisted in them ; nor in facing the snow-storms, the 

 floods, and the dark nights of so many winters. This, to some, appeared like 

 insanity, but my stimulant as well as my reward was in seeing my father and 



mother in their happy home The ' Seasons,' by the inimitable Thomson, 



had charmed me greatly ; but viewing nature thus experimentally pleased me much 



more The autumn I viewed as the most interesting season, and, in its 



appearance, the most beautiful. It is then that the yellow harvest of the fields and 

 the produce of the orchards are gathered in, as the reward of the labours of the 

 year ; while the picturesque beauties and varying foliage of the fading woods, with 

 their falling leaves, and the assembling in flocks of the small birds, put me in mind 



of the gloomy months with which the year is closed To be placed in the 



midst of a wood in the night, in whirlwinds of snow, while the tempest howled above 

 my head, was sublimity itself, and drew forth aspirations to Omnipotence such as 

 had not warmed my imagination so highly before ; but, indeed, without being 

 supported by ecstasies of this kind, the spirits, beset as they were, would have 

 flagged, and I should have sunk down." 



" As soon as the days began to lengthen, and the sprouting herbage had covered 

 the ground, I often stopped with delight by the side of woods, to admire the dangling 

 woodbine and roses, and the grasses powdered or spangled with pearly drops of 

 dew ; and also, week after week, the continued succession of plants and wild flowers. 

 The primrose, the wild hyacinth, the harebell, the daisy, the cowslip, &c. — these, 

 altogether, I thought no painter ever could imitate. I had not, at that time, ever 

 heard the name of the great and good Linnaeus, and knew plants only by their 

 common English names. While admiring these beautifully-enamelled spots on my 



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