THOMAS BEWICK. 



89 



more perfect pair in Bewick's own possession. The Birds were engraved 

 from drawings made by a young artist, and this may account for the want of 

 life and lack of beauty in the designs. The only woodcut in the Tour — 

 a sledge — is repeated in a smaller size in the Quadrupeds. It may be of 

 interest to note — what is not stated in the work itself — that the Tour was 

 compiled by the Rev. J. Brewster. It is in the form of forty-one letters, from 

 notes made by Consett in his tour of nearly four thousand miles on land. 

 In a letter to Bewick from Wycliffe, November 6th, 1788, which fixes 

 the date when the plates were finished, Marmaduke Tunstall acknow- 

 ledges receipt of the prints for the 

 Lapland Tour, which, he says, 



fortunate slave, and there is a 



motto round the top, "Am I not a man and a brother?" This was 

 used in the title-page of "The Princess of Zanfara," a dramatic poem 

 issued in 1789, though it was executed for an Anti-Slavery Society. 

 Since then it has been employed for several publications, both intimately 

 and remotely connected with Slavery and the Negro question. The 

 other cut shows a negro kneeling in a similar manner, but the size is 

 smaller, and there are no figures in the background. In the supple- 



About 1787 Bewick made two 

 cuts — both remarkably fine — of a 

 negro kneeling. One represents 

 the chained black in a suppliant 

 attitude, hands clasped, and one 

 knee on the ground, with a view 

 of a plantation in the distance, 

 where a Legree thrashes an un- 



' ' demand my grateful thanks ; I 

 think them very finely executed, 

 especially the birds." 



Book-plate on copper. 



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