io6 



THOMAS BEWICK. 



Collector," says, " It would appear to be tolerably certain that six impressions 

 on parchment and the same number on paper were all that were taken, with 

 Bewick's knowledge, on the Saturday before the block was injured, but Simp- 

 son may have clandestinely taken some other impressions on the Sunday, and 

 to his unauthorised use of the cut the lamentable injury may possibly be 

 attributable. Allowing, however, that Simpson had the power, I do not 

 believe that he exercised it in this particular instance." And Hugo further 

 says, " I very much doubt whether more than six impressions on parchment 

 with the border, and really without the name, can be found to exist." In this 

 estimate of the number Hugo, who goes by what Chatto and Bell say, is 

 mistaken ; the letter acknowledging receipt of six, in Tunstall's Memoirs, 

 was either unknown or ignored by these writers ; and collectors since their 

 time have often been puzzled to account for the larger number known by 

 many to exist. 



Hugo's reference to Simpson, who was a pressman at Hodgson's, is 

 because of the letters which he prints from Chatto and Bell regarding a para- 

 graph in the "Treatise on Wood Engraving." It is there said, "When only 

 a few impressions of the Chillingham Bull had been taken, and before he had 

 added his name, the block split. The pressmen, it is said, got tipsy over 

 their work, and left the block lying on the window-sill exposed to the rays of 

 the sun, which caused it to warp and split. About six impressions were 

 taken on thin vellum before the accident occurred." In commenting on this 

 statement Bell wrote, " The writer of the account of this cut in line 13, page 

 570 (first edition), of the 'Treatise on Wood Engraving,' is incorrect in saying 

 that ' the pressmen got tipsy over their work,' as at that hour when the 

 impressions were printed most of the men of the office had left." Chatto, 

 the author of this account, in reply to Bell's letter, says, " I have first to 

 observe that you do not fairly quote what is stated about 'the pressmen 

 getting tipsy over their work ' at page 570 of the Treatise. In writing that 

 identical passage I was particularly guarded, in order that what I stated 



