THOMAS BEWICK. 



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were no doubt the accusation — sometimes unjustly made since — that the 

 Quadrupeds was not his original work. Bewick might have remembered that 

 " a prophet is not without honour save in his own country," and from that 

 have taken comfort. The same tale, however, was some years afterwards 

 publicly repeated in the " Monthly Magazine," and Bewick sent an elaborate 

 though almost unnecessary explanation to the same publication, which is 

 referred to in its proper place. 



In the same year Bewick was greatly grieved by the death of his respected 

 and much-loved teacher, the Rev. Christopher Gregson, of Ovingham. Ever 

 since Bewick was a boy he had looked to him for advice and guidance in many 

 matters. In his Memoir Bewick pays a warm tribute of gratitude to the friend 

 who had been able, at a notable turning-point in his career, to assist in his 

 immediate entry into a position which, all things considered, was the best that 

 could have been obtained by the young artist. 



In the summer of 1791 Bewick went to Wycliffe to make drawings for the 

 first part of the " British Birds," and while he was there his wife took the 

 children to the seaside. In a letter, quoted elsewhere, published in the 

 1878 Newcastle Natural History Society's Transactions, dated August 

 8th of that year, Bewick asks his wife to be careful, when she returns to the 

 house at the Forth, to see that the beds are free from damp. Little Robert 

 had been ill, and Bewick expresses the utmost anxiety for his health, and 

 hopes the change will have done him good. 



In the education of his children Bewick adhered to the honoured maxim to 

 train them " in the way they should go," and some of his written observations 

 display the importance he attached to this duty. " They ought to be taught," 

 he said, " that all they can do while they sojourn in this world is to live 

 honourably, and to take every care that the soul shall return to the Being who 

 gave it, as pure, unpolluted, and spotless as possible, and that there can be no 

 happiness in this life unless they hold converse with God." His children well 

 repaid all the care bestowed on their training. Never were members of a 



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