200 



THOMAS BEWICK. 



and skill lavished on this little block are quite beyond praise. Few of the 

 birds after this are of note, though the Shoveler, the Pochard, the Pintail 

 Duck, and the Teal are all specimens of what is good and legitimate in 

 wood engraving. The Tufted Duck was engraved by Henry Hole, and is one 

 of the three, with the Whimbrel and Lesser Tern, mentioned in Atkinson's 

 Memoir as not being Bewick's work. The vignette, at page 291, of an old 

 woman driving geese away from a well, is, in Mr. Ruskin's Sheffield volume, 

 sarcastically said to be " Bewick's idea of refined female character and 

 features in advanced life," but containing so much splendid engraving work 

 that " if any modern wood-cutter can do more I should like to see it." The 

 next but one is the Road to Glory, where a number of boys are seated on 

 gravestones. The first blows a trumpet, and the others are clothed fantas- 

 tically in imitation of different kinds of warriors. " This," says the "British 

 Quarterly Review" (vol. ii. 1845), "generally passes for mere ' burlesque of 

 war,' but the sting goes deeper. Upon the highest stone, next the trumpeter, 

 it will be seen that the artist has placed the well-dressed gentleman's son ; the 

 next to him is sans shoe or stocking, and the last is the quintessence of a 

 poor little ragged urchin, probably destitute of father, mother, or friend, a 

 true picture of the system of promotion in the British army at this hour." 



At page 319 a sportsman, in reaching over a river for his bird, seems 

 likely, from the breaking branch, to receive a ducking; at page 337 an old 

 countryman leans smoking over a gate, beer-pot in hand, contemplating a 

 couple of "quacks; " and farther on a woman administers the water-cure to 

 a man with most woe-begone countenance. The print at page 370 was done 

 as a book plate for the Rev. Henry Cotes, who revised the letterpress, but 

 some misunderstanding arising concerning it, Bewick, who liked the cut, took 

 away Cotes' s name and employed it for a vignette : the first impressions of it 

 are rare. The last of all is on page 400 — a hull of a ship, containing wonder- 

 fully felicitous wood engraving of the strong, firm character so eminently 

 Bewick's own. 



