The Ford. 



' The Poetical Works of Robert Ferguson," Vol. II. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



THE l8l8 AND l820 FABLES PORTRAITS — MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. 



l8l2 TO l820. 



TN 1 8 1 2 Bewick went through a severe illness, which laid him aside for a 

 considerable time. It was hardly expected that he would recover, but 

 his strong constitution was proof against the disease, although it left him 

 very feeble. His thoughts were busy when his limbs were idle, and he made 

 up his mind, if strength returned to him, to proceed with engravings for a 

 volume on the Fables of ^Esop, a project of which, years before, he had 

 often thought, but to begin it there had not been found an opportu- 

 nity. "While I lay helpless, from weakness," he says, "and pined to a 

 skeleton, without any hopes of recovery being entertained either by myself or 

 any one else, I became, as it were, all mind and memory. ... I could 

 not help regretting that I had not published a book similar to Croxall's 

 ' /Esop's Fables,' as I had always intended to do. I was extremely fond of 

 that book ; and as it had afforded me much pleasure, I thought, with better 

 executed designs, it would impart the same kind of delight to others that I 

 had experienced from attentively reading it." After his recovery he there- 

 fore went on with this work, but it was not until 181 8 that it was published. 

 In 1 8 1 2 the family removed from their house at the Forth, and went to reside 



