238 



THOMAS BEWICK. 



most striking, while he discoursed on their probable histories and ail- 

 ments. 



We have a delightful sketch of Bewick the following year from 

 Audubon, the American naturalist, who relates in his " Ornithological 

 Biography" (vol. iii. page 300), that in April, 1827, he visited Bewick 

 at his workshop. 



" There," he says, " I met the old man, who, coming towards me, welcomed me 

 with a hearty shake of the hand, and for a moment took off a cotton night-cap, 

 somewhat soiled by the smoke of the pipe. He was a tall, stout man, with a large 

 head, and with eyes placed farther apart than those of any man that I have ever 

 seen : a perfect old Englishman, full of life, although seventy-four years of age, 

 active and prompt in his labours. . . . The old gentleman and I stuck to each other, 

 he talking of my drawings, I of his woodcuts. Now and then he would take off his 

 cap, and draw up his grey worsted stockings to his nether clothes ; but whenever 

 our conversation became animated, the replaced cap was left sticking, as if by magic, 

 to the hind part of his head, the neglected hose resumed their downward tendency, 

 his fine eyes sparkled, and he delivered his sentiments with a freedom and vivacity 

 which afforded me great pleasure. ... I revisited him at 8 on the 16th April. The 

 good gentleman, after breakfast, soon betook himself to his labours, and began to 

 show me, as he laughingly said, how easy it was to cut on wood ; but I soon saw 

 that cutting wood in his style and manner was no joke, although it seemed to him so 

 easy. His delicate and beautiful tools were all made by himself, and I may, with truth, 

 say that his shop was the only artist's shop that I ever found perfectly clean and 

 tidy. My opinion of this remarkable man is, that he was purely a son of nature, to 

 whom alone he owed nearly all that characterized him as an artist and a man. 

 Warm in his affections, of deep feeling, and possessed of a vigorous imagination, 

 with correct and penetrating observation, he needed little extraneous aid to make 

 him what he became, the first engraver on wood that England has produced." 



The eighth and last published edition of the Quadrupeds appeared in 1824, 

 in the same sizes and prices as the seventh (1820), of which it is almost a 

 reprint. Up to page 514 the volumes are alike ; the space then occupied, in 

 1820, by the vignette of the castle (as at page 426 of the first edition), is in 

 1824 filled by letterpress; and the cut of Sawyers, at page 520 of the 

 seventh edition, being omitted in the eighth, everything falls back one page. 

 Farther on the vignette in the Addenda of 1820 is also omitted, and by 



