THOMAS BEWICK. 



241 



of subscriptions received, this being probably because of the uncertainty that 

 was felt of the work ever being published. 



The Appendix to Bewick's Memoir states that, in conjunction with his son, 

 Bewick commenced the " History of British Fishes," and for this there were 

 prepared sixteen figures of fishes on wood and one by Robert on copper, 

 together with about fifty vignettes. The work never was completed, and 

 the figures of the fishes were published for the first and only time in the 

 1862 Memoir. Thirty-one of the vignettes were also printed in the same 

 volume, and "about twenty" appeared in the 1847 edition of the Birds. 

 At page 286 of the Memoir is the last vignette Bewick did, being a view 

 of Cherryburn, with a funeral procession descending to a boat awaiting to 

 take it across the Tyne to Ovingham. It was anticipated that Robert 

 Bewick, after his father's death, would proceed with the work, but probably 

 from the difficulty of obtaining good pictorial representations, as well as from 

 the absence of the master mind, the whole project was abandoned. 



In 1822 a copper-plate of Ryton Church was engraved for the Rector, 

 and signed T. Bewick and Son. It is very carefully done, and is 

 in execution one of the finest of Bewick's smaller plates. A large 

 plate was executed about the same time, and signed in a similar way, 

 for the Newcastle Grand Lodge announcements. In the following year 

 Bewick made a design which he called "The Border Wars of 1823," a 

 wood engraving of i\ by 1^ inches, representing two boys relieving 

 themselves in a natural (but quite Bewickian) manner, and deriving pleasure 

 from the contest they are engaged in. 



The design on page 243 was engraved for the Waltonian Club, for a 

 small volume, " On the Pleasure and Utility of Angling, 1824," being a 

 paper by W. A. Mitchell. Dovaston's Poems, 1825, contain a signed 

 engraving of a frozen river with a man skating, who is looking round, 

 and does not observe that a monkey has made a hole with a hatchet in 

 the ice where he approaches: another of the many instances of Bewick's 



1 1 



