THOMAS BEWICK. 



243 



cuts published in 1824, and on page 5, vol. i. of the 1847 Birds. Hugo, in 

 the "Bewick Collector" (page 256), gives some details of the first experi- 

 ments with it, stating that Bewick exclaimed, when assured of the success 

 of the process, "Would that I had been but twenty years younger ! " 



The large block which Bewick afterwards prepared to further prove the 

 practicability of the method is called " Waiting for Death," * being a 

 representation of a wretched old horse, past all labour, and was intended to 

 illustrate a carefully compiled address on cruelty to animals, calculated " to 



Newcastle Waltonian Club. From " On the Pleasure and Utility of Angling," by W. A. Mitchell. 



improve at once the taste and morals of the lower classes, particularly in the 

 country," and the whole dedicated to the Society for the Prevention of 



* In the first volume of the Birds (1797) Bewick introduced a horse in the background of the Magpie 

 " Waiting for Death," of which a fac-simile is given opposite. To this Atkinson attaches a story of Bewick's 

 childhood : — " A neighbour [at Cherryburn] wanted a horse to go to Newburn with, and borrowed an old favourite 

 of Bewick's father under strict promise of good usage : he neglected the condition and overworked the horse, which 

 died soon after, and Bewick used to step aside in going to school to see and shed a tear over the old horse." 



The Magpie block underwent considerable alteration. In the fac-simile given there are two black branches 

 in the foreground. It was printed thus in the 1797 edition. In the 1798 impression (with "engraven" on the title, 

 and 1797 as date) there is only one branch. In the 1800 publication of the cuts of the Birds alone it has again one 

 branch. But in the 1804 (really 1805), 1805, and subsequent editions the whole dark mass is taken away, it 

 having been reduced on the wood to a light foreground, to correspond with the remainder of the design. 



112 



