246 



THOMAS BEWICK. 



This, it will at once be seen, is not altogether correct ; he was at the time 

 seventy-five years of age, and not in the best of health, while he sometimes 

 wrought three or four hours a day at his profession. Otherwise the notice is 

 fairly accurate, as late in the summer of 1828 he visited London, with his 

 daughters Jane and Isabella, about some of his publications. He was invited 

 at that time to attend a public dinner to be given in his honour by the 

 principal engravers ; but though he was strongly pressed, he felt unable to 

 accept the invitation. Yet the motive of his artistic brethren could not have 

 failed to touch the heart of the old man. 



Nothing, however, appears to have interested him in the strong way he 

 appreciated things in his earlier years. " He had ceased to feel an interest," 

 Chatto tells us, " in objects which formerly afforded him great pleasure, for 

 when his old friend, William Bulmer, drove him round the Regent's Park, he 

 declined to alight for the purpose of visiting the collection of animals in the 

 gardens of the Zoological Society." Dovaston, however, relates that Bewick 

 wrote him " several very humorous letters on the utterly artificial life of the 

 Cockneys ; with the mass of whom, since he was among them half-a-century 

 before, he thought the march of intellect had not equalled the march of 

 impudence." And Audubon also mentions that Bewick visited him in 

 London during the same year, and he thought he looked as well as when 

 he had seen him in Newcastle in 1827. 



Bewick, on his return to Newcastle, busied himself with the experiment of 

 printing exemplified in the "Waiting for Death." The following letter, 

 written at this period (in his daughter's hand, but signed by Bewick), and 

 now printed for the first time, is one of the most interesting that has been 

 published : — 



" Newcastle, Nov. 1, 1828. 



" Mr. Pickering, D r . to Thomas Bewick. 



"Nov. 1. To 12 Supts [Supplements to Birds] Royal in sheets 5/1 f , s, _ d ' 



" D? Sir — With this you will receive the above which hope you will find quite right. 

 I have taken the liberty of enclosing a small package, and shall be much obliged if 



